Cohousing-L Mailing List: tyranny of children (was Fifty Plus Cohousing)

[Eris Weaver (erisw]

Sharon Villines said:

> But perhaps what we need is a greater understanding that cohousing can
> be child friendly without being child dominated. Some areas and times
> could be exclusively adult -- not with age restrictions but with
> behavior and programing expectations. Some dinners where macaroni and
> cheese are not served or rooms where magazines can be left out without
> being destroyed.

YES YES YES!  A community can be child-friendly without EVERY room and/or
EVERY event being accessible and/or appropriate for children. This is
something I have been struggling with in my community (not very well I might
add) and we have not even moved in yet.  (Next month we are finally having
our FIRST ever adult-only event -- and we've been together for five years!)
I have felt frustrated when it seemed that every event had to be planned to
accomodate children and mealtimes had to be planned to accomodate children
etc. when sometimes that served to NOT accomodate a chunk of other people.
For example, a canoeing trip was cancelled because the canoes couldn't
accomodate small children -- disappointing a few of us who were looking
forward to it. Playing a potentially vigorous/dangerous game like Ultimate
Frisbee isn't as much fun if we ALWAYS have to let the little ones in.
Letting small children run around and make noise during a business meeting
makes it hard for the folks with hearing loss to hear what's going on and
participate. Not every event/room/activity has to appeal to/be accessible
to/ EVERY single member of the community every time! Sometimes when to try
to accomodate EVERYbody you accomodate NObody!

**********************************************************
Eris Weaver                                erisw [at] sonic.net

SoCoHo
http://www.sonic.net/~erisw/socoho.html
Sonoma County, Northern California



_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L