Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Behavior guidelines for Common House

[Lynn Nadeau (welcome]

Some additional factors with children. At RoseWind we early on made a 
rule that young children shouldn't be in the kitchen at all (unless a 
parent is carrying or escorting them for some particular reason). It 
helps that the wooden dining room floor changes to red linoleum at the 
start of the kitchen: "Stop at the red floor" is easier for the little 
ones than "Stay out of the kitchen." They actually love to call each 
other on floor-boundary incursions of even a few toes - it's like a game. 
But in fact it avoids putting them in the way of hot and sharp things, 
and sometimes a lot of busy adult traffic, typically carrying stuff. 

Adults are asked to put desserts in the kitchen, or on a side counter, 
until later in the meal, to help kids understand what foods are 
appropriate for their main supper.

Another guideline for young children has been to have an adult serve 
them, to avoid germy fingers diving into the serving dishes. They have 
adapted easily: "Could you get me some more chips?" If they forget, 
someone says "Please let me serve you." "Here, I'll get it for you."

They do sometimes get to racing around ("walking feet" and "inside 
voices" is entirely an adult concept - says this former preschool 
teacher: children are naturally exuberant) but get redirected to the play 
room or to slow down. Likewise the sectional sofa in the dining room 
tempts them to bound around on it, play fort behind it, etc, and 
redirection is sometimes called for. The rule is that the sofa there is 
"for sitting". 


Lynn Nadeau, RoseWind Cohousing
Port Townsend Washington (Victorian seaport, music, art, nature)
http://www.rosewind.org
http://www.ptguide.com
http://www.ptforpeace.info (very active peace movement here- see our 
photo)