Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Kids in cohousing

[gpye (gpye]

Greetings!  I'm a lurker here in Durham/Chapel Hill, NC and 
I'm writing because Greg Bamford's message stirred up some 
memories for me that relate to this discussion of kids in cohousing:

I spent my first 7 years in a trailer park in Charlotte.  It was not an 
intentional community, and I don't remember whether it was particularly 
transient or not.  What I do remember is that there were no "yards", no 
specific borders where you "couldn't" go.  There was virtually no traffic 
on the trailer park circle, so we played games and went back and forth 
between each other's houses with ease and without a great deal of 
supervision.  I absolutely loved it,  and didn't realize that 
the whole world wasn't like that.

At age 7, we moved to a "neighborhood" with streets with cars and 
backyards with fences and I remember feeling major culture shock (though 
I'm sure I couldn't articulate what was going on at the time).  Suddenly, I 
had to be "invited" before I could go into someone else's yard.  Things were 
much more formal and where I'd easily made friends with all ages before, here 
kids seemed to have "groups" to which you had to earn membership.   You 
get the idea.  It was a tough transition.

In other words, I think the informality and having a safe place to play 
and everybody knowing everybody were incredibly valuable and it's worth 
it to me to spend the effort in developing our own cohousing group 
because I feel like it's possible to get that as an adult (and for my 
kids as well).  Note:  I do have a lot of this informality and caring 
with my friends (both coho and non-coho), but the geographic distances 
keep us from interacting as easily as if we had cohousing.

BTW,  I love the Cohousing Stories we've been hearing lately. They 
are very inspirational.  Thanks!  Would love to hear more!  

Ginger W. Long
Mimosa Grove Cohousing (MoGo CoHo), Chapel Hill/Durham, NC
gpye_Long [at] ncsu.edu

"No matter where you go, there you are."    --Buckaroo Banzai