Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Senior's needs? (was Achieving age diversity)

[Deborah Mensch (deborahmensch]

Hello Lia,

I really appreciate your putting out this perspective. I've been noticing
how the values a community espouses affect the outcome, and I think this is
a great example.

I live in a cohousing community where there is a fair amount of wildness
during meals. We have a kids' room down the hall from the great room, and it
has a door that can shut -- that helps, since the kids can go to the kids'
room for the loudest play. A fair number of parents here don't try to keep
their kids at the table once they've finished eating, probably for any
number of reasons. Now that I can trust my 2-1/2 year old daughter not to
leave the Common House without telling me, I let her go and play after
meals. Since I'm a stay-at-home mom, it's one of the rare chances in my life
to have a conversation with another adult without needing to watch my
daughter and attend to her needs.

All that said, I recently talked to a neighbor about a nearby cohousing
community in Petaluma where the meals are very different. All this is
secondhand, so I hope I'm getting it right. What I remember is: Everyone
sits down at the same time. Meals are always served family-style rather than
buffet, so people stay at the table for the entire eating time rather than
getting up for seconds, etc. Kids stay at the table for a long time with
their families, if not the entire meal. And, from what my neighbor said, the
kids also eat the same, healthy food as the adults, not a kid option
prepared for the picky eaters so common among younger ones.

What distinguished the community in our conversation was the homogeneity of
values related to child-rearing in that community. (Several families there
have kids who attend a local Waldorf school, which implies a likely
constellation of shared values.) When a community forms around the kinds of
values the Petaluma community has, and which Lia describes, a lot of
positive community influence on the children is possible in the areas
covered by the shared values. On the other hand, when those kinds of values
are not shared, either by design or by happy accident, it's harder to hold
kids to those kinds of norms at community meals. I'm not saying it's
impossible, just that it's a lot harder. And of course, the behavior
standards in each private home can be whatever that family puts into
practice. It's the common meals, where families with different values and
practices rub elbows, that get complicated.

Of course, there are also values about child-rearing that tend in the
opposite direction -- toward allowing more freedom and wildness -- and those
can be shared or not shared as well. It just seems, from my own experience,
like the inculcation of the behaviors Lia describes would be easier in a
community where those behaviors are explicitly valued by the group, and
where those values are articulated early and often during the process of
forming the group.

-Deborah Mensch
Pleasant Hill Cohousing
Pleasant Hill, Bay Area, California


On 11/11/06, Lia Olson <liajo [at] sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> I have to preface that I'm not currently living in co-housing (that's my
> dream
> for the future), but the issue of senior vs. kids needs--especially as
> articulated by sharon--seems to really speak to larger issues.
>
> Let me say this --as someone about to celebrate a 60th birthday, I'm in
> the
> senior camp.  At the same time, I am a single mother who was as
> child-centered,
> child-focused as they come.  Basically, I chose to remain single and put
> my
> energy into providing a stellar start for my precious son during my prime
> coupling years and I would do it again, despite the fact that it's not
> really
> fun to find myself living alone at my age.
>
> Here's the thing.  Putting my son first and foremost did not mean that I
> didn't
> teach him how to live in harmony with others.  Believe it or not, we had
> candlelit civilized dinners every night.  And, you know what, we almost
> NEVER
> were alone, because his friends practically clawed their way into
> invitations
> to participate in our gentle rituals.  My good friend says now that her
> son
> rarely wanted to eat at home, but chose to hang out at our house because
> he
> loved the beauty, civility and respect evident at our dinner
> table.  Frankly,
> he rarely was absent, because meals at his home were free form and
> flexible to
> the point that they didn't feed his spirit.
>
> Are we sure that kids want to run wild at mealtimes?   That has NOT been
> my
> experience.  That might be what they do without structure, but I wonder if
> lack
> of limits doesn't correlate with lack of meaning?
>
> I found that when I integrated these wild children into a meaningful way
> of
> being together, they acted like plants deprived of moisture suddenly
> watered.
> My friend's son, now grown and moving into a marriage commitment, swears
> that
> he will institute the sort of limits and opportunities he found in my home
> when
> he becomes a father.
>
> Is it possible that kids don't really want to run wild and trample on the
> rights and needs of others?  That is my humble experience, and I wonder if
> it
> has been explored in co-housing communities, or whether the ideal of
> "freedom"
> has pre-empted exploration into what children really need.  It sure isn't
> the
> constrictive milieu of the 50's, but I wonder if there isn't something
> more
> nurtuing we can offer children that involves empathy, sensitivity, and
> responsiveness to beauty, ritual, and sensitivity.  There are times to
> shed
> restictions and simply explore the riches of the universe with abandon,
> but are
> community meals one of those experiences?
>
> Expecting piotshots, but still beliving in the integrity of my question,
>
> Lia