Honestly, having a large family was never on my bucket list and I really had never considered it as an option. Having a large family has its own set of challenges but there is always a silver lining.

The Challenges of Having a Large Family

• Chaos Everywhere All the Time
• Limited Budget
• Limited Space
• More Mess
• Children Can Be Annoying
• Everything is Supersized

The average amount of kids in an American family is two. Since we have seven children in our family, we have about three times as many kids in our family than the average family. In my family, there was just my sister and me so I always wanted to have at least three children. However, Rick’s number was two children and so as our family grew larger we just kept saying we would stop after this one.

After this happened a couple of times, I just started saying “What’s one more?” I think the hardest adjustment was number three. When we took custody of our third child, I think we realized that we were outnumbered and that was a little disconcerting. If they all ran off in different directions, we wouldn’t be able to chase them all at once. We quickly got used to the idea and never looked back!

Chaos Everywhere All the Time

I think one of the hardest adjustments is chaos everywhere all the time. It is necessary for me to be “on” constantly and sometimes that’s hard to handle. I will say as the years have gone by I have gotten used to it and it has definitely gotten easier. I don’t know if it’s because they are getting older or if I’m just getting used to it.

There is always noise and loud talking happening which makes it hard to concentrate and focus sometimes. I have learned to block the noise and unless I’m learning something new I am pretty good at it. It’s gotten to the point now that the quiet makes me more suspicious than the noise and that requires an investigation about what is going on.

Silver Lining

The silver lining to the chaos is that there is something always going on. This offers kiddos incentives to keep their behavior in check because they know they will miss something if they don’t behave. I have learned to direct the chaos in a way that makes it as productive as possible.

Chaos is one thing but controlled chaos is where the sweet spot is for a large family. We have seven children and so we can expect all seven of them will be loud and doing things. My goal is to direct their energies into something that is valuable but doesn’t feel like work all the time.

I like to say I create a box for them to dance in and I say “Go crazy!” The box symbolizes their boundaries and they know where they are supposed to be and what we allow. However, I want them to be their own kind of crazy and so I must have space available for them to do that in.

Another silver lining is that quiet time is a need at our house and so it is something I consistently do every day. At a certain age, naptimes stop and all of us parents are really disappointed. Well, the naptime is not dead around here. Most of the time they are not sleeping but are participating in a quiet activity in their room. Some of them like to draw, watch a movie, or read a book and as long as it is quiet I am good with it.

I have learned that this isn’t only a need for me but my children need it too. It’s like a reset button and if they don’t get it everyone is a little more agitated than usual.

Limited Budget

The budget of a large family is always stretched as far as it can possibly go. It takes a lot of money to raise and provide for a child and so this can be a definite stressor. We have to be very honest with our children about what we can afford and what we cannot.

As a large family, you learn to be creative when you are going somewhere or doing something and then there are times, we have to say no. Certain activities are achievable when you only have to pay for two kids but when you have seven, it becomes too much.

Silver Lining

We have to watch our bottom line to make sure everything is balancing out and we are not overspending but I don’t feel like that’s a bad thing. We have also learned to prioritize what is important and then do our best to accommodate those things.

Yes, sometimes this means we have to tell our children no and that we don’t have the money in the budget for that particular thing. I think this is something that my children need to hear and understand. When I was growing up, my parents were very honest with me and told me no to certain activities and so now that I am a parent I understand that this is a part of parenting.

What if my children never heard the word no? What would happen when they became parents and couldn’t give their own child everything they wanted? They would feel like a failure. Our job is not to give our kiddos whatever their little hearts desire, our job is to teach them financial responsibility and that sometimes we have to say no or wait for what we want.

In our large family budget post, I talked about how we do activities and events economically. Click HERE to see our tips and tricks for making memories without breaking the bank.

Limited Space

Thankfully, we had a decent size house before we began this journey so we have a lot of room to grow into. However, as the kiddos are getting older, the space challenges are getting real. We have had to learn to be creative with the way we organize things so that they are accessible to everyone.

We have a boys room and a girls room in our house. Rooms are decent sized and so all the beds fit. The challenge comes in the closet space and space for them to keep any personal items away from nosy siblings.

I would love to say we have this figured out but we don’t. We are constantly shuffling things around trying to find what works but I think that’s just part of having a large family.

Silver Lining

The silver lining in having limited space is that you tend to limit the clutter and prioritize what you truly need. Before I became a mom, I loved shoes and I enjoyed at least ten pairs. When our family grew, I realized this was not going to be possible because if everyone had ten pairs of shoes then we would have ninety pairs laying around. That’s a lot of shoes to have to keep organized and stored. So I decided what shoes I absolutely need and those are the ones I keep.

Keeping things simple while meeting needs is something that helps me keep my sanity. Shoes are the hardest things to organize and the easiest things to trip over, so limiting them is in our best interest.

More Mess

The more children you have the more mess there is. Scratch that! The more people living in your house the more mess you have. If we are doing a paint project, we have seven times the mess to clean up but this doesn’t stop us from doing those activities.

I just do the activities in a way that is easily cleaned up by covering the table and making sure they clean their hands before they go running around the house. Before I start any activity like this I go over my expectations for them and make sure they understand the rules. This helps them learn to contain the mess in a certain area, which is the dining room table in our case.

Silver Lining

It is true that the more children you have the more mess you get! However, it also means that you have more workers too. Over the years I have worked hard to train our children to help out around the house and with other everyday things, This has really paid off now because it is a lot easier for me to maintain our home and be able to do activities like painting, See our post Chores: A Handbook for Parents for more information and a free PDF download.

Children Can Be Annoying

It’s true, children can be annoying! It’s something they strive to be really good at too. Every day I try to be as easy going as possible but sometimes it’s really hard. One of the biggest challenges I face is all the questions. I have no problem with them asking questions, if fact, I encourage it. However, when the same child keeps asking the same question over and over again, it’s get’s very annoying! Especially on the days when all seven decided to do that.

Silver Lining

Honestly, as annoying as they can be, they are a lot of fun to be around and we love them a lot! I don’t know what I would do without them. I know it sounds corny but having a large family means there is a lot more to love.

Everything is Supersized

Having to do things big was one of the hardest things to get used to when we first started on this large family journey. The fact that we grew so quickly probably contributed to this factor because we had a couple of minute’s notice compared to nine months to plan for any changes.

Everything we do is supersized and you have to learn to do things on a much larger scale from storing your food to driving your car, I mean, van.

Silver Lining

Once you learn to do things on a larger scale, it gets a lot easier. I have learned how to cook for large amounts of people in the least amount of time. I have learned to incorporate others into my planning and that makes my load lighter. Once I adapted to the idea of doing a lot of things at once, things actually began to move faster than when I just had one child.

Comparing having one child to now having seven, I think one of the biggest advantages is the number of children. When we had just Sam, a lot of the entertaining fell to me as the mom. As we added more children, they entertained each other freeing me up to do the things I needed to do. Now, it’s so easy to have other children around here because our children entertain them too.

I wouldn’t trade having a large family for anything! I am called to be a mama of multiples and thrive on all the activity that comes with it. I love each and every one of my kiddos and can’t imagine how our family would be if they weren’t a part of it.

So, yes, having a large family has its challenges but at the end of the day when I put my feet up, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in this world!