Kids at Edge Esmeralda – Part 1
It takes a village to raise a child
UPDATE: We’ve now published Kids at Edge Esmeralda – Part 2, which goes into more detail about kids programming and ground rules.
One of our major goals for Edge Esmeralda is to integrate family life with creative life. While most people live in nuclear families, our goal is to break that mold and give families a more connected way to relate to their community. We take seriously the idea that “it takes a village to raise a child”, and we believe it’s good for everyone in the community for kids to be more integrated into it as well.
While most contexts in life are age-segregated, we believe that there is a lot to learn from people in different life stages than ourselves. So unlike most events, this popup village will be multi-generational: Edge Esmeralda will be home to toddlers, centenarians, and everyone in between.
That leads to the natural question: how will kids spend their time? Children have unique needs, so this post will dive into how kids will be part of Edge Esmeralda in June.
Our approach
The kinds of moments we’re trying to create
For children: We want to spark creativity in children by providing opportunities for parallel play, guided exploration, and exposure to a wide range of adults who care deeply about their work and community.
For parents: Parents often feel like they have to choose between their creative, work, and family life. The Edge Esmeralda community will be filled with people who understand that challenge and want to help build a creative environment where that doesn’t have to be such a binary trade off, and where parents feel they can be fully present and welcomed without leaving the people who are most important to them behind.
For people without kids: This isn’t just about kids and parents – we also want to create opportunities for people who don’t have kids to spend time with children and learn from them as well. As society gets more and more age-segregated, many people haven’t spent any meaningful time with kids before they themselves become parents; we want to change that.
What we will & won’t provide
Ultimately, you are responsible for making decisions for how your kid spends their time while at Edge Esmeralda. Our role is to provide a scaffolding for you to build off of (more info in the Calendar section below), and to point you to local resources for weekdays so that you don’t have to figure everything out from scratch. We will leverage the awesome things the Healdsburg community already has to offer, and make it easy for you to find those opportunities for your kids
Plan to bring what you need to make your family comfortable and maintain the lifestyle you want and expect (e.g. if you’re used to having two live-in nannies at all times and want to have that in Healdsburg, please do not expect us to provide that!). Our team's focus is to create opportunities for your family to be part of a community that would be hard for you to create on your own, rather than offering a full-service plug-and-play solution for you to transport your normal life to Healdsburg for a month.
This is an experiment
Our team has organized many trips, events, and popup villages in the past, but this is the first time we’re heavily emphasizing families in one of our gatherings. We are learning as we are doing, and we want to hear your feedback. We want to set expectations that we haven’t mastered this particular dimension of bringing people together yet, so please bear with us as we learn. (That is one of the reasons why we are leveraging local groups that have years of experience creating amazing experiences for kids, rather than taking this on directly ourselves.) The experience will be perfectly imperfect. This is something that is very important to us to develop mastery on, and we are excited to learn from and with your family.
Calendar
During the week (MTWThF), older kids will attend local camps during the day. For kids who are below the age cutoff for camps, we'll help you connect with other parents to plan playground hangouts, community center meetups, lunch gatherings, and more.
Here’s a list of local camps that your family can plug into, which we’ll keep adding to as we learn about more cool activities over time. If you find any that aren’t on the list, please let us know at info@edgeesmeralda.com!
We will help parents find each other to coordinate carpools, “bike buses”, and other coordination opportunities like that, but actually planning your kids’ weekdays is up to you.
During the week, we will have nightly dinners Sun-Thu with the whole community.
We will plan for these dinners to be on the early end (5:30pm - 7pm) so that your kids can join us without cutting into their bedtime.
We will make sure there is kid-friendly food available.
We will have some staff around to support on childcare, and some activities like art supplies. It will be a fairly light ratio of staff to children, so you are still primarily responsible for your kids at this time, but we want to make it easy for your family to attend these nightly dinners when you want.
We'll help organize a babysitting club.
Parents and other adults can volunteer to take you kids for an evening so that you can have a date night, attend a lecture, or simply get some rest.
Saturday each week will be Adventure Day.
We will organize day trips to places like the redwoods and the beach, and maybe even an overnight camping trip.
These trips are designed for you and your kid to have fun together. If you’re coming as a couple, we’re imagining that one parent will likely go with the kid on a given trip while the other stays back at the village to participate in that weekend’s lectures, workshops, etc.
You’re also welcome to send your kid off with another adult you trust, maybe the parent of one of your kids’s friends or a friend who doesn’t have kids who’s excited to spend some time with your kids. Our hope is that you find some people you can co-parent with in June and for Edge Esmeralda to help form a support network for your family.
Sunday each week will be Learning Day.
Adults can sign up to teach classes for the kids, teaching them anything from art to science.
Kids will get to learn a subject from someone who is deeply passionate and serious about it. We will separate ages here so that it’s age-appropriate learning.
Meanwhile the adults will have an opportunity to get to know the kids.
Our hope is that this is one of the most memorable moments for the kids and the adults who teach the classes.
Ways you can get involved
As a parent:
Lead an Adventure Day trip
Share any resources you’ve found or are bringing with you with other Edge Esmeralda parents (e.g. nanny share, local camps)
As a non-parent:
Lead a Learning Day session
Organize a sports activity, like a pickup basketball game or soccer match
Volunteer to help watch kids at a nightly dinner
Volunteer to join the babysitting club
Email us at info@edgeesmeralda.com if any of these sound interesting, or if you have other ideas for how to make kids feel welcome at Edge Esmeralda and want to help!
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