Life as a Mom to 10 | Large Family Life

hi friends it's Sherry from R life homeschooling and I'm going to be doing a little bit more informal of a video today I'm going to be talking about Mom life in a large family I'm not going to be sharing any practical tips or anything like that I'm just going to be a little bit more personal maybe it'll be a little entertaining just talking about what it's like to be a mom in a family with 10 kids [Music] [Applause] if you're new here my name is Sher I'm a homeschooling mom to 10 kids I'm married to Nelson who's my high school sweetheart we've been married for almost 24 years our oldest is 19 and we have several in between and then our youngest is 15 months we have seven in school two preschoolers and then our oldest is graduated and I come on here every week offering encouragement for homeschool moms I want to cheer you on in the great work that you're doing in your homes I thought this would be a fun video to do because I know I have some View viewers who come from a large family and just like watching cuz it reminds them of their childhood and I know um there are others who maybe you are your family is growing and you it's starting to feel like a large family so I thought it might be fun to just talk about um just just daily life what it's like in our home people don't tend to have as many kids nowadays as they did maybe 50 years ago although I know it is kind of growing in popularity a little bit some people are having larger families again but I thought this would be kind of an interesting video to do and I want to say just from the start that we have 10 kids we have a large family I don't think our family is better I don't think people with smaller families are you know are missing out or anything it's just a little unusual to have a family of our size so I just thought I would share what it's like and hopefully it'll be entertaining for some of you I have my coffee here so um and I I took some notes so I'm just going to Dive Right In one of the first things that I think is pretty evident in a big family is that it's really it's loud it's always loud there's always something going on there's always someone to play with someone to do something with sometimes my husband and I will be sitting at the dinner table and everyone will be talking at once and sometimes they're all talking to us and they each think individually that we are listening in on their conversation and Nelson and I will just look at each other and just be like this is crazy it is so loud in here uh a big family is just an exciting place to be for the most part as our kids get older there's always someone coming and going and I love the fullness of just lots of people lots of just different interesting personalities there are some things that are hard about having a lot of kids it's harder to travel places at the stage we're at now we have older and younger kids so we're not in the stage where everyone is doing everything at the same time we have so many moving Parts which can be very challenging um there's my husband's schedule which is random and then we have two sons that are working with different schedules and then some of the other kids just their appointments and extracurriculars were not involved in that many but just the limited amount that we are getting people to those we're not in the stage where everyone's doing the same thing anymore and so all that managing all that can be a lot but we still have a lot of fun we um we'll just go up in the yard and play volleyball together as a family we'll all go out in the pool and um there there's just a lot of fun family time be I think um we probably spent more time at home than the average family because it's a little bit more challenging to just pick up and go places but that's that's been a good thing um just being together a lot and quiet days at home of course there they're never quiet it's always kind of crazy and Loud around here but we love it sometimes when we're at the dinner table the conversation we'll notice it just slowly gets louder and louder and as people get more excited and without realizing it we find that we're just yelling across the table and we have to just like okay everyone stop stop for a second let's just bring it back down because um we're all just excited and lots of things to say and I I'm not a person who grew up in a large family we had four kids which is large compared to the average size and and I would say I tend to be a little bit more of an introvert I I'm a thinker I like just being by myself myself having some time to myself Reading Writing but um it's grown on me it really has I I just I love each of our kids and um I still get time away to do things but um I do love the fullness in our home another interesting thing about a large family is that everything is more there's more food more dishes more cleanup more fun I would add um there's just there's more of everything so learning to manage it is is something that is was a learning curve for me coming from a home where we had four kids we were in school um most of the year had Summers off but then to having all of our kids home for most of the time because we're homeschooling it just was a lot to manage to learn how what's the best way to go about keeping the house picked up getting people's chores done what's the best way to go about school and that was something that definitely took me a long time I didn't learn it in a year or two years I mean it's I'm still learning I'm still getting better at how to manage it all but everything is more one thing that I think is probably true of a lot of large families is that people tend to make assumptions of you and this is probably not just um for large families if you if you do anything that's different if you're different in any way people probably make assumptions about you and I think some assumptions are actually partly true and some are completely bogus um cuz people just don't know some people can make assumptions that you as a mom of this many kids are just overworked never get any time to yourself hagger um just constantly running and feel kind of sorry for you and the truth is you're just a normal mom that does get exhausted that wants time to herself sometimes that yes sometimes is overworked and sometimes you are up late doing dishes or clean up or in the middle of the night with kids when you wouldn't have to be if circumstances were different but um it's also true that you're you're just normal and you know that it's important to take time for yourself and so you take the time away you need and then you come back and enjoy your kids sometimes people can have the opposite assumption if you are out and you look all put together and your kids all are looking nice and welld dressed and they can think that you are this perfect mom and have everything all together you homeschool your kids and look at you you're if I'm not pregnant if I'm back down to my normal way you just must be super mom and that's not true either the truth is that just like everyone else it's nice to walk away from the mess at home from the work at home and get dressed up and look nice and have some nice time out it doesn't mean that there's not other areas of your life that aren't like buried and you know you just so behind need to catch up on that is probably the truth if you are alt together and looking nice when you go out there's probably something at home that's falling behind um there's just certain things you focus on at certain times but whenever you do something a little bit different I think people tend to make assumptions and I've learned the best way to deal with with it is just to roll with it you know um I think it it used to bother me sometimes when people thought things about me that weren't true um I don't know the older you get the less you care about what people think and um especially if it's not true and just you know people are going to have their opinions and sometimes they really just don't know another interesting thing to know about a big family is um I think sometimes people see a big family and just it seems so exhausting to even think about all the things that you must do every day as a mom um but the reality is that you just had one child at a time so when we had our first child I was overwhelmed and I was exhausted and it seemed like such a big deal to me and then we had our second and our third and you just you just have one at a time and you slowly adjust to a different lifestyle so while there are growing pains as you're adjusting to things as your family's growing um you do adjust to them and it becomes a new normal for you and um and you just figure out how to do it so from the outside looking in I think sometimes a big family looks like a a a lot of people a big number and um but on the inside everybody's an individual and I see each of my kids for the person that they are and we've just adjusted to having more people one at a time I think it could be easy to see a mom with a lot of kids and think there's no way that she could be close to each of them with there being so many and um that is something that I I feel isn't true I feel close to each of our kids and it's different um we try to make birthdays big deal when it's their birthday usually one of them gets to go out with us to eat we may not be able to do some of the things like taking them to all these different places and being involved in a lot of sports or a lot of extracurricular activities but we do try to zero in on what's important find the one thing the one or two things that's really important to each individual child and prioritize that so it may be surprising to um people who aren't part of a large family didn't grow up that way to realize that I really feel close to each of my kids um I want to make sure I'm checking in with them individually every day so it it doesn't feel like a big number to me and the last thing I want to share is the unexpected blessing of many children um this is something that I think is is a very practical blessing but it almost seems C seems like it doesn't make sense and that is the difficulty of having a big family is a blessing in itself the truth is that it is more to manage it's not an easy lifestyle like if my husband always says if it was easy everyone would do it it's not easy there are parts of it that are harder it's more to manage it's it's a lifestyle of living for other people so it's not easy but I think the blessing is in the the difficulty in the hardness in very practical ways um for example I think it's made us more physically fit we're always moving we don't sit around very much um for 19 years now I've had a toddler and so I'm always up chasing after the toddler or um if we go to the playground I'm not sitting on the bench scrolling on my phone because I have a little one that's climbing up and could fall and it's been that way for many years we're always it keeps us very busy and Physically Active we're not able to go out to eat as much which uh some people would think would just be you know not worth it but it's kept us home eating healthier meals at home I think it's kept us physically healthy of course uh the expense of having a lot of children to provide for is a lot and so so um the difficulty and challenges of that I think has helped us to make better financial decisions when you're under the pressure of things you tend to be a little bit more careful about what you spend money on uh you do more thrifting you make decisions more thoughtfully so I think it's it's done that for us as well we've become better stewards of the money that we have I think the challenge of a large family has made our marriage stronger um it it's put us under more stress sometimes and um there's there have been many times that have been difficult like any family when you're managing more children more you have more responsibility it ca has caused us to lean into each other and to really depend on each other we are a team and um it's not been easy there's times we disagree or at times one of us gets frustrated or the other um and just learning who's doing what and what works for the both of us but it has made us a better team and we know that we are just we are both needed to make this house work to make this family work and it's kept us home a lot more kept us with each other and with our children and so while some people might see that as a difficulty or as hard managing more it's made our marriage stronger and of course any anything that is challenging in life whether it be having another child or um uh some maybe a loss or something that's just traumatic that you go through whatever it is that is difficult um Can ultimately cause us to lean on the Lord and that's the the difficulty that's the unexpected blessing that a large family has been for us it's caused me my husband to just seek the Lord's help and his wisdom and to realize that um without him this could turn out a lot differently so these are just some interesting things about being a mom in a large family I I hope this has been interesting to you it's something I just thought would be fun to share and talk about I know a lot of you come from a large family if you have any funny stories or anything to talk about that maybe I didn't say about life in a large family I would love if you would share it if your family's growing and you have questions or um have just some things to add would you comment below and let everyone know let me know I love reading your comments thanks for watching I'll see you next week