Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Kids in meetings

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> Some people
> have been uncomfortable with this because they feel they have to adapt their
> comments, behavior, etc. to fit having a child in the room.

While I support children being in meetings, I also support the standard of
the meeting remaining at an "adult" level. In other words, this is the
standard of the meeting and children who are comfortable with that standard
are welcome.

We are attempting to phrase all our "standards" in terms of behaviors and
not ages. Thus there is "no running in the commonhouse except in
emergencies" rather than "children cannot run in the commonhouse." Our
biggest runner is an adult, actually, and he tempts children into running.

We currently need limits for the kids room where we have very young and
preteens sharing the space (at different times), but it doesn't work to mix
roughhousing and small furniture and plastic toys. The task is to define the
behaviors typical of "under age 5 or so" rather than to set age limits. Thus
a 12 year old is perfectly welcome to play with and like a 3 year old in
that room but not to hold a basketball game there.

Similarly we are talking about a more active room with a ping-pong table and
whatever else teens want without making it a teen room. Any one who uses the
room, however, would be accepting of loud, physically aggressive, music
accompanied behavior (or whatever). A five year old might be comfortable in
there but the nature of the activities there would not be expected to change
because a 5 year old walked in. Nor would the room change if I walked in and
hated people bashing balls around. This is the bashing balls room.

Meetings are set up for particular levels of interaction and if they are not
maintained, there is no point to having the meeting. And trust me, we get
more information about what is going on in the community from kids than from
adults. They know everything.

If kids don't understand what is going on in the meeting, and they want to,
treat them  like new members or guests - you have someone sit next to them
who quietly explains what is going on.

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


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