Managing Mom Guilt - Big Family Activities

 Declan started practices for his spring soccer league that was sold to us as a "close travel" league. But then I got the schedule (after paying $180 for registration and $200 for uniforms), and his first game is on Nantucket. Yes, the island. As in, a one-hour drive to the ferry in Hyannis, followed by a 2-hour ferry ride to Nantucket, all for a one-hour soccer game—and then travel the whole thing backwards.

Yeah, no thanks. Declan will be skipping that first game. Luckily, the rest of the games are less than an hour away, but I’m reminded why we didn’t do travel sports for our kids until now—and only because there’s just one child who wanted to partake. Imagine trying to manage travel teams back in the day when five of them played soccer at once? Impossible.

Which brings me to one of the hardest parts about being a mom to lots of kids: trying to give the same opportunities and experiences to each child.

Now, I don’t want this to be confused with giving each child “love and attention,” which is often the reason given to not have more than a couple of kids. The secret that the world doesn’t realize is that giving children more siblings naturally gives them more love and attention. There are literally more people in the family who interact with them, care for them, play with them, and have their backs. Parents aren’t the only source of love and attention (or entertainment, for that matter), and I dare say that children from healthy, big families get plenty of support and feel loved by many—which might not always be the case in smaller families.

But while love is infinite, financial resources and hours in the day are not. And that’s where having lots of kids in activities can get tricky. Much to my husband’s dismay, my brain tends to keep track of the opportunities we gave the older kids, and I feel the need to give the younger kids the same. They don’t have to choose the exact same sports or instruments or activities, but I want them to have access to everything, and not be held back or discouraged just because we’re busier now, paying for college tuitions, or, let’s be honest, just plain older and more tired now!

JP, Andrew, Eamon, and Maggie all played soccer, basketball, track, baseball, and took swim lessons throughout their whole childhood. Once they reached middle school, they tried golf, lacrosse, volleyball, flag football, and competitive swim. In high school, they each played two or three sports per year. Andrew went on to play soccer in college, Eamon wants to do the same next year, and Maggie hopes to play volleyball in college. We’re under no delusions that they’ll be going to college on athletic scholarships. They’re good at their respective sports, play varsity at early ages, and become captains and leaders on their teams, but they are not D1 material at all. We tell them to focus on academics for those college scholarships, and they’re doing a great job at that. :)

So now we have the next three kids, who sometimes feel like our second family, thanks to the age gap and the huge difference in interests. Alexander tried soccer and basketball but didn’t last more than one season of each. He literally told us at age four that he wanted to retire from soccer. Gosh, he was so funny. Anyway, he’s always loved music, so we started piano lessons for him at age 6, and he has kept at it for the past seven years. We’re an active and (we try to be) fit family, so even though organized sports didn’t appeal to Xander, we wanted him to be physically active, and put him in competitive swim, which he loved.  He moved up to the Swim Team when he was 11. He loves swimming and quickly realized that he felt and slept better on the four days a week when he swam, so he began adding running and workout videos on the other three days. Now, he thinks he’ll run cross country in the fall (as a high schooler—where did the time go?) and then swim in the winter.

Declan is wired much more like Andrew and Eamon and wants to play all the sports, watch all the sports, talk about all the sports, live outside and never stop moving. He has a ball in his hand most hours of the day when he’s not in school. He plays soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter, runs 5ks whenever we sign him up, and also takes weekly violin lessons. I wanted to let Declan continue to play a sport this spring because he loves it, and I used to let the older kids do the same. The problem is, we now have an ice cream shop that takes up a lot of time, and signing up for spring sports takes way more communication and logistics than it used to.

My husband, who loves me very much, suggests that we don’t sign up the kids for anything this spring because, between the shop’s additional work, the season of sacraments (he’s also the DRE at our parish), our regular jobs, and just life in general, it’s already pretty hectic. As for me, who loves my kids very much, I have an extremely hard time saying no to Declan playing spring soccer, when I let the older kids play so many sports and try so many things. It doesn’t seem fair that Declan should have to suffer just because he’s the 6th kid, right? I mean, we should expect to be stressed, running here, there, and everywhere for the kids—that’s just what parents do. It’s the “season” in our lives. But for us, those seasons go on and on, because we have all of these lovely kids.

Parents of one or two children might think, “Okay, let’s buckle down and be ships passing in the night for the next five years while our kids play sports, take instruments, and have playdates.”  Then, those kids will be in high school and not depend on us in the same way. For parents of large families, those buckle-down years go on forever. And it’s hard. And it’s exhausting. And yes, it’s completely our fault! We know how it happened. ;) But just because we were open to a big family doesn’t make it easy—or make us especially equipped to handle it better than anyone else. We struggle. We overthink. We constantly assess the needs of each child. We get stressed, we get tired, and we fail often.

But, if we’re being honest, we wouldn’t have it any other way. We obviously can't imagine life without each of these sweet souls with us.  I mean, what else would we be doing with our time and money? (Insert maniacal laugh here.) We can see the future, filled with lots of grandchildren and travel plans after these hard-working years are over. Hard doesn't mean bad. So many good things come from times of struggle.   For now, as we have been for a long time, we’re in the thick of it, but at least we’re in it together.