Reply to What are the bad parts about having three kids?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m the OP of a thread similar to this one, but my takeaways are that the main cons are incremental cost (since stopping at two is considered a baseline in that it still provides the experience of multiple kids for both parents and children) and chaos. A lot of which is circumvented by having enough money for a large enough home and support with cleaning, childcare, possibly having one parent stay at home or work part time, birthday parties, camps, tutors, and private school (if needed for SN or wanted for other reasons.) of course many people have money for all of the above and choose to stop at 1 or 2 anyway. Costs will be relative I suppose based on your standards of living.[/quote]

We have no shortage of money for the things you said so the cost hasn't been a negative factor.  Its that your attention and time is so much more divided.  that may be totally worth it in the long run and i'm sure it'll change over time, but just to give some specific examples

- I used to read to my older 2 in the early AM before #3 - now thats impossible to do that (or anything fun with them) because i'm holding the baby who is whining while cooking breakfasts while getting kids dressed etc.  Its just meeting the basic needs to get people safely out the door in the morning versus time to enjoy them

- its harder to spend time as a family because there are so few activities that appeal to all - games and building things are just invitations for the toddler to wreck it, the 6yo has outgrown going to the nature center, the toddler needs full time watching at the playground so i can't kick a ball around with the other 2 anymore. etc etc etc.  So DH and I split up the kids a lot instead of doing things as a family because even if we all go to a museum or something together, we just end up in different parts of it

- we miss games and school events and other things i wish i could be at because of conflicting schedules

- it became impossible to keep a serious full time job for one of us because of the sick days (they're really exponential because they're coming from multiple schools / activities / sources and then work their way through more kids) and the 6 dentist appointments a year and the 4 doctors appointments and the OT appointments for one  etc etc

and on and on.  I do throw a TON of money at it, we have so much help and outsource what we can.  And I wouldn't necessarily change it.  But i did not appreciate how much having a 3rd would cut down on the parts of parenting I find fun (getting to enjoy an activity with a kid, doing things as a full family all together, having the time to give each a longer bedtime 1:1 time, playing with them at home versus supervising) but there's no amount of money that makes the spread of needs based on being in so many different stages disappear unless you're just offloading a kid all the time  [/quote]

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