Chaotic kid-dominated homelife & parenthood: Inseparable things?

In My Humble Opinion
1

On a rational level, I know the answer to my question is “no”. My own experience as a kid tells me that there’s no requirement for one’s life to be completely turned into a busted piñata just by being a parent. We naturally weren’t rowdy or hyperactive kids, and my parents had a no-nonsense sensibility that kept us in check. They had lives outside of raising us (although they both were/are homebodies…same as me), and while you could probably tell right away that children were present in the home, the place didn’t look like it had been besieged by children.

But recent exposures to my fiancés’ relatives are making me worry about what I could be signing up for as parent. And I’m hoping this post doesn’t come across as critical, because I like his family a lot.

His older brother has a 5-year old boy in addition two teenaged sons. Within two seconds upon entering their house, it is obvious there is a little boy who lives there. His action figures are posted on every horizontal surface: kitchen counters, dining room table, coffee tables, computer desk, back of the toilet. Everywhere. Every time we’ve visited his brother and SIL, the youngest’s toys are strewn across the floor in the living room; there is actually a toy train track that is semi-permanently stationed in there that you have to carefully mind while walking. And when we visit, no matter the occasion, family entertainment is centered around the youngest. For instance, a couple months ago we had dinner at their place and afterwards, we sat and watched his brother play videogames with the youngest. Then my fiancé, his brother, and I played chutes and ladders with the youngest. Then we played several hands of UNO. Sitting at the table as adults and shooting the breeze happens infrequently.

His younger sister has three boys, all under the age of 5. I have never visited them since they live out-of-state, but the other day, my fiancé and I skyped with her. This was the first time I’d really talked to her and was interested in, you know, having a conversation with her. Instead, almost the entirety of our 45-min exchange consisted us her showing us the antics of her 3 kids. Boys diving over couch cushions, boys pretending to be dinosaurs, boys hopping around like kangaroos. Extremely adorable stuff. My fiancé of course was entertained and cherished getting to see his nephews at play. But after 10-minutes of this, I felt alienated and annoyed. I’ll be her SIL in 9 months. Is it unreasonable to expect that she’d pull her attention away from her kids long enough to engage me? I complimented her on her new home and asked her a few questions, but got very little out of her because her kids were too much of an irresistible distraction to her. I don’t know if my fiancé picked up on my feelings about this, or whether he even thought there was something missing from the exchange.

I’m not a parent, so I’m trying not to cast judgement on them. Perhaps it’s not fair to expect parents of little kids to value adult interactions the same way I do. Perhaps its hard for them to tear themselves away from their kids because kids are naturally attention-hungry (perhaps me and my siblings were exceptions to the rule?). What I do know is that I don’t want my life to be so kid-centered that I unconsciously ignore and alienate adults in my company. Is this a risk that automatically comes with parenthood? Or does this have more to do with a person’s personality? I don’t think I have it in me to be 100% kid-centered, but who knows what could happen once I become a parent?

I guess I’m also looking for advice on how to broach this with my fiancé. The last thing I want to do is make him think I’m judging his siblings, but they are clear examples of what I don’t want my life to become as a parent. His siblings seem happy, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t the life for me. Not that I haven’t already given him some idea of my values…for example, he knows that I don’t want toys all over the place if it can be helped. But for now, I have decided not to bring up my feelings about the conversation with his sister.

2

:eek: Leave this one alone. The amount of chaos created by my one son, aged 2.5, is epic. I can’t even imagine three of them. I work full time, so when I’m home with my son (and infant daughter) all I want to do is play and cuddle.

Check out Pinterest and you will see a plethora of quotes, signs, etc… about mothers with three boys. There is a reason.

And you are right. You may very well alienate your fiancé by making it seem like you are judging his siblings. I think you could say to him, “wow, it looks so hard to have three boys under 5. I don’t think I want that.” Or, “I hope your sister and her husband can afford house cleaners… I can’t imagine having to keep house for three boys.” Then see how the conversation plays out. There is a way to broach the subject without making it seem like you are judging them for their lifestyle.

First impressions are hard to overcome. But cut your SIL some slack. Unless she locked her three boys in a bathroom, no adult conversation was going to be had, especially when all they wanted to do was show off for their uncle who they only get to see by Skype. Save your judgments until you can meet her in person and share a glass of wine, while your fiancé takes the boys to the park. If she only talks about the kids at that point, well, then maybe she’s an asshole. But I doubt she will.

As the mother of your own children, you will all but dictate the tone and attention levels of “child” in your own home. Whether everything is all about your kids, or you have two nannies and weekly date nights with your husband… that is up to you. You will have a lot of power to control that. And while it certainly is something you want to talk to your fiancé about before you have kids, don’t style it as a, “I want a different lifestyle then your family,” but rather, “our partnership is the most important equation in our family, and you and I should always put each other first, and the kids come second.”

And after having your kids, if you have a method for teaching your under 5yo kids from leaving toys all over the house, please share it. The rest of the world is waiting to know it. :smiley:

3

Why do you have to bring up his siblings at all? You are happy enough with his family, his family their kids seem happy so why rock the boat? And how do they affect your future kid?

If this is about your future kid(s) then keep in between you two. Have honest discussions but don’t bring the other family as bad examples. As much as you say it is not judgmental some people may see it that way. Assume someone will hear about it, families are like that.

And be warned, you can plan as much as you want for parenthood, but until you have a child you can never know how you will react. Kids don’t come out pre-programmed, the kids being raised by your personality and learn from you.

Until they can walk. And then talk. And then become teenagers. But until then you are THE GOD. With great power comes great responsibility.

4

Believe me I understand that isn’t a walk in the park. I don’t even know his sister, but I have enormous respect for anyone who can raise 3 boys (5, 4, and 3, BTW), without losing their sanity.

So I guess your response answers my question about my expectation being a tad unreasonable. To clarify, though, it isn’t that I felt miffed that she spend most of the phone call playing with the kids and engaging them. It just struck me as weird that she showed little curiosity about the strange person (me) talking to her through the computer screen. If this is not unusual for someone in her position, then this is good for me to know.

5

There are a few different points here.

  1. The behavior of your particular children. As a parent, you can shape that. However, all kids will misbehave, and if you happen to have a high energy child, or one with special needs, your ability to change this will be limited. Yes, parenting is essential, but not all kids will sit quietly and color :stuck_out_tongue: I always thought my kids would be calm because I am. Nope. One is a well-behaved but high energy little guy, and the other has autism and is prone to meltdowns. You need to set limits, be consistent, and all that jazz but sometimes kids will act crazy. You will then do whatever parenting strategy you have, which will limit it happening next time, but it will still happen.

  2. Your house. This is a priority issue. Do you really care about having an adult-oriented home? You can certainly set rules around where toys are played with, or make creative storage solutions. I don’t care, so we have toys all over (put away when company comes over), but decor isn’t my thing. And I have a small house. If this is a huge issue for you, make a playroom somewhere so the toys can be out, but not in the living room. A spare bedroom or basement is perfect. Kids do need space to play, and as a parent nowadays, you will have a billion toys unless you wage a constant battle, alienating everyone who wants to give you gifts. But the place to play doesn’t need to be the middle of the house.

  3. Your social life. Kids are demanding, and “shooting the breeze” isn’t easy. But it can be done if you try. Teach them to play by themselves sometimes. Or, what I’ve done is that mine get an hour of TV time a day. Guess what? When company comes, after the kids visit for awhile, the TV hour magically appears. Viola. Time to hang out with the adults. On rare occasion, one of the kids will be having a meltdown and ONE parent will take care of it while the other gets adult time. Furthermore, there are babysitters. Once you find one you trust, you can hire him or her to sit while you go out with your friends for dinner to shoot the breeze.

  4. Use creative solutions. For example, both my husband and I are introverts who need our alone time. So we switch off. One weekend, I will go out alone for a few hours, see a movie, take photographs, go hiking, whatever. A few weeks later, husband will do the same. One to two times year, each of us gets a weekend alone while the other takes the kids to visit family. I’ve used mine to stay in bed and rest, to go to another city to visit friends, and to just hang out at home without anyone there. He’s done basically the same thing.

  5. Basically, set priorities. When you have kids, some things from your previous life have to go away. But not everything. The trick is figuring out what is essential, and then how to keep it. I need my alone time (solution above), travel (we prep the kids, trained them early, and just do it), and outings (babysitter once a month).

  6. Your fiancé. None of this helps if you’re not on the same page. I would bring up the kid centric thing, not in context of his family, but in the context that you don’t want to loose certain parts of your life, that it’s not going to be healthy for you to not have adult time, etc.

6

I don’t have to bring them up to communicate my views to him. But I do see his siblings as potential indicator of his own familial values. If he intends to recreate the dynamic that his siblings have because it seems ideal to him, then he should know that I don’t see it as ideal, right? Or is this crazy talk?

I’m happy around his family but that’s probably because I don’t live with his family and only spend a couple hours with them on a quarterly basis or so.

7

That makes sense, and I actually DID talk to my husband about the parenting dynamics in his family. But not everyone will take kindly to that. It worked for us, but I’d advise a more general conversation unless you’re sure it will go over OK.

In my experience, having a supportive co-parent is absolutely essential. If keeping adult time is important to you, you need to make sure your fiancé is with you. It is a bit unrealistic to expect kids to not intrude on your conversations with adults, but it’s not unrealistic to expect your partner to take care of it 50% of the time.

8

I’ve expressed this to him over the course of our relationship, and he agrees this is also important to him, which is encouraging. So it could be that we’re already on the same page on this and I’m just overanalyzing things. Probably because I seemed to be the only one who felt alienated on the phone with his sister this weekend, and this makes me feel guilty and worried at the same time.

In truth, he knows his sister and the demands she under a lot better than me, so his expectations are more grounded in reality and compassion. So I’m now going to tell myself to think the same way.

Thanks for the rest of your advice, btw. We’re both introverts as well. Will take heed.

9

You absolutely need to talk about this stuff. But I think there is a way to do it that doesn’t make it seem like you are judging his sisters.

And I would wait to see if a pattern emerges in the context of talking to the little sister. Maybe this is a one off. Maybe she is super shy, or felt awkward on Skype. I have a hard time knowing where to look doing facetime, and it makes me uncomfortable.

10

Best wishes to you on your engagement.

Do you have any other friends with children in the same age range? Do you react to their situation in the same way?

Regards,
Shodan

11

I know people who go out of their way to keep the kids in a separate part of the house. My parents, for example, always had a room with toys and then a couple rooms for company that were always kept in Better Homes and Gardens condition. I never liked that concept, so when I bought a house, I made sure it didn’t have any “extra” rooms, and I’ve intentionally carved out an area in every single room for toys and/or activities. When you come to my house, you’ll see toys everywhere, but just know that this is by choice; I like having the kids around. I also know people who have toys everywhere because they’re overwhelmed and can’t keep up. I don’t know which camp your relatives are in.

I also tend to involve my kids in any Facetime calls, but not at the expense of a coherent conversation, so I’m not sure what exactly was going on with your future SIL.

12

None of my closest friends have kids. But we are friends with a couple that has two toddlers (one of whom has special needs). Even though they clearly have their hands full, the couple is able to split their attention between the adults in their company and their kids. So I feel comfortable around them.

13

My brother and SIL have eight kids, from… I think 14 down to under a year. While the kids are super excited when you go visit, and one of them in particular is a VERY WOUND UP LITTLE BOY, they eventually calm down. They have toys around, but they are put away when not in use, etc. Obviously, this is just for the most part. There definitely is a sense of controlled chaos!

Of importance: My SIL doesn’t work outside of the home, so she has more home-time to establish routines and keep things tidy. But she also homeschools, so she doesn’t have school time to be child-free (or child-reduced).

And yes, before you ask, they are crazy people.

So, I think even with a lot of kids it can be done. But I think it requires work on top of the already present work of feeding and raising and spending time with the kids. You might decide that it requires more work than you want to give it and let things slide a bit. You might decide that it’s incredibly important to you to maintain a level of adultness and order. It can be done!

14

Young children, especially boys, are just chaotic and crazy. It’s part of the package.

That said, a lot of what you describe is the result of choices on the parents’ part. They could put a bigger emphasis on cleaning the house up for visitors or Skype calls, and they could also put a movie on the TV so the kids could watch that in the other room while they have the Skype call, if they’re not interested in talking on it. But to some degree, the kids will get crazier in proportion to how much they’re ignored- if you’re on a Skype call ignoring your kids, you can guarantee they’ll amp up the craziness to get some attention.

Having kids is a huge lifestyle change. To some degree, your life does become a busted pinata - you and your partner are now 100% responsible for someone else- feeding, bathing, education, entertainment, discipline, soothing, etc… This takes a lot of time.

We’ll use me for an example: After I shower and get dressed in the morning, I go get our 3 year old, change his diaper, dress him, get his breakfast ready, and get him situated before I wake my wife up (and usually the baby as well), and leave for work.

When I get home, I have about an hour before it’s time to bathe the 3 year old, get him ready for bed, read books to him, and put him to sleep. In the meantime my wife does some support type tasks- gets dinner ready, nurses the baby, and gets him to sleep.

So around 7:30 or so, both boys are in bed, and we have a few hours to ourselves. We can’t really go anywhere as a couple because of the boys.

On the weekends, one of us sleeps in on Saturday, and one on Sunday, and the other gets the boys up, changed, dressed and fed. Then we usually do some kind of errands, and have some kind of family lunch, either out or in. They play before and after, and the 3 year old naps from about 1:30-2:30 in the afternoon, while the 6 month old naps at shorter intervals and nurses at his own times as well. So as tight as my schedule is, my wife’s is tighter, because she’s the food source, and while we can give formula, why would we pay for something we have for free? And pumping sucks, FYI.

So from about 3:30-5:30, we have a couple hours where everyone’s awake, and either we hang around the house, or one of us runs an errand while the other watches the kids. Then the bath/dinner/bed cycle starts again.

Somewhere in there, we do the dishes, pick up the floors, clean the bathrooms, take out the trash, do the laundry, and all the myriad other chores that households demand.

So yeah, having children does mess up your personal life, even if we’re just talking basic maintenance, and not necessarily child-centric scheduling.

15

I will say this. You don’t remember what was “normal” even at your own house when the kids were all under 5. You are remembering a period in which some of the kids–including the twins–were over 5 and could entertain the others. In fact, aren’t you and your sister the youngest?

3+ kids under 5 and no older siblings to help out is a particular type of hell and in no way resembles other parenting. Really. That poor woman likely hasn’t slept 5 consecutive hours since the first time she got pregnant. What were you doing 5 years ago? Imagine you hadn’t gotten a nights’ sleep since then. My mother had 4 in a row like that. She referred to that period as “The Duration”, and there were a lot of things that were normal for “The Duration” that were not the norm before or after.

16

This is true, but my parents’ memory of the past back me up. I have an older sister and brother who are 8 and 6 six years older than me and my twin. The older two were more of a handful than the two of us and I’m sure they required more attention from our parents than me and my extra-sedate twin did. But what I’m talking about goes beyond mere attention.

Our house was never treated like a playground (toys strewn about wasn’t allowed; you had to clean that shit up), and when guests were invited over, my parents catered to their interests, not ours. When my mom was on the phone, I would be told to wait until she was finished if I needed her attention (unless it was an emergency, of course). Since this is how I was raised, I suspect this is why seeing the opposite makes me feel awkward. As a parenting style it feels kind of upside down to me.

17

No, they are not inseparable. It depends on the parents and how they bring up their kids. Also very much depends on the culture. Look up “Bringing up Bebe” - French child upbringing is very different from the way Americans do it, and results in much more disciplined kids (of course, some would point out that it also results in much more conformist, non-individualist, less creative kids). I prefer the American way myself.

18

Maybe some of her reaction was just being nervous or shy around a new person, namely you. I know I take refuge in my grand babies if I am at a loss for conversation with someone I’ve just met.

19

I totally understand looking at that and thinking, “No way, not in my house!” It is crazy and overwhelming to watch someone else’s life when they have kids, especially if they have more than one. But I gotta tell you, plan for whatever you’d like and then be willing to accept what works when you get there.

When my husband and I had a baby we had plans and ideas, many of which got thrown out the window after a short while and that is perfectly normal. My SIL and her husband have been trying to adopt for a few years now and have gone from people who were going to just strap the baby into a bjorn and bring it everywhere they go (they travel the world for work, so they were planning on bringing their kid on intercontinental flights and around third world countries) to people who have reevaluated their life choices and are coming back to settle in the US so that they can have some stability and consistency as a family. Neither choice is wrong but they are two very different extremes and they don’t even have a kid in their house yet!

Thinking about what you will do when you become a parent is one thing. Finding out what actually works for your family is quite another.

20

Heh, my husband and I totally talked about his brother’s kids and agreed that we wouldn’t parent exactly like that. It wasn’t the noise or the chaos exactly; it was more that when the kids were loud (and I’m talking screaming, not just usual kid noise), or throwing a ball in the dining room while people were trying to eat dinner, or whatever, the parents would say “Hey, knock it off,” but then they wouldn’t do anything else, even if the noise continued, except maybe tell the kid to knock it off again… no consequences or firm boundaries, and in fact they were rewarded for screaming with their parents’ attention.

I told them that I wouldn’t listen to anything they said if they yelled or screamed it, and paid close attention to them when they were polite, and magically they don’t yell or scream around me.

You can do a lot with boundaries and rewarding for the appropriate things. You can’t do everything. Those kids are still super-high-energy and I don’t think there’s any changing that. My kid, while well behaved most of the time, has screaming meltdowns that we still haven’t figured out how to stop (though we do remove her from society when they happen).

I do have to say though that I have never in my life Skyped with someone where the object was not to see my or someone else’s kids. I don’t think it would even occur to me that this wasn’t the point of the Skype. So I wouldn’t read too much into the mom making the Skype session about her kids. A phone call would be a different story; when I’m on the phone with an adult I try to keep my kid occupied with other stuff so I can actually talk.