? for parents - why so many kids?

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By and large, the "developed world" nations are producing less children than needed to replace their populations. The overall population growth is coming from the poorer / less educated parts of the world. You can't shrink world population growth by limiting your own children; you'd have to limit THEIR children. Without that, what is left is shrinking races in some parts of the world, and populations that expand through immigration instead, which causes all sorts of other issues and resentments.

I have two children and that is all I'm going to have, but I can see how some people who can easily afford to raise more would want to just to help society stay balanced. Expanding through immigration creates a drain on resources, and that burden is carried by the pre-existing population. I think the instinct to preserve your kind kicks in and influences your choices, even though most likely no one is actively thinking that way or aware of the influence.

Speaking more directly to your situation, it isn't like your parents would have known that, in your eyes, they were making a bad situation worse. Many people LOVE the chaos of a larger family; in a lot of ways it is good chaos, even if it never felt that way to you. It isn't like your parents knew when deciding to get pregnant that this environment was going to be difficult for you; that decision no doubt predated awareness of your condition and needs. I most certainly did not know yet that my son was ASD when I decided to have a second child. And even now that I do know, I think there have been some strong positives for him in having a sibling, even if it there have definitely also been times it was clearly difficult. Hard to know what I would have decided had I had a giant looking glass into the future. In many ways, I think it is better that we can't see down all the roads and have that affect our decisions. Too much would be lost; too many choices would be never be made out of fear. Life is meant to be lived and experienced, not limited.

AngelRho I am trying to get my idea across and I might be able to do that by answering what you say.

Where does this something you SHOULD do come from? One lady in our neighborhood said that she had her 4th child because she didn't get her tubes tied soon enough.


Well, being the dad, you don't do most of the child care anyways.



Ah, yeah, those little jars ain't cheap and did you know 1/3 of families cannot afford diapers, that is Pampers and Huggies? I do get some of the expense because even people without the kids pay school taxes and in our area, they aren't cheap either for what are generally crummy schools. Also, why do I hear about so many poor kids who need charity drives if they are not that expensive?



The doors banging, TV blaring, kids yelling, little kids crying, phones ringing, loud washer and dryer always going, people always coming over that don't include you and people talking over all the chaos. No wonder I went crazy and was nearly suicidal when I lived there. If one of your kids are on the spectrum its a disaster and you are not thinking of them if you "enjoy it".



Way cool to you but again, its not your body they are taking all the organs out of. I don't blame her not going through it again and I hope she had a tubal ligation the last time (they often do that right after giving birth of the woman requests). Its way cool to you, but think of your wife. This is one thing she really must say no to. Exception: If you can find a way to grow a baby in an overgrown Lava Lamp like they did on a bad 80s Lifetime movie, they you can have all the kids you, the guy, want.



[/quote]I wasn't thinking so much of the parent but for an older child who may have an ASD and has a hard time coping with a lot of chaos. There is less of that with 1-2 so why make it worse having more?

These official population-clock sites are pretty weird. The U.S. has one death every "unlucky 13" seconds strangely enough.

http://www.census.gov/popclock/

http://data.stats.gov.cn/

http://www.indiastat.com/popclockflash.aspx

Last edited by Venger on 20 Sep 2014, 12:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

Doors don't bang in my house, and don't necessarily bang in houses with several children.
TVs blare in some childless houses, and don't blare in some houses with many children.
Little kids do cry sometimes, but not for long if someone is there to care for them.
Phones ring regardless of the number of children in a house.
My washer and dryer is in the basement, so I don't hear them running.
People come over regardless of whether there are many or a few or no children in a household.

So, a lot of your statements are either over-generalizations based on your personal experiences, or refer to things that are not dependent on the number of children in a family.

I've had a friend or two before that would act slightly-hostile towards me sometimes cause I wasn't a "family man" like him. I suspect that's not uncommon for some reason.

Barely anyone comes to our door
Our phones don't ring that much
Our washer and dryer are in the basement and they are not always going
No one bangs doors
TV doesn't blare (no need to have it up high)
My daughter cries
People don't talk over the chaos here

I do have small children. Two of them. I'm assuming OP you lived in a small house. I could relate to some what you wrote. I had two brothers but I always knew it was the parents that were in charge and they make the rules and get to decide what is and isn't allowed and my parents let the chaos happen and let my brothers have friends over often and have parties and going up and down the stairs a lot and making messes and being in my personal space. I was so glad to move out. My brothers realized how much work I was doing around the house because I was always cleaning. They also had friends over all the time when they got to their pre teens and that was when it got so chaotic for me and they always wanted parties so that meant more anxiety for me and parents who don't give a darn because my brothers had rights too my mom said. But we lived in a big house, small house when I was 13-16.

BobinPgh,

I think I understand your question, now.

I don't know how my son would have done with a sibling, much less multiple siblings. I know he would not have liked a sibling messing with his stuff, or having to share attention. On the other hand, having to share attention might have been good for him. I don't know. Also, maybe he'd have a friend or at least another child willing to talk to him. We wanted two, but it just did not work out that way.

As far as sensory issues, it is hard to say how much worse that would have been. Not all kids with ASD have the same sensory issues. We don't slam doors, I have no idea what a second child would have done. Our washer and dryer are both very quiet. When I go into the laundry room, to me it sounds like pleasant white noise, not dissimilar to the quiet fan we have in my son's room that is there to make noise to help him sleep. I don't thin another load or two would make a difference, to him as he does not do laundry.

The biggest sensory issue in our house, frankly is him and I am the one most sensitive to noise input of all of us. He sometimes shrieks when he is upset, though that has diminished substantially, as he matured. So, if I had multiple kids they might have upset each other and both shrieked more, if that were the second one's thing too. The shrieking bothers me the most, so depending on what the second kid was like, I might very well be the one must affected by the sensory issues. Who knows.

The other issue is that if we had a second, we would have had him/her before my son got diagnosed, so even if I thought ASD was not a reason to have more kids it would have been too late by then to stop at one.

The biggest thing for us would have been time and money. I spend a lot of time teaching (I home school, b/c our schools here suck, especially for kids outside the norm) and helping my son with skills. I would have to divide my time with him, if I had another, or we would have to spend a lot of money on tutors etc., or moved. That is not something I would have known in advance of having more kids.

Edited to add: My family tends to have small families, my husbands until the last generation or so has had many kids. His mother probably would have wanted a bigger one than what she had b/c she liked and missed a large family situation. Some people like it and some people hate it. It is the same with small families. Some people like them and some people don't. Sometimes people want to replicate what they had as kids b/c they are accustomed to it, and some people hate how they were brought up and want to do the opposite.

Instinct. That, AND unwillingness to impregnate my wife would have been a marriage deal-breaker.



Let's see:
1. All diaper changes between 7am and 5pm
2. Make lunches for 3 kids
3. Drop 2 kids off at school, wife at work
4. Care for 2 yo between 8am and 4pm for 5 days out of the week, to include exercise/entertainment/fine motor skill development, feeding/watering, nap times, etc?AND get my own work done
5. Pick up kids from school, do afternoon activities/piano practice/homework supervision, etc.

Sure, I insist on taking a 3-hour break in the evening. But the point of that isn't just to preserve sanity?they need time with mom. I don't think it's healthy for kids to grow up feeling either parent ignored them?think archetypal dad who comes home from work, vegs out on the couch to watch some ball game and doesn't even acknowledge that he has kids or that his wife carries the entire load at home. I might turn my brain off in the evening, but I'm usually hanging out in the kitchen with my wife while she preps the 1 meal a day she's responsible for (lunch and breakfast are my domain).

No?I don't do most of the work?.[/sarc]

Doesn't change anything, either. I'm a musician, write music, currently working on writing/recording arrangements for an instrumental Christmas album, and every now and then I get to write choir arrangements. I teach piano lessons, which for reasons beyond my control aren't going as well as they used to, which leaves me more time to a) compose and b) take care of my kids so we don't throw away money on daycare.


So you buy generics and you transition out of "little jars" as quickly as you can. Seriously, small children don't need huge quantities of food. You share a few ounces of whatever YOU are eating and they're happy/healthy. After about a year we don't really do baby food. There's no point. All three of mine were eating grown-up food by 18 months. Besides, if you actually read baby food labels, it's the same exact stuff you eat mixed with a little water and pureed. Either get a blender or go old-school with a mortar and pestle. It's not that complicated (or expensive).

If what aren't that expensive? Public schools are free, and if you really need assistance, they make it available.

I'll be honest, our Catholic school is the most expensive school in town and school uniforms are killer on the family budget. However, there are other economically challenged families that also attend and don't have room to keep their outgrown uniforms. They pass their stuff on to us. And when our kids outgrow it, we find another poor family who can use them. Let's face it: some people need help. We need help. People have been generous to us. We pay it forward.

We'd have $7,000 extra a year if we went with public school or homeschooling. And school uniforms for public school are NOT a big deal. The reason why is the uniforms are usually fairly durable and inexpensive (compare with private school). Think about it?you have to buy clothes anyway. Uniforms solve a lot of problems, such as gang identity and related violence, and you have to buy clothes for kids anyway. Uniforms just make it simple.

And if money is an issue, again, you can rely on friends, resale/thrift stores, and your local Salvation Army. It doesn't have to be this unbearable expense.

And think about this, too?you ordinarily would buy new clothes for yourself, anyway. If all your clothes still fit and you don't have holes in them, you don't need new clothes for yourself. You can budget to have your kids in new clothes as they outgrow their old clothes. And, like I said, you can rely on resale/thrift stores who will also give you store credit when you need to trade in old threads for new. And I'm talking pennies on the dollar here.


What doors banging? What TV blaring? What yelling? What crying? What phones ringing? What loud washer/dryer? What people always coming over? This doesn't happen at my house unless I allow it or encourage it. You can't project your own negative experience onto others.

I realize this stuff DOES happen to other people. We DEMAND discipline at our house and we get it. And, I mean, we aren't spanking our kids until they're bruised and bloody to get it, either. It's a mentality that we've encouraged over about 2 or 3 years with each child, firmly establishing conduct and routines that avoid those annoyances you're describing.

We do practice physical punishment, which I understand isn't an option with autistic kids. We've noticed that we were the most severe correcting our kids right around the age of 3, and it has tapered off so much that it is RARE for us to lay a hand on any child in punishment. Even our 2yo, who is definitely going through the terrible twos right now, imitates his brother and sister so much that he rarely misbehaves--if his pattern follows there, that's going to change in a few months, but still?the idea of a misbehaving child in our house is a foreign concept to us. I'm not glorifying physical punishment by any means?it's just OUR style, and if that bothers someone there are alternatives that work just fine for other people, and certain people actually should NOT ever go there. The main thing with any kind of discipline is that it is structured and consistent. If something is ever punishable, it is ALWAYS punishable and there are no second chances. Using foul language is unpardonable. Hitting your mother is unforgivable. If you were unaware of a rule, you are told the rule; you get a reminder the first time you break the rule (kids forget); a warning the second time (now it isn't an accident); punishment after that. We keep it simple and easy enough a 3yo can understand it. It's not so important WHAT your strategy is, whether you parent the way we do or you do something else that works better for you, but just that you have one.

If you set rules so dense and convoluted that YOU can't even follow them, enforcing rules is going to drive you nuts. If you are so inflexible with rules and boundaries your kids spend most of the day in time out, it's going to drive you nuts. My rules about rules are these: Have few, enforce all, never make a rule that can't be broken. It doesn't have to be complex, strict, or severe to get results.

Incidentally, my #1 strategy to correct almost all problems is to simply ignore them. The reason being that the child is misbehaving simply to get attention. Deny attention if that's the case, acknowledge the good behavior of the child when the behavior stops. Redirect the behavior if attention-getting plots are heading towards destructive or dangerous outcomes. Besides, if they are trying to get attention, it's probably because they aren't getting enough attention in other areas, i.e. when they ARE on good behavior.

It takes time as a parent to learn these kinds of tricks. I was an education major in college, which included a lot of educational psychology. I learned more than I ever wanted about childhood development, and I was forced into various teaching workshops, etc. once I got into teaching as a career. Having dealt with kids before, very little about my own kids surprised me developmentally. But knowing a lot of tricks has given me an edge in teaching my own kids different things. Admittedly it's easier for me than it is for a lot of new parents, but none of these things are big, mystical secrets. Anyone can learn to do it, and I think the best parents out there do this a lot more naturally than I do. They just have sharp parenting instincts that I lack. But I don't suck at it, either.


Um?yeah, I kinda already mentioned that. I already think of my wife. She didn't have her tubes tied last time, though?neither of us really want to think of this phase of life actually being over, and that's only natural I think. Human biology brings those years to a close on its own. Once childbearing days are over, there's nothing left to do in life but die. I find the feeling of continuity in life to be motivating. I don't mind waiting for death if I'm able to witness part of my legacy in the meantime, but I'm very uncomfortable making peace with the last years of my life not having built that legacy.


You're asking why parents have so many children. Your original question was directed towards parents, so I gave a parent's answer.

Like I said before, WHAT CHAOS??? This doesn't happen at my house. It shouldn't be happening at ANY house, special needs or not. It shouldn't make things worse for an older ASD kid.

The thing about that kid is this, though: It is SELFISH and unreasonable for a single person to expect everyone to make that person the center of their universe. It isn't unreasonable to expect people to make accommodations for someone with special needs. It IS unreasonable to expect anyone to put life on hold just to make sure nothing about a person's life EVER sucks. Whether you have a disability or not, SOMETHING about life is going to suck. You can't escape the suckiness of life. If life sucks, it sucks for everyone. Most people accept that and deal with it in such a way that life doesn't have to suck quite as bad as maybe it could. So life sucks for an ASD kid in the middle of a large family. OK, but it sucks for the other kids and the parents. And, you know? It would still suck if that ASD kid had never been born, and it would still suck if that ASD kid was an only child. Just because you are ASD doesn't mean you get a free pass.

What we do is merely the very best that we CAN do. It is unreasonable and unfair to expect parents to put their entire lives on hold just because of the needs of ONE child. What about the parents' needs? Why punish the parents for you being ASD? If they want more children, they are free to do that for as long as they have that ability. Your parents didn't wake up one day and say, "gee, let's get pregnant and have an autistic or aspie kid." Nobody makes that choice unless they adopt one. Their choice made you; they didn't choose to put you on the spectrum. If they want more children, they shouldn't be punished for having had a child on the spectrum.

You shouldn't be punished for being autistic, either. So your parents MUST keep a structured, disciplined household that recognizes your needs are different and take your tolerance for noise, lights, etc. into account. That isn't going to mean they can't have more kids, though, because it really is possible to have it both ways. You can't project your negative experience onto others.

Well I guess I figured out the answer: People have large families because they are careless and horny. I really thought that families of more than 2 children in this day and age would be rather rare, but that is not the case.

I am concerned about this statement:

Oh my gosh, I guess I have nothing to look forward to because I never had the kids?!

Well, did you ever tell him "Stop Shrieking"? as you would with a neurotypical kid? I believe my parents told me to stop shrieking and screaming, as they would have told my NT sisters and I am a better person for it.

I read something mean on a child free forum once, I don't really believe it but it gave me a laugh: Autism doesn't Speak, It Shrieks!

No, we have never tried that. (sarcasm)

It didn't work b/c of the reasons he was shrieking. If a small child were to fall and hurt himself, and he was shrieking because he was hurt, how effective would it be to tell him to stop? Other types of discomfort can do that to an autistic child, that NT people (or autistic people without the same issues) would have trouble recognizing. He was punished for it in school with disastrous results and was not a "better person for it."

You know when it got better? When he matured and his environment was changed to be less stressful.

I think what I meant is to tell them to stop when they are shrieking and screaming just for the heck of it. An example might be the daytime show "The Talk" where these women and the audience are all screaming and shrieking and it is so unnecessary. Ohh, that show is painful for me! If you take away the discomfort, that is the better thing to do. Too bad many teachers don't recognize that. I had one teacher in 7th grade who sent me to the office all the time because I did something "distracting" (I don't remember, too long ago) and that got me into special education and that just about ruined my school and career.

Oh, Ok. I misunderstood. My son didn't shriek for no reason, as a general rule. Every now and then he would do it to get our attention when his communication skills were very poor. That was pretty easy to get him to stop doing once his communication skills improved. Like with little babies who cry b/c that is their only way to communicate, if you have a child who is at a lower-than-chronological age communication level, that phase lasts longer. The key at that point is to give the child tools to communicate better, and as they mature and are able to use them, that kind of shrieking can be phased-out. If you don't let them communicate the way they know how, they tend to move to even less desirable forms of communication. You can't really extinguish a behavior like shrieking until they have a more desirable, practical alternative. Just saying "use your words" or whatever parents of NTs do, won't work until the expressive language skills are there.

The quote you are referencing, refers to kids in that younger communication phase, regardless of chronological age. Not all kids on the spectrum are like that. I have a young relative who cries sometimes when really distressed, but is otherwise extremely quiet and docile. That has its own problems because he is not able to advocate for himself and he is likely to be compliant when he should not be. That is dangerous in its own way.

If you came to that conclusion based on the responses on this thread, then your reading comprehension is quite poor.

There is a different between a child that is hurting than a child that is just shrieking for the heck of it. When my son does it, we tell him to stop. We don't ever tell him to stop if he is hurt. Kids scream when excited and happy and I got in trouble for shrieking once when I was six because it hurt the speech therapist's rules. I felt bad about it and thought I did something wrong. Now I realize I did nothing wrong and I got in trouble for being a happy kid. All he had to tell me was indoor voice and we do not scream because it hurts his ears, not exclude me out of the group.

Grownups at that school didn't even allow shrieks and screams because I can remember being told over and over to stop and I did every time.