<p>It’s great that you guys can chat with each other! I usually text or call my mom when I’m on my way to places. It’s also great that you speak of your mom so sweetly. My mom is, too, a strong, resilient, hard-work, loving woman who I wish to be 1/10th of when I am a parent.</p>
<p>We should start placing bets on the handstand contest. . .</p>
<p>I just remembered something – I still keep in touch with one of my friends from the family of 12 that I knew growing up. The mom was amazing. She now suffers from alzheimer’s. The dad died quite some time ago. Her daughter, the one I keep in touch with, tells me that she tells her mom that she has 12 kids, and she doesn’t believe it. She laughs, and says, that’s ridiculous. 12 kids! Why would anyone have 12 kids! Oh, we had some good times growing up with that family. Great memories.</p>
<p>I appreciate the family members contributions. I was concerned about the “no pay” focus as I have also seen where this has been hurtful. In the context of divorce, it has been perceived as abandonment, and in other cases family favoritism. This isn’t the case here.</p>
<p>It makes sense that a family would stretch a budget, but that doesn’t mean anyone is lacking. Overindulging a child is harmful too. I think most families are in between paying for everything and not paying for college. The “no pay” rule seems rigid to me, but in the context of this family, it worked. The key here is the healthy relationships between family members. Functional families- of all kinds and sizes- work well. The kids were given that, and that is a lot.</p>
<p>Does everyone have to be so jealous and ugly about it? They raised twelve kids who are now productive members of society, and will most likely never be a social burden. Can’t you just say, “good for them,” and move on if you have nothing better to say? Why do you have to attack them?</p>
<p>I agree. I’d be more critical of those with families of any size who have raised spoiled brats who become welfare recipients. We need more tax-PAYERS. lol</p>
<p>(before the howls, I am not saying that people on welfare were spoiled brats as kids.)</p>
<p>We had 7 kids in our family. No food allergies at all. Mom would serve a meal and if someone didn’t like it, they could eat a PB&J sandwich or cereal which they had to make themselves. Mom wasn’t a short-order cook. That said, mom was a good cook and only one brother was a somewhat picky eater who seemed to live on cereal (Team Flakes! anyone remember Team Flakes!!??)</p>
<p>I agree mom2collegekids -folks can’t just let it be they have to bring up “but I knew someone in a similar situation and they were really angry because parents didn’t pay for college or dad made them put a computer together or parents made them change a diaper or parents made them eat dinner together or whatever.” The three family members who posted here sounded really, ummm, normal. Can’t wait for someone to accuse them of being a ■■■■■.</p>
<p>If you are including me in the ones who brought up the money issue, I would like to clarify that I think this family is doing great. It was to point out that in some situation, it could be hurtful, and so that rule may not work in all situations. Some parents may look at this article for advice, but each family has to decide what is most useful to them.</p>
<p>I also have seen overindulgence do harm.</p>
<p>My ‘beef’ if there is one is not so much the money issue, I think folks just like to bash large families nowadays (I see it with the Duggars as well), pennylane. I don’t get it, it’s a choice to have a large number of children and seems like you’d need to be very organized to do it but that somehow translates to the very negative ‘control freak’ term. Or the doubting that the family could actually sit down to dinner most nights, or questioning how they would handle it with food allergies when the dad clearly said in the article that there were no food allergies. Just a really high level of doubt that two people could successfully marry and have lots of children and do it successfully, meaning the kids come out on the other side well adjusted tax paying citizens and the parents are still married (which I think they have done)…</p>
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<p>I believe that the father said it was EVERY night. That was what people doubted. The kids–a delightful group of young people, I must say–have indicated that it was more like MOST nights.</p>
<p>I knew one very large family that had great kids and, as far as I could tell, great relationships. But the oldest, a daughter, chose to enter a convent. 
(I believe she reconsidered after some period of time.) The only thing that I wonder about with such families is the degree to which the older kids have to take care of the younger ones. Doing so obviously can have both plusses and minuses. It seems like this family was able to find a good balance, and it was clear that they were <em>helping</em> their parents, not giving up their own childhoods as unpaid babysitters and household servants.</p>
<p>Personally, I would have loved to have more children, and I wish I had done a better job with the chore thing when my S was little. </p>
<p>I do think it is legitimate to have concerns about over-population. Obviously, being a Mormon family has an affect on one’s thinking on that subject (as well as an affect on achieving compliance among the children).</p>
<p>My sister has 5 kids and she says she gets dirty looks from people all the time when she has them all in public, not sure if that is real or imagined-- with her you never know. She has an enormously difficult time financing and caring for all 5, but it’s not because it’s 5, it’s because she makes stupid decisions. Like signing each kid up for four sports each that they can’t afford, including one D dancing with two different studios 7 days a week to the tune of 6k a year (plus the occasional 2-3k camp) when they make poverty wages and can’t afford to heat their house or put food on the table or pay the majority of their bills (an endless stream of debt). People like her probably contribute to the judgment that better functioning families receive.</p>
<p>I have mixed feelings about these giant families, but it’s not really any of my business. It’s just not what I would choose. I think based solely on the article people had a good reason to react the way they did… it’s easy to chastise now that you have more information than posters did at the beginning of the thread.</p>
<p>There’s always more information. Why assume the worst? Most giant families don’t ALL get together. There are too many of them. The criticism was a little over the top imho.</p>
<p>I agree that there is backlash towards large families. I don’t share that. I have mentioned before that I know and admire many large families who have done a great job, so having seen that helps with the perspective. Healthy families come in all shapes and sizes, and sadly so do dysfunctional ones.
When the title concerned me, it wasn’t about the family size, it was the many ways the “I won’t pay” message could affect a child- for better or worse. It isn’t so much that the parent doesn’t pay than the message and relationship behind it. However the comments from the family members here clarified that this did work here.</p>
<p>Something that I wonder about - it seems that the children were not doing well enough in school to be eligible for AP courses, given that the parents had to regularly go to the school and demand that a child be enrolled. The parents apparently became involved at that point, and made sure the children did well?</p>
<p>I resent the implication that food allergies can be avoided by strict discipline. I am a parent of a child with life-threatening food allergies - present since he had his first exposure to anything other than breast milk. First bite of baby cereal mixed with cow’s milk, missed his mouth and the spoon touched his cheek, immediate hives.</p>
<p>I didn’t get that there was any implication about avoiding food allergies - just that there weren’t any (though I do think there’s something in food that there wasn’t when I was a baby/child so take that with a grain of salt and I also now have food sensitivities that I don’t recall having as a child and we ate what was served - I also recall knowing ONE child with asthma my whole childhood…). I also think it’s kinda sweet that the dad might have made a mistake like he missed a kid now and then (kids would know that there was a kid missing from dinner here or there so made the correction from ALL meals to MOST meals). That’s awesome.</p>
<p>I thought that the article said that the AP wasn’t an issue after they demanded the first child be enrolled (so once the first child was enrolled, did well, the ones that followed were able to be easily enrolled?)</p>
<p>Not having food allergies was listed as one of the benefits of their approach to food: </p>
<p>“To this day, our kids are not afraid to try different foods, and have no allergies to foods. They try all kinds of new foods and eat only until they are full. Not one of our kids is even a little bit heavy. They are thin, athletic, and very healthy. With 12 kids, you would think that at least one would have some food allergies or food special needs. (I am not a doctor.)”</p>
<p>The clear implication is that their approach prevented food allergies. It is true that food allergies are more prevalent now, and there are various theories about the reasons. But they are not new. Two of my siblings had quite serious food allergies as children in the 60’s. And there were 10 children in my family, and we also had to eat everything that was served (unless we were allergic - and the allergies showed up in infancy).</p>
<p>My question was why the children weren’t doing well enough in school to be eligible for AP courses in the first place.</p>
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<p>I wonder how this would have gone over with kids with special needs, say autism.
I have a child who had severe sensory issues from birth, she would starve herself rather than eat something she couldn’t tolerate.
Btw, she is also slender, athletic & eats a wide variety of food as an adult.</p>
<p>Here is the quote, with my bold:</p>
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<p>I read this as smug: You would think that one would have food allergies, but no, because of my superior parenting, we didn’t have any food allergies! Yay me!</p>
<p>This is both annoying and dopey. Hint: these twelve siblings are all related to each other and to their parents. It’s like saying: There are so many Chinese people in the world, you’d think out of twelve kids born to me, at least one of them would have been Chinese. </p>
<p>No, no, no. Like being of Chinese ancestry, having a food allergy is hereditary. It would be surprising if one of twelve siblings and none of the others had food allergies: usually either none will, or several will. Food allergies run in families, and the Thompson family by pure luck doesn’t have the food allergy genes.</p>
<p>I get infuriated when parents of healthy non-disabled kids take credit for their children’s health. Their superior parenting led to their kids success… which implies that my inferior parenting must be the cause of my child’s disabilities. Walk a while in my shoes, Mr. Smug.</p>
<p>The problem with having a large family is that when it’s clear the parents can’t handle the responsibility, a lot of people, children are hurt. And sometimes you don’t know until it 's too late what you can well handle. </p>
<p>There are a number of blogs out there urging folks to have large families adopt, adopt special needs, adopt a lot of needy pets, take the chances. Easy to say, but who’s there to pick up the pieces when things don’t work out. That’s the hesitation I have with large families. Yes,because there are more individuals involved, the chances of problems increase. So do chances of good things and there could be more options to handle issues, but the absolute down sides are more and if you are unlucky or so not competent that you hit them, it can be a huge problem. </p>
<p>I have a dear friend who has a large family, and as much as I like her, and so enjoy her company, dealing with her many children especially when they were small was overwhelming. And this is from one here who has a lot of kids. When she needed surgery, farming them out was not easy. Her own famlily was overwhelmed with the sheer numbers, and did not like dealing with her. </p>
<p>This family has it under control and has done a wonderful job. I admire that.</p>
<p>May have been some tracking going on - my D was tracked into general biology by her 8th grade science teacher despite getting a B+ in the class so she clearly met the written requirement for Biology I. She was also being tracked out of Honors classes despite having the grades (again, a B but she wasn’t the only B student in the class either).</p>