Myth Busting Large Family Style

While in line at the grocery store yesterday my husband hears "there's that moron with 19 kids", not recognizing the voice and feeling extremely defensive he turns around slowly and realized that this stranger was holding a tabloid magazine, and referring to Jim Bob Duggar, not him.  This lady kept on spewing all kinds of negative comments to her adult daughter who was definetly trying to get her mother to stop.  My husband shockingly did not join the conversation as he was in a hurry.

We regularly get compared to the "Duggar" family and years ago when the "Cheaper by the Dozen" movies were popular we would be compared to them.  If you have watched either you would realize that these shows are polar opposites.  It seems when people don't have first hand experience with large families they quite often make a lot of assumptions about what it must be like based on whatever is current on television.

It is time for some myth busting

Our children are individuals - it is a common misconception that our children are all clones of one another and they don't have their own likes, opinions and interests.  Yes some of our children are involved in the same activities as their siblings but they each bring their own strengths to the activity.

No the older children aren't responsible for raising the younger children.  Everyone in our home is expected to contribute to the running of the home, each child has to maintain their personal space and has one 20 minute chore daily.  The children are also expected to be part of each other's lives as we are a family not a boarding house.  We laugh, cry, play and work together....striving for more laughing and playing.

Yes we know about birth control and don't need strangers to tell us the merits of it.  Technically we adopted most of our children so us using or not using birth control isn't the issue.

Our children regularly get lots of one on one attention from us.  As parents we make a point of ensuring everyone gets plenty of attention.  We do have never ending love for each of our children.  In fact our children also benefit from the love of their siblings and there are a lot of them.

Our home is not chaotic and yes Christmas is fun but it was fun when we only had one child also.

No we do not want our own television show and we aren't competing with the Duggar's.  I think it is wonderful that the Duggar's are putting there lives out there for people to see but it's not something we would be interested in doing.

My children aren't missing out on life experiences because they have so many siblings.  I actually think the opposite is true for this statement as there are many activities that the kids wouldn't have tried if it wasn't for a siblings interest or support.  Our eldest daughter recently commented that when she has been speaking with various people in her life they are shocked at the numerous and varied activities she has participated in.

Our children's special needs are NOT because we have so many children and we are NOT child hoarders.  We specifically adopted children with special needs because the child welfare agencies have a harder time finding them a forever home.  We have only adopted when we have felt confident that we had the ability to parent the new child and the existing children well.

We are educated and education is important to us.  With all the special needs that are present in our family we would not survive if we weren't educated when dealing with the sheer number of medical professionals alone.  Currently 3 of our children are in university, one in college and another has graduated from college.

We are not wealthy and we are not poor.  We work very hard for everything we have, sometimes it has been more of a struggle than other times.  Sometimes both my husband and I have had to work outside the home and other times just one of us.  Sometimes my husband has taken on multiple jobs.  As circumstances/family needs have changed we have had to change with it.

What comments do you get most often about your family?