Doing it all with 5

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  • March 5, 2010 at 4:17 am
    mommyj5
    Member

    I have 5 children, 14, 12, 9, 3 and 1.  I am feeling overwhelmed by it all.  Focusing on high school and the last precious years with my oldest yet wanting and needing to ‘lay down the rails’ with my little guys, especially since I can see where not having done or followed through on certain things is affecting my older ones.  Maybe I am just a wee bit on the emotional side right now, perhaps it is the fatigue.  

    Help, how do you do it???  How do get to spend that fun, precious time with your little ones while still helping and guiding the older ones with their studies?  

    danielle

    March 5, 2010 at 1:05 pm
    Misty
    Participant

    I have 6 children (11-1) and one thing we do is every week (so it takes 5 weeks to get through everyone cause the 1 yr old don’t need it yet) we have an hour alone with a child.  This is time to talk, play or just go for a walk together.  It’s great cause it gives us as parents time to have that child alone with M&D (that part is important for us we both are there) to listen to them.  It’s amazing what you hear when they are alone with you.  We also will have nights for the 3 older ones where out of the blue we might say to one of them, hey you get to stay up 10 minutes late tonight to be with M&D.  During that time we might talk more to them about things we are seeing.  These are idea’s that have worked for us to get some much needed 1-on-1 time with our kids.  You might be asking what our other children do.  They are to play alone, quietly, not come out for any reason.  This includes the 3 yr old who has been trained to understand these rules.  The 1yr old usually can be with us if the child who’s night it is wants her there or we give her to one of the older children to entertain.

    Now if you are talking about during the school day, you can still do the same type of things with your kids but (at least at our house) the time would have to be shortened to like 15-20 minutes alone with them.  Take them aside, sit outside and talk about school, do reading or whatever it is you want to do or talk about with them.  Train your little ones during that 15 min.  It’s amazing what you can train or re-enforce in 15 minutes.

    Those just came to my mind.  I hope that it was helpful at all.  Or maybe it’s not what you were looking for, if that’s the case sorry!  Misty

    March 5, 2010 at 2:07 pm
    tandc93
    Participant

    I’m sure you probably mean during the day, but we’re still trying to find the balance there!  I am finding that doing something with the girls (ages 4 and 3) first is helping.  We’ve been doing Starfall lately in the early morning and it seem to buy me some time to work with the boys (12 and 10).   The girls are early risers–5:30 am!  I think it helps that the boys have independent studies and then we have our together studies.  They know that if I have to deal with the girls during together studies that they can hop over to independent studies while they wait (or read a book!).    

     

    Similar to Misty, my DH takes each child out to breakfast Saturday morning.  The kids really look forward to this time alone with dad!  

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