How Parenting Changes with Five or More Kids
Once you learn the ropes of parenting (which usually happens after having a kid or two), you probably feel like you’ve conquered the entire world. You’re a great parent! You’ve got this whole parenting thing down. But what about five kids or more? You could add as many kids as you want to your brood and nothing much will change, right? Yeah…not quite. While you won’t become a totally different parent with every child you have, your parenting style is definitely going to adapt as your family grows in size. Three kids is not the same as five kids, or eight kids, or *gasp* 10 kids. Since having five or more kids is commonly the point at which people start categorizing your family as a “large” family, here are all the ways your parenting will change once you hit that pivotal five-plus kids milestone.
You Lower Your Expectations
Sure, back when you “only” had two kids, you could get everyone fed, well-dressed, and out the door to school in under an hour (all while washing the breakfast dishes, walking the dog, and throwing in a load of laundry). But having a big family means every task has to be prioritized, and you simply won’t be able to do everything in the same time frame. Maybe you can feed all five kids breakfast or get them all dressed in weather-appropriate clothing; you probably can’t have both. If that means some kids are putting on their shoes in the minivan (or wearing shorts when it’s 20 degrees out), then so be it. And the laundry? It will still be there when you get home (it always is!).
You Throw Out the Parenting Books
Who needs Dr. Sears when you’ve got the on-the-job experience of raising five or more kids? Gone are the days of consulting outside “experts” each time you have a parenting question. Now, other parents (heck, even your pediatrician!) come to you for advice, since you’ve “been there, done that” more times than most. A side bonus here is that you’re more confident as a parent when you have many children. You have the know-how to make reasonable decisions—you’ve basically been running a decade-long sociology experiment in your home and so far all your kids have turned out (mostly) fine. You must kind of know what you’re doing, right?
You Embrace Frugality
We’re not saying that having a big brood automatically transforms you into an extreme couponer, but feeding, clothing, and housing more than a couple of kids isn’t cheap, no matter how budget-conscious you may be. When you start adding kids to your family, you start losing money in a big way—unless you become a master saver. Parents of multiple kids learn to shop for quality second-hand goods, utilize cost-savings at warehouse stores like Costco, create money-saving meal plans around weekly sales and discounts, re-purpose old items into new ones, and pinch pennies whenever and wherever possible. Soon enough, it just becomes a way of life not to buy anything full-price or brand new.
You Adjust Your Standards for ‘Good’ Parenting
Remember when you didn’t have any kids and you announced you would never be the type of parent who did X, Y, or Z (fill in the blank with your undesirable parenting topic of choice)? Well, now that you have five or more kids, you’ve learned that good parents come in all shapes and sizes, and there is almost no limit to what you’ll do just to survive parenthood. Does leaving dirty dishes in the sink for 48 hours make you a bad parent? Nope—you’ll get to them when you get to them! If your kids are wearing two different shoes outside of the house, are you negligent? Nope—just busy. Did your youngest refuse to use the potty until they were almost 5? No problem.
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