Large Families

Those of you that have truly large families will laugh at the size of my large family. We have five children. Those of you that read me know this. In "society", I guess is how to put it, we have a large family. We get those looks that you're familiar with if you have a large family. I can only imagine how many more we would get if/when we have more children.

Living in a primarily Catholic community, though, I probably get less of those looks than a lot of large families. We get a lot of little old ladies telling us what a blessing our children are (to which we heartily agree, and give thanks!), and more, mostly women, commenting on what lovingly full hands we must have. I do love those comments. Lovingly full is good.

We do get some negatives. We took Aimee in for her school physical a few years back, and we decided to try a new doc. Ours had taken another position at a private company. Anyway, most families here go to a doc in Pueblo that we're really not comfortable with. They have the "assembly line" approach to doctor's visits. Come in, spend five minutes with an anonymous doc cause they have so many that you never see the same one twice, even if you request a specific one, and then say something quick about growth rates and eating habits, and then lecture for the remaining 2.5 minutes about vaccinations.

So, anyway, we go through the phone book. It's a school physical, really can't be screwed up, and we were in the market for a new doc. So we find a clinic in Walsenburg who's name has something to do with FAMILY. I can't remember the whole name. But family was in there. That tells me they have experience with kidlets and welcome them as patients. So we go. We ALL go. Jessica took us, so add Jamie to the mix. We go in and there are only elderly patients in the waiting room. Not that I have anything against elderly patients, or elderly people, for that matter, but not much FAMILY at the FAMILY doc.

We check in, and go find seats. The kids immediately beeline for the toys, which are mostly broken happy meal rejects. Well, OK, small town, lots of medicaid/medicare, I can understand that. Since my kids don't get happy meals often, even the rejects are new toys for them, so they eagerly play with them, and, being kids, make noise as they play. Cheerful, playing noise. FAMILY noise. Not banshee screeching or war cries or other assorted non-family noises.

We find out the doc is running late. Way late. Now, we scheduled an early appointment so we would have the kids out the door before the wanting lunch and getting tired crabbies set in. You've been there. Kids are hungry and starting to get tired, so their attention span drops to about 3.4 seconds. Had the doc been on time, we'd have been safely home before that happened.

By the time Aimee even got called back for the preliminary stuff, the crabbies are starting to rear their ugly heads. We still haven't progressed to banshee screeching or war cries, but probably another half an hour, at most, is what we would be granted, before we did get to the beginnings of that point. So, being the smart mommies that we are, Jessica and I decided to take the kids out to the van to wait. In the van are snacks, which will at least ward off the hungry crabbies, and no one to bother with the getting tired crabbies. I mean, this is a normal childhood behavior, right? Judging from the children I ran into when I worked the late shift at King Soopers back a bazillion years ago, most children get the tired crabbies. Anyway, I digress (me? noooooooo!). But why does it annoy people so bad when kids get tired and crabby? After all, it wasn't our fault that the doc was late.

Anyway, as we're picking up the happy meal reject toys and gathering our stuff to head out to the van, the receptionist says "Can you please keep your kids quieter?" I say "We're heading out to the van now." She then tells me to take the kids (including a toddler boy and an almost toddler girl) to play in the front yard of the library right behind them. The unfenced yard of the library that fronts the business loop of the highway with a speed limit of 40. That's where I want my kids to play, yup.

Umm...where, exactly, did the doctor's office lose the focus on "family" that is in their very name. If they don't want kids in their office, they should stop billing themselves as a family doctor. Yes, children are loud and sometimes distracting, despite our best efforts. We are training them to be adults, but as anyone knows, training goes roughly in the early days. At the point at which they surpassed normal kid noises, I removed them from the situation.

Am I out of line to think that a family business of any type, should expect that families will consist of young children who will act like, well, young children? It's one thing if my kids are pulling stuff off the shelf at Safeway. It's another altogether if they are making car noises while sitting in the toy car shopping cart.

Let's put it like this: I wouldn't take my kids into an antique store. I wouldn't take my kids into a restaurant that requires reservations. And while I do consider the grocery store to be a family type business, I wouldn't let them pull things off the shelf or scream like banshees. Of course, if I'm there when they're tired, that's on me. I should schedule my day better, so they can be out of there to, well, act like tired children act. But if I do take my kids to the store, and the check out line is an hour long, and the kids are fussing by the time we get to the cashier, well, I've made that effort, and the business needs to understand that. And most businesses that cater to families do.

All children are a blessing. And training is an ongoing task. It requires repetition, and children, being, well, children, will test their boundaries, requiring further training.

Anyway, my intent was not to rant. It was simply to discuss the inequalities that larger families have. That most of the time, aside from a look or a comment that probably wasn't really intended to hurt, that I don't really have to deal with. I was going to talk about the difficulty in our daily walk with God. See, I heard this pastor on the radio today, talking about how people don't struggle to walk with God. They just screw up, then ask for forgiveness again. And that's not how it works. You have to work at it. Now, the walk itself is work. I've talked about my own struggles with submission. Boy, it's hard. And yeah, I do screw up. I'm not perfect. No one is. But I do consciously make the effort to submit to God's will. I mean, in that area, I really have no choice. God's will, will win every time, one way or the other. But one can choose to not be judgemental, or to not gossip, etc. Rather than being so and then asking forgiveness, one has to make the conscious choice to not do it. And trusting God with your fertility is one of those things. One has to make a conscious choice to let God be in charge.

I'll tell you why that scares most people. Kids are expensive. But very rarely do I hear families saying "I can't afford this." Most of the time what I hear are stories of God's provision. I posted a long time ago about "Just enough." And often that's how it works. No, you probably won't be living in a huge house with enough bathrooms and plenty of room and always have the newest bestest this or that. But you will have "just enough." If you only put that faith and trust in God.

K, I'm done now, and so are the dishes, so I'm heading to bed.