I'm officially a full member of Twin Oaks Community. Every vote cast for me read "accept." Now I can go in the labor hole, cause trouble, and make a nuisance of myself without any worries about getting rejected. Just kidding.

I wanted to talk about child care today.

Child care at Twin Oaks is complicated, but then, isn't childcare complicated everywhere? The original vision of the community (back in the 1970's and 80's) was to raise the kids collectively. To that end, they built Degania and created the Meta program. The kids all slept, ate, played, and hung out in Degania. I hear there was a fence around the yard so that the kids didn't leave and bother people elsewhere in the community. They were the community's kids, not necessarily their parents'. It was weird and creepy (or at least it sounds that way to me) and was abandoned several years ago.

After the Meta program, childcare on the farm bounced back in the opposite direction. Everything was left to the parents. Each child got their own money and labor budgets, to be spent at the discretion of the parents. Generally, the childcare provided by non-parents is in the form of "primaries," one-on-one care provided by adults. This is cool because non-parents get to experience having close relationships with children and watching them grow, and because the kids get lots of people with whom they are close. This is annoying because one-on-one care for every kid on the farm is seriously labor intensive, and because primaries are the only labor on the farm the is excluded from the "an hour of work is an hour of labor credit" policy; primaries are half credit. Several people are reluctant to do very much child care because they do a ton of work and don't have much labor credit to show for it. One can, of course, try to line up caring for two kids at the same time for full credit, but everyone has full schedules and "binaries" are hot commodities. I would say that primaries are the norm.

In February of 2011, Rick started Unicorn School. In July of 2011, I joined the community. I can't speak to what Unicorn School was like in the beginning, but I can tell you what's it like now.

Unicorn School happens four days a week. We are open from 9 AM to noon. We provide care and education for the elementary-aged kids, toddlers, and infants whose parents have chosen to opt into the program. We have three elementary-aged kids, three toddlers, and two infants. We have one adult for each age group that is responsible for their care, well being, and behavior management. We also have folks who come in for 30 or 60 minutes at a time to do education or enrichment activities, mostly with the elementary group.

I am the manager of Unicorn School. It's a unique position. I am creating a school and daycare all in one. I am purchasing everything from toilet training potty seats to maps of the world to teacher resource books. I am training and overseeing a staff who, for the most part, have little or no experience working with kids in groups. I am working with kids who are not used to being in groups. I am working with teachers who have no experience teaching, and they're working with kids who have no experience with being taught in groups. There are lots of challenges.

I think we are finally falling into a pattern. I think the kids are figuring it out. I heard one of the toddlers suggest to another, quite politely, that maybe she could use that crayon when he was done with it. They know when to expect snack. They know what is expected of them during our morning meeting circle. They know what to expect when they make poor decisions about their behavior.

I hadn't realized how much time and effort it would take to get them to be able to work together, or even just peacefully coexist in a room. But I think we're getting there.

I do think it's great that the kids get a lot of one-on-one time. I also think it's important that they learn that life is not full of people entertaining them and catering to their whims. As adults and as children, sometimes we have to work together. That's kind of what community is all about.