Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Re: child care at meetings

[S. Kashdan (skashdan]

"Lynn Nadeau" <welcome [at] olympus.net> wrote:
To: "cohousing L" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Monday, February 17, 2003 8:43 PM
Subject: [C-L]_Re: child care at meetings


Here at RoseWind, we have budgeted money to provide childcare during
meetings, but the main problem is finding available sitters. We don't
have a pool of member-kids the right age, though sometimes my
post-high-school daughter can be talked into giving up half of a Saturday
for it.
---
Here at Jackson Place Cohousing, we have funds for paying for childcare for
ten monthly business meetings and ten special issues meetings. We decided to
do this from the beginning because we all want every parent who wants to be
involved to be able to fully participate in those meetings. We don't have
any teenagers who are community members or related to community members
available. But, because we live in a city, our biggest problem isn't finding
childcare folks. We have found a few good ones. Our biggest problems are,
first, that some of the toddlers are too young to feel comfortable with
anyone they don't see around every day, and so their parents don't leave
them with the childcare provider. We are also having some problems with the
job of coordinating the childcare providers. One member did a really good
job and put in a lot of quality work last year--making and maintaining
personal contact with the care providers, keeping eyes and ears open during
meetings to deal with problems that came up in the children's room or
wherever they  were, and checking in with parents and care providers after
meetings to see about how everyone felt things went, etc. But, that person
is interested in doing other things this year, and the folks who are taking
on this chore are doing an okay but shortened version of the chore. Some of
us felt that the job of childcare coordinator should be made a regular
community chore, with  a clearly delineated description, but some people
don't like this suggestion, and it has started a controversy about many
things, including what a community chore should be (only something drudge
manual or paper work, or anything that needs regular doing, and whether
someone should be paid for doing community chores, etc.).

It has surprised me, because I am one of those over-fifties who likes being
around children and adults of all ages--but we are experiencing all of the
problems related to having a wide range of ages of people involved--from
months to late '70s. We have some older people who are finding the children
annoying, some younger people (with and without children of their own) who
are finding they are annoyed by the children or don't like how others are
raising them, some parents who are hurt or annoyed by others' attitudes,
some people who want the whole community to take responsibility for taking
care of children and some who do not, some younger people who don't feel
comfortable with or interested in older people, etc. the whole thing. We are
trying to work through these issues and hope they are only growing pains.
Sylvie Kashdan
skashdan [at] scn.org
Jackson Place Cohousing
800 Hiawatha Place South
Seattle, WA 98144
www.seattlecohousing.org
Where we are celebrating adult and children's birthdays, getting ready for
our annual meeting and celebration, and enjoying  musical concerts, plays
and videos and (so far) one conversation cafe together in our common house,
as well as some of us marching for peace together.



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