Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Children: Letting them work it out or micromanaging

[Sharon Tuck (Sharon]

My son's school has a "peace place". Each incident is dealt with at the
moment because that's how kids work. Each individual tells their side of
things while the other person listens and then the kids tell each other
what they need to move on. This puts it in the kid's hands instead of
the parents interpretation of what happened. A parent would have to
facilitate the interaction, but that's it. And I'm sure there are and
can be a bunch of variations on this. 


Sharon Tuck 
Wonderland Hill Development Company
303-449-3232  ext. 203
www.whdc.com 
 
"Sustainability through Community"

-----Original Message-----
From: Shelly [mailto:shelldemeo [at] comcast.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2005 7:17 AM
To: Cohousing-L
Subject: [C-L]_ Children: Letting them work it out or micromanaging

Hi:

Here at Rocky Hill Cohousing, 24 of the 28 households have moved in.
Along with those houses came many active children.....heavy on the boy
side and no playscape in sight as of yet.  Common house under
construction..  

It seems that many issues have been popping up from incidents with
children that vary from day to day.  One day, one child feels
excluded....another day someone got hit with a lightsaber too hard,
one...a snowball, etc.  

The ages of  the kids paying ranges from around 5 to 11 and the
attitudes about how much supervision the children need outside vary from
"let them work it out" to "somebody needs to be supervising at all
times."

As one who has a ten-year-old boy who runs out to play and a
one-year-old daughter who needs my attention inside the home, I really
don't have the energy or desire to pack her into a backpack carrier in a
snowsuit and stand outside on the path monitoring the children every
moment.

How have other communities handled this?  The child care committee wants
to have monthly parenting meetings where we discuss how each child is
feeling and what issues have happened etc. While that sounds like a good
idea, I guess, I feel a little exhausted just thinking about yet another
meeting.  I thought this was going to SIMPLIFY my life!

Shelly DeMeo
Rocky Hill Cohousing
Northampton, MA  



Ne thing I am enjoying about cohousing is that there always seems to be
somebody outside wanting to play and my boy runs out to join the action.
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