Connected parenting would be so much easier if there weren’t so many kids. I often find myself handling one meltdown only to have another kid meltdown. Or worse yet…two melting down at the same time! I have always wanted a big family. In fact, I told Ryan before we got married that I wanted six kids. He said he wanted two kids, and likes to tell people that we compromised and have six. Ha! I honestly don’t know why I thought six kids was a good number, or why God saw fit to allow us to parent six little ones.

Let me back up a bit. Our parenting journey started after months of foster care classes, a home study, and a lot of waiting. We brought home our first baby, a precious tiny little girl. She had her share of medical challenges from being a micro-preemie, but we thought she was perfect. After she had been in our home for about a year, we received a call for a 3 1/2 yr old little boy. We weren’t really looking to expand our family just yet, but we trusted God’s timing and said yes. He quickly stepped into the role of big brother and began leading our then 18-month-old baby girl all over. Her speech and motor development took off as she attempted to keep up with this new big brother. She loved having another little person around.

We settled into our new normal of being a family of two. We learned through experience how much trauma can impact even very young kids. Meltdowns, shutting down, uncontrollable crying, lying, power struggles…this became our daily life. As still relatively new parents we thought that this would pass, it was just a phase…everyone knows about the terrible twos (and soon learns that threes are not much better!)…but deep down this seemed different. There seemed to be more to the struggles. It didn’t seem like typical kid stuff. We had heard about the impacts of trauma in our foster parent training, but surely that applied to older kids.

Another year passed and we found out we were expecting a baby girl. We would soon have three kids ages 5 and under. We decided to take a short break from foster care to settle into another new normal. Kindergarten brought a new set of struggles as we learned to navigate a classroom, peers, and learning challenges. Housework seemed to pile up. Dishes and laundry that seemed never-ending. An eating out bill that needed to be cut in half, but where would the time come from to make real food? All our energy was being poured into our kids and our jobs. Our marriage always seemed to get a back seat. How to handle meltdowns was regularly a point of contention. Too strict. Too permissive. Too many rules. Too little routine.

Despite all of this we opened up our home for foster care again. This time the paperwork was less, the wait was shorter, and before we knew it our family had grown again. Not a tiny baby, but a precious screamer that was almost a year old. I quickly found a baby wearing wrap that would hold him so I could actually cook dinner from time to time. Unless this precious boy was being held, he was screaming. And then there was the two-year-old who wanted my attention, a brand new kindergartner who struggled to sit still for any school work, and a second grader who was still struggling to read. Did I mention we homeschool our kids? Their needs were compounding and there was no end in sight. We were still trying to get a grasp on how to handle meltdowns, lying, manipulation, and battles for control.

Our traditional parenting methods were FAILING miserably. For me, that meant I was a failure. I felt ashamed that I had wanted this big family and now I didn’t know how to parent them. I felt ashamed that I could get so frustrated with these little people that I loved so much. I felt overwhelmed, but I had wanted this. I had signed up for this. Surely things would get better.

A few weeks after our screamer was placed with us we enrolled in a parenting class for adoptive and foster kids called Empowered to Connect. With four kids and lots of big needs, we knew we needed help. This course added hours of homework and classwork to our already crazy schedule (which most people thought was ridiculous),  but we knew we needed something different. We learned about TBRI (Trust-Based Relational Intervention) and the amazing impact it was having on vulnerable children. We realized that our kids were those vulnerable children. We learned that we needed a different approach to parenting, but it was not easy to implement…especially with 4 little ones who each had their own big needs.

We pressed on because they are worth it.

We dove into this new parenting head first. That’s not to say we did it perfectly or didn’t ever question the sanity of teaching our two-year-old to ask for a compromise, but we were committed. We looked at the impacts of trauma on the developing brain. We were reminded to have compassion for our kids. We tackled the hard things like our own history and how it impacted us and how things our kids did triggered us. We learned to connect while we corrected. We began to empower our kids in ways that had never occurred to us. We embraced saying yes as an actual parenting tool!

Slowly but surely we began to see progress. We began to see the need behind the behaviors. Meltdowns. Lying. Manipulation. It all still happened, but we learned to change our response and find the communication buried beneath these behaviors.

But how did we do this with four little ones in the house? One moment at a time, and lots of proactive teaching.

Our precious screamer was reunited with family and we found ourselves back to only 3 kids (which I must say seemed like a piece of cake!). So what did we do?  We opened back up to foster care of course. Over the next two years we would have many kids come and go, a miscarriage that rocked our world, marital struggles we weren’t sure how we would make it through, the birth of another little one, and the adoption of two more kids through the foster care system. (In case you’ve lost track, that makes the grand total 6 kids.) Each day brought new challenging behaviors and a chance to practice our parenting skills. We had many failures along the way, but thirteen years later we can see the rainbow after the storms.

No matter what your journey looks like, there is hope.  You and your kids can find a place to heal and grow.  Some key things we learned on this journey:

1. Repair your mistakes. You will have plenty of opportunities to repair your mistakes. Ask your kids and your spouse for forgiveness often.
2. Balance your nurture and your structure. Often times in parenting we are trying so hard to get compliance from our kids that we neglect the relationship. We need to have a balance of structure so our kids feel safe and nurture so our kids feel loved.
3. Share power with your kids. You can do this by offering your kids compromises and choices instead of engaging in power struggles. This seems so counter-intuitive as a parent, but it really does work.
4. Ask for help. We won’t ask for help because we feel shame or we need to stubbornly show others who thought we were crazy that we can do it. You need to know when to ask for help. Find a sitter, a tutor, or a maid. Curbside grocery pick up or even delivery. We all need help to make it through, so don’t be afraid to ask…and keep asking!

Children are a blessing from the Lord, but that doesn’t mean that parenting them is easy.  You can weather this storm and make it to the rainbow that God has for you.