I've often heard mothers say that after having three kids, more children makes no difference. I couldn't imagine what they meant.
It seems to me that if I have three kids all doing different activities—say, one is coloring, one is doing legos, and another is in the shower—that having one more child, say digging in the dirt, must add more activity to my house.
I'd go through the house checking on all my children and their independent free-will choices: I'd make sure the kid in the shower wasn't wasting water, the kid doing legos wasn't using his teeth to pull legos apart, making sure the coloring child wasn't coloring on the furniture, and checking that the digging child wasn't throwing dirt over the neighbor's fence.
I understand that when parents go from two children to three, the parents change from one-on-one to group parenting. The parents ask several children at a time to get on their pajamas and expect everyone to do it. Individualized attention reduces. The difference between asking four children and six children to get on their pajamas is very slight.
It also seems that a parent can only keep a certain number of things in his or her mind at a time. I can stir a pot of soup on the stove and I can chat with someone on the phone. I can tie a kid's shoe laces and I can tell another child to stop shouting. I can change a diaper and glance at a child's drawing. But when trying to do three things at a time, something drops off the radar. I cannot answer two children's questions at a time and sweep. I cannot dress a child, plan the days activities, and answer a question at the same time.
When three demands are being made upon me at a time, I must block out or refuse or wait to do one of them. The more children added to the mix, the more things I must block out or refuse to address or put on my waiting list in order to address the one or two most important things at hand. This means that all the children's questions aren't answered, people are ignored (or told to wait), messes aren't cleaned up for a bit, fights aren't always ironed out, and plenty of activity operates outside my watchful eye.
Now as a mother, I have more things to do besides regulate my children's activities. Write this blog for example, hehe. No, seriously. There's plan the day's activities and paint the ceiling and repair the oven and regulate electricity use and direct household chores. I have many balls to juggle. And I can only do one activity well at a time, two is okay, but three gets messy. This means that numerous balls are bouncing around me unattended. Somewhere the water is running, a child is pooping in his diaper, a tape player is blaring, dust is accumulating, something is getting broken, someone is fighting, someone has a runny nose, time is passing and dinner will soon be upon us again.
If I believe that everything within this house must be under my control, I will find myself run ragged quite soon. But if I believe that God has given me one thing to do at a time, and the rest, he can handle, then I will find a quiet contentment in the midst of my chaos. I might even discover that he has given me the strength and wisdom to do that one thing.
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