Five Thoughts on Parenting After Having Five Kids

It's been the wildest ride of my life.

My wife and I have five kids: two girls and three boys. We had five kids after just six years of marriage, which means that in the early days, we were averaging 0.83 children per year.

We’ve been married for 18 years now, which means that if we had kept up at that same pace, today, we might have 15 kids. …but we don’t. We still just have five; we discovered that was our limit.

So, here we are now, with one child who is a legal adult, and four out of five of them are teenagers. That’s weird for me to think about.

Over the years, we’ve learned a lot about parenting, and we’ve been given more advice from other people that we’ve discarded than I can even tell you.

I’m not a fan of telling other people how to manage their families or giving out advice on “the right way” to run a household or what a “proper” marriage looks like, and I don’t like receiving it either.

Having said that, as I reflect on parenthood, here are a few things I’ve learned that I think are worth sharing with anybody who may be interested.

#1: Your family will not be like anyone else’s family, and that’s okay.

A lot of people get confused looking at other families (or even the family they were born into) and wonder: “Why can’t I have a family like that?” — Even if people don’t actually say this out loud, a lot of times, they’re thinking it deep down inside.

You may do this yourself: you might look at your marriage or your kids and reflect on how your parents did things and wonder why what they did for you growing up doesn’t work in your case.

“You’re so luck. When I was your age, my parents used to…” is something I’ve found myself saying a lot, and I’m trying to stop doing that.

The best thing I can do for myself is to stop comparing my family to my parents’ family. What they did for us kids might not work for my own kids. That needs to be okay.

#2: Your family will not be like the family you wanted, and that’s okay, too.

I try not to laugh when I hear new parents say things like, “We’re going to have two kids and then stop,” or “We’re only going to have one kid.”

Actually, it’s hard for me not to laugh whenever I hear any soon-to-be married or newly-married couple say anything that starts with “We’re going to…”

Because the odds are you’re not going to do whatever you’re planning on or hoping for. You have no idea what the future holds. Nothing is certain in life, and parenthood is one of the least certain things life throws your way.

I know people who said they would never have kids but then had a bunch of them. I’ve met people who said they wanted lots of kids, but it turned out they couldn’t have any.

I’ve met young women who planned on getting married very young and becoming stay-at-home moms, but then time passed, and they’re now in their 30s, still single and childless, nearly ready to give up on ever being married at all.

I’ve also met people who started young and ended up divorced right away. Or people who got married very late in life and had kids in their 40s, either for the first time ever or for their second round at parenting.

I know of more than one case where parents who weren’t using any birth control at all had long periods of inexplicable infertility and concluded, “Well, I guess we just can’t have any more kids,” then time goes by—5, 10, even 15 years—then… BOOM!

“We’re pregnant? What?!”

It’s all a great mystery, and we have very little control over any of it. Embrace it.

#3: Tons of people will give you parenting advice. Most of it is bad.

I don’t mean it’s “bad” as in “morally wrong,” (although we got some of that too). I mean “bad,” as in, it’s bad advice because it doesn’t work in your case.

For example, if my wife were allergic to flowers, “Buy your wife flowers for Valentine’s Day” would be really bad advice in my case, obviously.

That’s an extreme example, but there are plenty of real-life applications where what works well in one marriage or family doesn’t work in another.

Parents LOVE to tell other parents how to parent. This is really annoying sometimes, but it often comes from a good place: if a mother or father finds something that works for them, they want to share their “discovery” with you.

It can be a genuinely helpful desire, but it’s usually not very helpful.

As I mentioned, parents are different. Kids are different. Families are different. What works well in your friend’s house may not work for you at all.

For us, the earliest days of parenthood were the hardest in this regard. Experienced moms gave my wife so much advice about diaper changing, nap times and bedtimes for the baby, how to swaddle, how to feed, how to survive teething, what to feed a weaning baby, what the baby’s weight should be, and so on.

Even things like musculoskeletal development were up for debate! People had opinions about what we were feeding our kids, how much we were feeding them, whether they were too fat or too skinny for their age, and whether their ability to hold and grasp a pencil properly or say certain words were “right” for their stage in life.

It was nuts! Almost everybody had a different opinion. Who was right? Who was wrong?

Bottom line: who cares?

Nobody’s entirely right, and nobody’s entirely wrong. What works for them may have worked for them, but a lot of it didn’t work for us… we had to learn what worked for us over time.

#4: The way your kids “turn out” is not necessarily reflective of your parenting.

I have met some adults who grew up with deadbeat parents: an absent father, an alcoholic mother, they were completely orphaned, etc., yet they turned into fine adults themselves and excellent parents.

I’ve also met people who made horrendously bad choices growing up but had perfectly wonderful, loving parents. I know kids who were raised by two parents in a wholesome, supportive home, and yet these kids grew up into criminals and became addicts, sometimes even ending their own lives or taking the lives of others.

That’s dark, I know, but it’s real. Parenting is real life. It’s as real as anything you’ll ever do in your life.

It’s really hard not to feel like your own kids’ choices reflect on your parenting skills, but I’ve seen enough to know that there’s only a small correlation between how people are parented and the adults they become, not a big one.

So if your kids grow up to be bank robbers or drug dealers, it’s hard for parents not to take it personally and say, “What did we do wrong?”

AND YET… our society is very quick to look at “good kids” who seem nice, get good grades, and perform well socially and say, “Wow, they must have great parents.”

It’s a hard truth, but a truth nonetheless: people make their own decisions in life, and you cannot entirely blame the parents of “troubled kids” for the way they turn out. Conversely, you cannot entirely credit the parents of “good kids” for their good behavior.

A lot of it is just pure luck.

We’re all doing the best we can, and humans are agents of free will and choose their own futures for the most part. That’s both discouraging and encouraging.

#5: We’re all making it up as we go.

When I was little, I thought my parents knew everything. I didn’t always like what they did or said (I often didn’t), but they always at least had an answer for everything they did.

When I became a father, I was shocked to find out that all of that was a bluff.

“Because I said so” is something parents say because sometimes it’s the best (and only) answer they have for why you can or can’t do something.

Even people with sincere faith and a moral code are constantly having to make guesses. I’m a conservative Christian who runs a household with rules based on the Bible as much as we can.

But not even the Bible offers direct insight into a lot of issues kids deal with these days.

Rules about hair dye? Piercings? Vaping? Sleepovers at friends’ houses? Discerning the proper number of hours spent in front of a screen? Choosing precisely which words are and aren’t allowed in the house? Knowing how old a child should be before getting a phone, or whether they should get one at all?

…there aren’t any Bible verses that directly address any of those things. I have to decide what the rules are for my own house, and often, when the kids push me and say, “Why?” I don’t know how to respond.

Ultimately, it’s because we have to draw the line somewhere. Knowing exactly where that line is and when to make a stand versus when to be flexible is EXTREMELY difficult.

It’s actually the hardest thing we do as parents, and there’s no simple guidebook for it. You have to make your choices, stand by them, and see how it all pans out.

Those are my thoughts on parenting for now. But that’s what I know and what I’ve learned. You may have totally different conclusions, and that’s fine too.