Big family, Little family

Chris recently sent me an article that talked about some of the issues facing parents of families with "big" families in America.  I put big in quotes, because the article was talking about families with less than 8 children.  In my mind, 8 is a BIG family, anything less is just normal.  The people with three children have little families, to me.  To others, I know, this is considered the normal.  It all goes back to what you are used to, I guess.

Anyway, this article had me looking for signs of neglect in my children.  Classic symptoms of not enough attention, feeling looked over, blah,blah, blah.  I hadn't really seen any, but then I thought maybe I was just blind to it.  Being so close to the situation, and so used to things, that I wouldn't recognize these symptoms in my children.  I really tried to look at them and their behaviors with a non-biased eye, as much as possible.  And what I saw surprised me.

My kids LOVE babies.  All of them, even Nicholas, who has now hung out with 4 babies, and in some expert's opinions would have his fill by now, adores them.  Everywhere we go, if there is a baby anywhere in their line of vision, they will head straight for it.  They coo, and ooh, and aah, and laugh at how cute he/she is, until I drag them away.  Every.single.time.

My kids' favorite playmates are each other.  They will occasionally ask to play with a child from school, but it is very rare.  Like less than once a month, rare.  They truly prefer their siblings over anyone else.  Even when we do get together with other families, my kids will usually hang out together in a cluster, amidst all the other children.  Because of this, they can play for hours, literally, HOURS together.  Mostly they love imagination games.  They will set up and then act out elaborate scenes with their Playmobil people. They play "town", "indian village", and school for entire afternoons, with absolutely no input from me.  People always moan about their kids being home from school, because they are in their hair. I love vacation, because the older ones are home to play with the younger ones, and I can actually get stuff done around the house.

And the kicker was last night, during family scriptures.  We always try to come up with a funny way to remember what number verse we need to start on the next night.  Last night was verse 34.  I said, "Well, I was 34 when I had Noah.  I always said I would be done having children at age 34.  And I thought I had achieved my goal."  That led to talk of how we really thought Noah we would be the last one, and how happy we were to have Alexandra.  And that I would have loved even more, but it wouldn't be a good idea due to health concerns.  Nick sighed and said, "I wish we could have a whole neighborhood of kids in our family.  Then we would always have lots of us to play games with."  The others enthusiastically agreed.

That decided it for me.  They aren't suffering because of all these other siblings, they are reveling in it.  And so I have decided to quit worrying about.   To others we may have a big family, to us we are just family. 

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