Let The Children Come & Come & Come…
I picked up a People magazine and on the cover was a couple named the Duggins. I don’t know anything about these folks other than they could use a little more sun and they have nineteen children. Nineteen children?! Are they assembling an army to conquer Luxembourg or planning to start their own circus?
After thinking about it for a while, I now realize there are A LOT of great reasons for having nineteen kids. You can get by with a ton of unthinkable things and with nineteen kids people would understand.
- Accidentally leaving a kid at the zoo. Instead of calling DHS, zoo employees would say, “Hey, it’s OK! Eighteen out of nineteen isn’t bad!”
- You always have leftover birthday cake in the house. That’s a big plus…sign me up for a couple of extra kids!
- Everyone should know how to use an outhouse. With nineteen kids you’ll have a good reason to dig several.
- Kids today are told they are special without having to prove it. When your drowning in people that look just like you…well…you get to prove it!
So having nineteen kids makes perfect sense but what I don’t understand is how you can show each child the personal attention that they need. I have one son and one daughter – I could shower them with constant attention and they wouldn’t get enough. There is no limit to the investment I could make in each of them.
How do you love a child individually when there are so many? Some may argue that it depends on the parents. I disagree. Some parents are more enthusiastic than others, but all parents – good or bad – have to deal with this fact….there are only twenty four hours in a day. Once you carve out the necessities of life, there may be five hours (or less!) to plug into your children. Now that I have two children it’s hard for me to imagine having four and still having time to focus on each one.
A friend of mine grew up in a family of nine. He told me that when you grow up in a large family you really don’t connect with your parents as much as you do with your older siblings. The older children become something like surrogate parents. Even when you get older, you talk to your parents when you can but it’s those older siblings that shape your childhood.
That’s not my idea of being a parent. Opinions are worth the vapor their made from but here’s mine – I have a hard time seeing a parent of more than five (six?) children without handing over some of the responsibilities to others be they extended family or older children. It’s my desire that Saul, Olivia, and whoever else has memories built from time not only with the entire family – but alone with me…you know…their father.
March 1st, 2010 at 9:20 am
It’s great to hear you say how important it is to create memories with your children. Words of wisdom