Quality Time

One of the misconceptions of having a large family is that we never spend time with our kids. I'm not sure who started that rumor, but I can tell you for our family it isn't true in the slightest. First of all, each kid receives the individual attention they need AND want, because honestly some kids just don't want it. Hunter for example is perfectly fine playing with Legos by himself, where as most of our other kids want to be center of attention(cough cough BROOKE). When I tell people this they seem not to believe us, so let me just give some examples of how we spend time with them. We have dates with our children, one on one dates where we normally end up running an errand and then go out to eat, we always let them pick where we eat no matter where they pick we end up going. As you can imagine we end up at Chic-Fil-A A LOT! Regardless of what they pick to eat we make it seem like a fancy date and we talk to them about everything we can think of. This is honestly one of my favorite things to do with my kids, they seem to really enjoy it and the normally end up telling their siblings about all the fun things we talked about while we were away. The other thing that seems to be sure popular with our kids to bond with them is driving them to sports. Yup. This simple little act makes a huge difference, it's when most of our deepest conversations happen, well as deep as a five year old can get! Tyson recently said he was scared to start football because it was his first sport without Zayden, Brooke comforted him by telling him that it's fun doing a sport alone because it's all about you! She wasn't lying, even if the other kids are around at a sporting event of a sibling we still try to keep the focus on the child performing to boost their self esteem and let them know they're loved. We're hoping this arrangement continues to work as well as it has been, if it needs to change we'll change it, but for now it's perfect!