I’m in a big hall in Newbridge, County Kildare, which is being used as a rehearsal space, sitting on a child’s chair, nestling beside some coat rails. One of my children is a choir and rehearsing with the Newbridge Brass Band for a twenty-five year celebratory concert in December. So there’s plenty of ‘Diddly Om Pop Poms’ and cheerful Christmas carols to keep me company me as I write.
Large groups of children have been on my mind all week. The first group make up the Duggar family. They live in Arkansas, in the United States. The head of the household is Jim Bob Duggar who is married to Michelle. Between them they have eighteen children. That’s right, E-I-G-H-T-E-E-N. All of them conceived naturally and all of them having names beginning with the letter ‘J’. They have just announced that they have another on the way making nineteen. Neither of them looks insane and you’d be happy to sit next to them at the school Carol service.
I was so heartened by Bob and Michelle and their neatly dressed children that I sent them a chatty email. They sent one back immediately telling me “Dear Annie, Jesus wants to become your best friend, He loves you! He wants you to ask Him and get His advice about every major decision in your life. You will see your whole life changing. Jesus wants you to go back to people you have done things wrong to and ask for forgiveness for what you have done, telling them you have committed your life to Jesus and you now want to live for Him. You will still make mistakes in the future, but daily pray to God and He will lead you. Love Bob and Michelle”. Oh dear. Jesus is coming, look busy everyone.
At least we now know why the children all have names beginning with ‘J’. And I guess that, with eighteen children in the house, you’d spend a lot of time on your knees praying just to get through the day. Imagine eighteen beds to make, eighteen lots of homework and the height of the laundry mountain. Holy Moly. Michelle must need climbing boots and an abseil rope to get up and down it.
The other children on my mind have Nadia Suleman at the head of their household. Her family consists of a mere fourteen children. They were all conceived using IVF and are being raised (with an army of volunteers and paid nannies) by their single mother, otherwise known globally as “Octomum”.
Nadia Suleman looks like a worn out version of Angelina Joile. Since giving birth she’s fallen out with her mother (who publically declared that her daughter was ‘unfit’ and ‘sick’). She has eight nine-month-old babies and six older children including one set of twins and a severely autistic little boy. It exhausts me just writing that down.
The numbers are mind-boggling. She spends a thousand dollars a week on food; another ten thousand a month on nannies. She uses over five hundred nappies a week and on average Octomum survives on three hours sleep a night. With such little rest, it is no wonder that she’s opted for Botox, lip and breast enhancement to help her out.
Her babies were born into the world of reality TV and she regularly shares with viewers like me that the film crews, interviewers and paparazzi are a burden. With everyone close to her also selling stories to the papers, you have to have some compassion for the woman. She puts no restrictions on what can be filmed whatsoever. A braver woman than me. When the documentary was shown on television last week, there were comparisons with every family I know, but on a much larger scale.
Children throwing tantrums, school uniforms gone missing and grocery shopping to be done. The noise levels were through the roof. Even the Newbridge Brass Band would have had difficulty being heard above the sound of eight babies waiting to be fed. Sitting the babies around a specially designed table with eight little chairs built into it, she got on with the task in hand with humour and order combined. Say what you will about her, but personally I think she deserves an octo-medal for her efforts (or maybe she'd prefer some washing powder vouchers).
Despite the daily chaos, Nadia makes time to go do those regular Mum things, like going bowling with her six older children. She may be running on empty, but at least she seems to understand that providing that they are regularly fed, watered, washed and get a good night’s sleep, children, our sons and daughters, are great fun. The people who organise the choir know it, so do the GAA coaches, teachers, the Scout and Girl Guide groups, the choir, the hockey clubs and even the Newbridge Brass band.
So I have made a star chart for myself, after all the children have been plagued by them since the day they could talk. If I earn twenty stars a week, I will treat myself to a chocolate eclair. My challenge is to spend ten minutes a day with each of them. If I do, I get four stars. In our little boy’s case, no doubt I’ll be playing table football (and losing). In our youngest daughter’s case, I’ll be playing cards (and losing). As for our eleven year old, I’ll be watching her knit.
As for the teenager, it gets harder. Perhaps we’ll go to her room and talk about X-Factor and skincare. Perhaps we’ll flick through old Hello Magazines. Or perhaps discuss why, after six months, I still haven’t read ‘Twilight’. Whatever it is, I mustn’t ask her to tidy her room no matter how high the clutter and dust is. I’ll lose a star on my chart and boy, do I need that cream cake.
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