Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Kids in meetings

[Robert P. Arjet (rarjet]

cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org writes:
>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.

 I struggle with this issue a great deal.  I tend to impatient and
embarrassed when my kids disturb our meetings, and something like the
above always sounds good to me.  But my wife repeats, again and again to
me, that this is telling kids that they are welcome to participate as long
as they don't act like kids.  We run into the same issue in our Quaker
meeting: you can imagine what a two year-old is like in meeting for silent
worship, even for 15 minutes.  In some ways, however, it's clearer for me
in that context: telling a two year-old who is behaving in an
age-appropriate manner that he is unwelcome in worship is saying that kids
are welcome to worship with their spiritual community only if they can
somehow stop acting like kids. 

>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."

At the same time, my wife and are are strong proponents of the above type
of rule-making.  We don't say in our (proposed) "living with children"
document that kids have to be quiet in the common areas.  We say that
*all* members should show appropriate respect for the community, including
maintaining appropriate noise levels.  This works, as long as kids (and
other rambunctious folk) have other ways to be rambunctious: saying that
no-one may run in the common house doesn't mean that kids can't run, it
just means that they should do it on the bike path, by the pond, etc.  I'm
well over the age of majority, but I know that a lot of my neighbors are
not going to want to hear me play my electric guitar.  That's fine, as
long as there's a space for loud music and I can do it there.

The point of this digression is that barring children who act like
children from meetings means that they don't get to participate in a very
important part of community life.  I'm not saying that kids get carte
blanche, but I also don't think that it's fair to ask a kid to act like an
adult.  For that matter, if an adult in our group was ADHD and couldn't
sit still or stay focused, and tended to interrupt, talk out of turn, and
try to initiate side conversations, I'd have a hard time banning them from
meetings, especially if I believed they were acting at the limit of their
ability.  

So, I'm torn between wanting the children of the group to feel welcome and
heard in our meetings (and to feel their wonderful presence and energy
there) on the one hand and wanting a quiet meeting where I can fully focus
on the issues on the other hand.  What keeps me erring on the side of
welcoming the children is the philosophy that if we are building a truly
child-friendly community, it seems makes sense to include children in the
community from the get-go. 

Hmmmm. 

Robert Arjet
Central Austin Cohousing
http://www.austincohousing.org 

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