I have this theory that when it comes to the optimal number
of kids, it’s a balance between your ability to give each child the individual
attention and care they deserve, and the benefit of greater community. You have
too few kids, and they miss out on the camaraderie, love, and learning to
sacrifice that the unique personality of each sibling—and the unique
combinations of each of those personalities—provides. But have too many kids,
and some of their needs can slip by under the radar since you’re too tired or
taxed to notice. It’s just impossible to give each one the same degree of
attention when you have many.
We’re at a stage in life—four kids six and under—where the
group effect is particularly pronounced. It’s easy to fall into something
author Rachel Jankovic (who had five kids in five years) calls the “bulk
effect.” She gives a great example of this in her book Loving The Little
Years: Motherhood In The Trenches:
“Let’s say that you are trying to get ready for church, and
one child is disobedient (something petty, like not putting on their shoes when
you told them to). They wandered off and got distracted and loitered in the
living room for a minute. In that minute the baby starts crying, you see the
clock and realize that you are going to be late, you can’t find the wet wipes
or the baby’s shoe, which you know you put on the table last night. The baby is
still screaming, so you are trying to rock the car seat with your foot while
doing the hair of your middle child who will not stop bouncing. You are
shouting out to your husband to see if he knows what happened to the baby shoe,
probably punctuated with ‘Sit still. Stop. Don’t wiggle.’ As it turns out, your
husband is out looking for someone’s lost shoe in the car where they are prone
to remove them, so you get no response. You begin to have evil thoughts about
shoes. The tension is mounting. You may very well be feeling hot and sweaty
while your coffee is getting cold on the counter, untouched. At this moment,
the child who didn’t put his shoes on comes wandering back, refreshed with a
nice spell of magna-doodling. What do you think happens?
“You take that shred of guilt and then harness onto it the
stress of the whole situation. You make your child into a scapegoat… He did,
after all, disobey… the consequences for his sin go way up, and the
consequences for yours go way down. It is simply a classic shifting of the
blame. … Oftentimes you won’t even discipline the sin that did occur, because
you are wanting to leave this situation with the feeling that you were full of
grace toward that child who maliciously magna-doodled. Next time, you say, you
will get spankings. This time, you will just have to bear the weight of my
discontent, my anger, and my lack of self-control.
"If you took the actions of each individual child, nothing
big happened. One kid took her shoes off last night in the car. One kid keeps
bouncing when you are trying to fix her hair, one kid had a dirty diaper, and
one kid magna-doodled instead of putting on his shoes, and the baby just wants
some attention… The combined effect is certainly ripe, especially when you add
in the things that Mom and Dad were responsible for. The time. The lost
clothing that could have been found last night. Not noticing the distracted
disobedience right away. Not getting up early enough to drink your coffee.
“The situation is not sin. It is merely the combined effect
of a lot of people. And just because you can pin down one sin in the batch does
not mean that child is responsible for the situation. Your children are not a
situation. They are individuals. Disciplining an individual for a collective
situation is a great way to alienate your children. It is not only unjust and
unkind, but it is untrue to the gospel. Christ takes our sins; He does not load
us down with someone else’s.”
The bulk effect is when I let my reaction to the overall
situation unduly affect my reaction to one child; when I functionally make them
responsible for the behavior of the group. There’s a difference between asking
Elijah to be quiet because Esme is still sleeping, and becoming mad at him
because she woke up. There’s a difference between reminding Eric to let Elijah
pour his own cereal because he’s two and wants to feel grown-up, and snapping
at Eric because he triggered Elijah’s third tantrum of the hour. There’s a
difference between reminding them they’ll have to deal with certain
grocery-cart arrangements, and getting upset at them for making a grocery run
so complicated—it’s not their fault there are so many of them. When having a
lot of kids becomes a problem, it’s my responsibility to deal with it.
The other pitfall for big families is mistaking our ability
to contain and organize them for actually addressing their hearts and seeing
their needs.
Big families naturally require a lot of organization—keeping
them clean, clothed, and fed is a major operation. It’s practically consuming
in and of itself. I think our lives are doable because we’ve gotten pretty good
at running the ship, but we have to remember that, as Jankovic puts it,
“Christian childrearing is a pastoral pursuit, not an organizational challenge.
The more children you have, the more you need to be pastorally minded.”
This means a lot of things. It means being willing to let
the operation be interrupted if there’s an emotional need. It means seeing my
kids: observing shifts in mood, the faint door-slam, the persistent grumpiness,
and taking time out to get to the root of it. It means spending time alone with
each child without an agenda. Since I have limited energy and resources, it
might mean putting aside my career or ministry in some way so I don’t miss out
on being able to know and address their hearts and minds.
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