Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Placement of children's playroom

[Rob Sandelin (Floriferous]

I am not sure I beleive that kids won't play in a play room that is out of 
site of their parents. My observations from my own community, and many others 
are that the kids go to where the kid energy is and they pretty much completly 
ignore their parents mostly in this decision.  You have a whole different 
environment in cohousing, your kids are FREE! You as a parent don't have to 
worry about them, and once they figure out its safe, they are gone!  My five 
year old runs through the house, hi dad, bye dad on her way to play some game 
with the other kids.  (of course this is NOT an advantage for me, I miss my 
kids and often grownups are not welcome in their games) Toddlers are watched 
over a bit more closely, but the older kids tend to do this as well.

Design your playroom to be out of earshot of the dining space as much as 
possible. The bigger kids will look after the toddlers and at dinner you can 
have a monitor work with the kids. Go visit some cohousing groups before you 
do your design and get yourself invited to dinner and see how it works. It 
would be a very large mistake to design a commonhouse without looking at at 
least two other cohousing commonhouses.

The other day a woman visitor came by and was shocked by the "neglect" she saw 
in a parent. I was amused. She asked one of my neighbors, do you have kids? 
and he said, oh yeah, they are around here somewhere. She was shocked that he 
didn't know exactly what his kids were doing, where they were or who they were 
playing with.  Much to his credit, he patiently explained it all to her, but 
of course, she still didn't get it.

I see this same transition in parents when they first move here. At first they 
are conditioned to always be watching their kids, then after about 3-4 weeks 
they see the older kids keeping tabs on the younger, and the kids all watching 
each other and so they spot check where their kids are. After about 6 weeks 
they stop even spot checking and then just go door to door looking for their 
kids shoes.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood

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From:   cohousing-l [at] freedom.mtn.org on behalf of Jagate [at] aol.com
Sent:   Sunday, March 30, 1997 2:45 AM
Subject:        Placement of children's playroom

We are currently designing our common house and trying to figure out where to
locate the children's playroom.  We have heard that the placement of the
kid's playroom can make or break a common house -- if it is too close to the
dining room and noisy then people will don't sit around and socialize after
meals, but if it is too far away then the kids won't want to go on their own
and will just play around their parents in the dining room, hence more noise
and a less than socialable environment.

We would love to hear what some of your experiences are with the placement of
the children's rooms.

Thanks,
Jory Agate

Cornerstone Cohousing
Cambridge, MA