Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Guidelines on Children

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On May 2, 2024, at 9:45 PM, Chapel, Thomas (CDC/NCIPC/DOP) <tkc4 [at] 
> cdc.gov> wrote:
> 
> So a bit lost on the lesson here. The first 3/4 of the message I thought was 
> leading up to "don't try this (cohousing) at home".  Then it ended on a happy 
> note, kind of, that the pursuit of any kind of consensus guidelines is a vain 
> pursuit?  If so, not a ringing endorsement for communal living either, as I 
> don't have to deal with any of this if I live in a cul de sac with an HOA 
> that has block parties frequently. Ha. 

Not that consensus was a vain pursuit but that writing down rules is not 
necessarily the best way to move forward, particularly believing that you need 
rules _before_ you can move forward. Before you even move in. 

In everyday life, people develop consent, they don't decide to consent. They 
achieve consensus by understanding the situation and figuring out what works 
best for everyone. It’s a process.

The best consensus is the result of understanding what everyone is feeling and 
thinking. Then they make room for each other.

I was getting tired of writing when I finished that email so I didn’t give 
examples of how conflicts are resolved. What we found in real life was that the 
parent who doesn't want anyone to correct their child is also always with their 
child. It becomes a non-issue. 

Another parent might believe that he can allow his twin boys to play outside 
alone at the age of 6. But in cohousing, that means other people would end up 
supervising them because they would be in the middle of gatherings of adults 
and children, not alone. Most of the time that was fine, but not always. If the 
boys were fighting, he wanted someone to come get him and he would take care of 
it. But that would require someone to take responsibility for going to find 
him. 

Making a rule about what age children are allowed to roam the property without 
a parent or caregiver present would have had so many clauses and if-then 
statements the boys would have been 12 and the rule no longer relevant by the 
time we finished writing it. And there might not be another situation that 
needed that rule for 10 years. 

We tried to make a rule about at what age children were allowed in the CH 
without an adult. But we had 12-year-olds who were as responsible as adults and 
other 12 year olds who had little self control or respect for property. So age 
couldn’t be a criterion. How do you define the behaviors the child has to 
exhibit before they can be alone in the CH? 

When people try to do this before or as soon as moving into cohousing, they 
often feel that it is hopeless. That’s the situation I’m addressing. 

I’m saying relax. A workable order will develop.

We did have a rule for years that young children would not be in the kitchen 
unless they were working with an adult, making cookies or whatever. There was a 
line where the wood floor of the dining room met the linoleum floor of the 
kitchen. That was the stopping point. 

One parent was upset about that rule because she was teaching her daughter to 
put her dishes in the dishwasher after eating. But what the parent wasn’t 
thinking about is that in a cohousing kitchen there might be several people 
carrying around pots of soup or piles of dishes, or mopping the floor. A 
four-year-old running in and opening the dishwasher at the wrong time could put 
everyone at risk. Not because the child was doing anything wrong, but because 
it would be like crossing a street in the middle of the block. Traffic. The 
mother would have to walk with her daughter and determine when it was safe to 
open the dishwasher. 

In that explaination, the rule seems pretty simple and obvious. In real life, 
that discussion began with no kitchen in sight as an issue of "denying children 
a meaningful role in the protection of the planet.” 

It took a while to figure out that she was talking about putting your own 
dishes in the dishwasher and that the cooks were talking about fear of tripping 
when a child unexpectedly ran in front of them.

That’s why writing down rules is hard. Not because it is impossible, but 
because it is putting the cart before the horse. Much easier to make rules (if 
you have to) based on lived experience.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org