Child Contracting

June 25th, 2022
kids
The kids came to me with a contract dispute: they disagreed about what the deal had been. After some talking, and hearing what they each thought they'd agreed to, it turned out that the contract wasn't just metaphorical:

"Anna rents the living room from Lily in exchange for Lily's use of bedroom. And Lily will do free cleaning."

It turned out that Anna signed it after hearing a rough paraphrase. I told Lily that she would need to read any future contracts aloud, word for word, before Anna signed. I also explained about interpretation against the drafter, and how Lily should be careful to avoid ambiguity in writing down agreements.

I'm not sure what "free cleaning" means here? Generally they both do very little cleaning, free or otherwise.

Cleaning up this evening I came across a second contract:

"Anna will let Lily use bedroom and bathroom. In exchange Lily will let Anna use the living room and Lily does free cleaning. If furniture is moved or added please put away".

This one wasn't signed, so perhaps they couldn't agree?

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Ozy and Vasili Review Lilo and Stitch

Sometimes my seven-year-old, Vasili, wants to see some godawful movie that makes me want to melt my eyeballs out of my head.

via Thing of Things June 27, 2025

Elixir's Last Dance

On May 18th, the contra dance band Elixir had their last gig ever. The dance was packed: there were three hundred people. It was the only dance BIDA has ever done where they sold tickets. People flew from across the country just to hear Elixir play one la…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts June 5, 2025

Workshop House case study

Lauren Hoffman interviewed me about Workshop House and wrote this post about a community I’m working on building in DC.

via Home April 30, 2025

more     (via openring)