The More the Merrier.

“The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.

Erma Bombeck

My family was pretty crazy growing up. Wait, what am I saying?... We’re still crazy. And honestly, I wouldn’t trade the craziness for anything. I grew up being the second youngest of six children, which may seem like a massive amount of individuals to some of you. At times, it was difficult to know exactly how I fit in to this large family full of so many cool older siblings and a cute younger brother; it was difficult to figure out my specific role. My large family, however, did bring with it a sense of security and belonging, which may not seem like the most likely outcome when there are so many that need to focus of the parents. I do think that there is something special about having a lot of siblings to look up to and to interact with and to learn from, though.

The author and women’s rights activist, Pearl S. Buck, has said, “The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people – no mere father and mother – as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into in before he was born.” I have felt that sense of kinfolk and emotional security in my own family.

I am not trying to tell people to have huge families, but I do know that there are many things to be learned from having a lot of siblings to butt heads with, to cry on, and to laugh with. Three of the main ones that I have noticed in my own family are social skills, conflict resolution, and compassion.

I am not going to lie, my siblings and I were some odd ducks growing up. Everyone has their awkward stage, and some of those stages just happen to last about 18 years. It's a process of trying to figure out what is acceptable and what is not when it comes to interactions with others. But this is one thing that I was able to develop because of the interactions with my siblings. We learned how to work through conflict, how to put others first, how to support each other. Another skill we learned was how to act in large groups. When you don't grow up with the craziness of 5 siblings, it is easy to be over-stimulated by large groups. Sometimes there is so much noise and so much happening that it can be overbearing and stressful. In a family where people are laughing and wrestling and yelling, it is easy to get used to. 

As you can imagine, in a family of eight there was a lot of the bickering, wrestling, and not-sharing going on. This provided an opportunity to learn accommodation. I remember when I was young and living at home, we all really liked to argue. If we were especially annoying and weren't able to work our differences out ourselves, Mom would get involved and that wasn't pretty. She would make us sit in the corner together, holding hands, sometimes singing songs, until we could smile and love each other again. This was the worst punishment ever. It was worse than being put in time out on the toilet. I would think, "This kid just made me so angry, I have no desire to touch him or look at him!!" This punishment sometimes took an hour to work, but eventually I learned it was better to forgive quicker, and soon enough I was down to around two minutes of forgiving time (depending on how serious the circumstance was, of course). This taught us how to work through conflicts, how to forgive each other, and how to be more compassionate. 

Compassion is an important skill. It is easy to get into the habit of thinking you are the most wonderful thing that ever happened to this planet, but when there are 5 other hungry mouths you learn quick the reality of the situation. I had a lot of experiences that reminded me that I was not the only person alive, and that everyone has needs. I also learned that I could help others out with their needs instead of focusing on my own. This is a lot easier to gain from having siblings than it is after moving out of the house. In a big family, you learn to work together. You learn how to forget yourself more, how to work with others, how to accommodate because you care about the needs and happiness of you siblings (not all the time, of course; it is a learning process). I learned to be more compassionate because of my siblings.

I love my big family. I have learned so much from my interactions with them and from each of their examples. I would be completely different if I only had a couple siblings; not that those differences would be bad, because there is something to be learned from every situation. But I am pretty proud of what we have learned together as a family, and of the love that we share with one another.