Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Placement of Childrens' Room in Common House

[Lori A Llewelyn (lorillewelyn]

In response to the question about how to locate the childrens' room in
the Common House:  

I have lived at Muir Commons CoHousing for 3.5 years.  In those 3.5
years, we have tried several different rooms in our Common House as the
childrens' room.  

First of all, if there is much of an age range, one room is not
sufficient for all of the children.  The solution we have hit on (which
pleases most people, but not everybody) is to have a room for toddlers
and then to have the other rooms in the Common House be activity-specific
rather than age-specific.  Besides the Toddler Room (where older kids are
welcome, as long as they are getting along with the toddlers), we have a
Rec Room (with games, TV, etc.), an Exercise Room (which is a large room
with nothing in it except pillows and is generally the most-used room by
the middle-aged kids), a Sitting Room (which is for quiet activities,
such as visiting and reading; unfortunately, it is next to the Dining
Room and is not quiet during mealtimes), and an office and guest room
(which are generally not used by kids).  Our oldest kids are just hitting
teenage-hood, so we don't much experience with the needs of teenagers.

In terms of the location of the Toddler Room, my advice is to arrange it
so that it can be seen but not heard from the Dining Room.  Put a big
window (nearly floor to ceiling), or French doors, between the Dining
Room and the Toddler Room, so that parents can watch their kids, see when
there are problems, but so that noone has to worry about how noisy the
toddlers are.  The toddler room can be fairly small, and the window or
glass door (some kind of safety glass, obviously) should afford a view of
most or all of the room (from the Dining Room).  This way you can also
shut the door to the Toddler Room and feel somewhat confident that the
little kids will stay in there and not be in danger of darting unnoticed
into the (dangerous) kitchen, etc.  We don't have this arrangement, but
this is what I would like to try, if we had it to do over again.

And, if there are times when there are no toddlers in the group, this
room would make a great quiet room, from which people could see the
general activity in the Common House, but not hear it.   Given the way
the rooms in our Common House are currently arranged, the thing that the
most people miss the most, I think, is a quiet room, where people (mostly
adults) could read or visit, uninterrupted by the general hustle and
bustle of meals, kids playing noisily, interruptions, etc.