Will the kids be equals?
We were told about the worse case scenario and asked how we could give parental support to all of the children. Here is my answer.
We can't base all of our choices just on the odds. Our first set of twins had a 95% chance of reaching a live birth after having heart beats and neither of them made it. Also, if we lived our life in fear of the worse case scenario we wouldn't be moving forward at all. Since so far IVF has sucked for us!!!!
Our worse case scenario is not having too many kids - it's having none. That is our reality.
I am not sure where the lack of parental attention would come from. I have never seen John and Kate plus 8.
Let me give you my background with kids. For the last 20 years I have run youth sports leagues as business. I am usually working with about 300 kids at a time and during the winter it's over 1,000 and I pretty much know them all. Normally, I coach basketball and see about 20 kids per hour for 4 hours a night. I know them all by name and their parents.
Before that I have coached Little League, flag football, girls volleyball, Boys and Girls Varsity Basketball, track and field, I have been a swimming instructor, Life Guard, and T-Ball coach.
I have run after-school sports programs and summer camps. I worked for 2 years at a pre-school and worked with an after-school program, also with Children's World. For two summers, I went around to pre-schools (2 per day) and taught the kids a Red Cross Water Safety program. I was a camp counselor with the YMCA.
That's my background in working with kids in large groups that just came to mind without giving it much thought.
Then through in that Christy has worked as a teacher and runs a cheer business where she coaches 10-30 kids.
So we have a large background on working with many kids. I know that it's not the same as having your own kids, but it's pretty close. Also, ask anyone that's meet us how their kids respond to us.
In fact, I think that having multiple kids at the same age would make things so much easier. For example, one of the major problems for parents is that all of their kids are in different activities and normally, the youngest kids go at the earlier times and the oldest go at the later times. This makes parents stick around for long periods of times. Our kids would all be in the same group or at least the same time frames.
Christy has two kids already and we have been raising them together for years. When Courtney entered high school she complained that she could not date any boys because they all knew me. As a matter of fact I had them all listed in my database with their address, home phone, moms cell, dads cell, and email address.
In short, we have been very active in their lives. When Nic and Courtney were growing up we were the main house that all of the kids came to play. All of the parents knew us well and felt comfortable leaving their children with us on a regular basis.
The one thing that I know from coaching a lot of kids is that when the kids are 18 months or less apart they can play together and compete at the same level and this makes them easy to work with as a unit. Once the kids are 3 years apart they are no longer peers. At that point one of them takes on the caretaker - babysitter role. They are no longer equals.
Another problem that many parents have is that their different age kids go to different schools. Each school is on a different bell schedule. This makes driving and picking up their kids an hour activity alone every morning and afternoon. Then throw in the places where the middle school is year round and the elementary school isn't so each kids is out of school at different times.
I see school, sports, and social activities would all be on a matching schedule making our life easier and allowing us more time with our kids than just playing taxi.
Their verbal, social, and physical skills would all be near each other allowing them to be peers and have stronger relationships with each other throughout life.
I truly see a lot of positives.
We can't base all of our choices just on the odds. Our first set of twins had a 95% chance of reaching a live birth after having heart beats and neither of them made it. Also, if we lived our life in fear of the worse case scenario we wouldn't be moving forward at all. Since so far IVF has sucked for us!!!!
Our worse case scenario is not having too many kids - it's having none. That is our reality.
I am not sure where the lack of parental attention would come from. I have never seen John and Kate plus 8.
Let me give you my background with kids. For the last 20 years I have run youth sports leagues as business. I am usually working with about 300 kids at a time and during the winter it's over 1,000 and I pretty much know them all. Normally, I coach basketball and see about 20 kids per hour for 4 hours a night. I know them all by name and their parents.
Before that I have coached Little League, flag football, girls volleyball, Boys and Girls Varsity Basketball, track and field, I have been a swimming instructor, Life Guard, and T-Ball coach.
I have run after-school sports programs and summer camps. I worked for 2 years at a pre-school and worked with an after-school program, also with Children's World. For two summers, I went around to pre-schools (2 per day) and taught the kids a Red Cross Water Safety program. I was a camp counselor with the YMCA.
That's my background in working with kids in large groups that just came to mind without giving it much thought.
Then through in that Christy has worked as a teacher and runs a cheer business where she coaches 10-30 kids.
So we have a large background on working with many kids. I know that it's not the same as having your own kids, but it's pretty close. Also, ask anyone that's meet us how their kids respond to us.
In fact, I think that having multiple kids at the same age would make things so much easier. For example, one of the major problems for parents is that all of their kids are in different activities and normally, the youngest kids go at the earlier times and the oldest go at the later times. This makes parents stick around for long periods of times. Our kids would all be in the same group or at least the same time frames.
Christy has two kids already and we have been raising them together for years. When Courtney entered high school she complained that she could not date any boys because they all knew me. As a matter of fact I had them all listed in my database with their address, home phone, moms cell, dads cell, and email address.
In short, we have been very active in their lives. When Nic and Courtney were growing up we were the main house that all of the kids came to play. All of the parents knew us well and felt comfortable leaving their children with us on a regular basis.
The one thing that I know from coaching a lot of kids is that when the kids are 18 months or less apart they can play together and compete at the same level and this makes them easy to work with as a unit. Once the kids are 3 years apart they are no longer peers. At that point one of them takes on the caretaker - babysitter role. They are no longer equals.
Another problem that many parents have is that their different age kids go to different schools. Each school is on a different bell schedule. This makes driving and picking up their kids an hour activity alone every morning and afternoon. Then throw in the places where the middle school is year round and the elementary school isn't so each kids is out of school at different times.
I see school, sports, and social activities would all be on a matching schedule making our life easier and allowing us more time with our kids than just playing taxi.
Their verbal, social, and physical skills would all be near each other allowing them to be peers and have stronger relationships with each other throughout life.
I truly see a lot of positives.
Comments