| "I love your idea of a house with an adult couple who teaches cooking and keeps in touch with parents. Of course, if any of us can remember what we were like in college, we can imagine how eager we would have been to live with adults, especially adults who kept in touch with our parents.'
I don't know how other folks are in their religious denomination, but the number of Quakers in the world is so small, we have used local Meetings in just such a way. The Clerk of our Meeting wrote a letter of "sojourning" to the Meeting in the college town where d. was attending, and they have become like a second family. Folks have occasionally taken her out to dinner, provided space for her to make presentations about her travels, and, when she was feeling a bit poorly, we had folks that we trusted whom we could call. If she ever needed housing over a break, it would be provided.
Now they got a bonus back - our d.! (She serves on several national Friendly bodies.) We hadn't planned it that way, and were relatively surprised that she decided to include the availability of a local Meeting in her decisionmaking (several schools had none). Now, she even makes connections when she is abroad.
All this is a long way of saying that it can be important for us all to expand our social safety net, and can be a great asset to the kids. |