Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Parenting in Cohousing

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 14 Jun 2011, at 9:40 AM, Diana Carroll wrote:

> There's a big difference between adults seeing
> a cookie-taking in progress and saying "Hey Joey, why don't you go check
> with your mom first" and the group coming to consensus on a policy to not
> *have* a cookie jar because it makes Joey's mom's life more difficult.

I feel particularly deprived by not being allowed to have a cookie jar 
available. I have one but I can't advertise it and it contains the small Paul 
Newman alphabet letter cookies which are organic and well, small. 

I'm called Nana by most of the kids here and feel I've earned the privileges of 
a grandparent who can spoil kids, but now it's no sugar and no TV and no 
nothing. They can't even sit around doing nothing. And learning two languages 
is the minimum they can do. I don't even know which language the 16 month olds 
are babbling in.

I took two 5 year olds out for lemonade and cookies at the local coffee shop a 
few years ago and it was the astonished talk of the town for days.

I would like to have cookies and milk available for the kids to stop by and 
chat but it's too politically charged.

I used to have "vegetable ice cream" — frozen corn, but even corn has become 
suspect.

FIW, when my children were small I was macrobiotic and nothing like sugar 
passed any of our lips for many years. My son still remembers fondly "that day 
you allowed us to have _a_ Hostess Twinkie." It's one of the things I wish I'd 
spent less effort on. Having good meals available is one thing, but food fights 
— even around good food — is not the thing I want to remember about my 
children's growing up. And I don't think anything I said about food, either 
way, had any effect on them. My daughter always preferred vegetables and my son 
always ate whatever passed by or ate nothing. They still do.

Sharon
------
Sharon Villines
"On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all 
the time." George Orwell