Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Re: Children (in cohousing and elsewhere)

[Kay Argyle (argyle]

>  Others have less physical tolerance for the sustained volume
>  and pitch that can happen at community gatherings.

Given the number of communities that report that their dining room is too
noisy, I'd say there's a fair percentage of people with limited tolerance.

One could make a case for accessibility. There are recognized diagnoses that
include an inability to function well in a noisy, distracting environment,
and more being identified as neurologists figure out how the brain works (or
doesn't).

Plenty of character flaws suddenly become no-fault diseases when they're
recognized as a pattern of symptoms, the underlying physiological mechanism
is documented, or an effective treatment is developed.  Maybe someday I'll
be recognized as a victim of Snorkledurfer-Vander Blixnort's Syndrome,
instead of being an old crab who hates noise.  (And any day now fat will
quit being a moral defect.  Really.  Any day now.  I'm waiting ....)

> My opinion is that if they were allowed MORE unsupervised time,
> rather than less (even though this is obviously age-related), their
> behavior might improve.>>

Is it too much supervision, or is it energy with no approved outlet?  Who
would you have higher expectations for (other things being equal -- family
finances, etc.), the kid juggling soccer practice, belly dancing, cello
lessons, SAT tutoring, volunteering at the zoo, and a part-time job, or the
kid who hangs out every night at the mall?

For that matter, far from _too much_ supervision, could it be a lack of
positive, supportive supervision?  Maybe the soccer player gets more
attention from her/his parents. I suspect a home-schooled kid gets tons more
supervision than a kid in
a public school, given the difference in "class size" -- two or three, maybe
half a dozen students, vs. thirty or forty per teacher.   Kids attending
public schools spend a lot of their time bored and ignored.

I'm sure I've heard that most teenage crime, pregnancies, and drug use occur
between the time school gets out at 3:00 and when parents get home at 5:00
p.m.

> We often tell our own kids to work out their issues with their friends
> on their own.  But sometimes they need help, and sometimes
> they need control.

Speaking from awful experience -- Adults don't always make sure that (a) the
kid actually has the resources, such as social skills and power base, to
work it out, and (b) the other party is in fact a friend, with some
incentive to change.  Kids have far less control over who their associates
are than adults do.  Sometimes they're stuck with colleagues who make their
skin crawl.

Or, for that matter, that (c) the "issue" isn't assault, theft, sexual
harassment, or hazing.  Just because the criminal is another child doesn't
mean there's no crime.

Some of the major school shootings were a bullied kid "working out issues on
his own."  Been there, didn't do that -- but school and workplace shootings
didn't start getting into the news until a decade later, to provide a role
model for what to do at the breaking point, and even then I don't think any
of the shooters have been girls. And I'm grateful that a particular sibling
disliked guns, or he could have been a pioneer of the genre.

Kay
(who grew up seeing greener grass on
the other side of the supervision fence)


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