Is It Really Possible to Be a Good Mom When You Have Too Many Kids?

I had too many children.

Each one was longed for, dreamt about, and planned long before they arrived in my womb. Each one felt known to me in such a tangible way I never felt like there was any option other than to allow them to be born. I feared I couldn’t love them enough, that my heart wouldn’t be able to grow fast enough to match the swelling of my belly, but that was never a problem. The problem was I didn’t know the right questions to ask, so I never faced the reality of how one woman could have enough time and energy to care for and raise four people the way I wanted to.

Now I realise that it just isn’t possible.

There are many things that have changed in the way I parent between the first and the fourth child, many things that seemed so important and caused so much stress that now I smile at when I see others driving themselves crazy. Food is a big one. By number four you learn to look at a child’s diet over the course of a week rather than one single day. They are picky and have unpredictable moods around what they will and won’t eat. They have so little they can control in their lives, it makes sense that the two they can (food and sleep) become such battlegrounds. But by number four you realise that there are days where you are in a rush and you make do with whatever is quickest, there are treat days, fruit only days, and everything in between, and most importantly, if hungry enough they will eat. So, you learn to step back, trust them a little more and widen your view to 7 days.

I used to say, if I got to the end of a day and felt like I had won with two out of four then I could count the day a success. I jokingly commented, ‘just try and make sure it’s not the same two’, but the reality is that isn’t always easy either. Toddlers and teens challenge the best of us and if you have both, you like me will have more than a few grey hairs to show for it. But what if we widened our view with the wins, the moments of genuine connection that leave them feeling seen, heard, and loved, and you content and satisfied that they are okay. No matter how impossible the demands of one day seem to be, over a week I know I can get it right enough to look back and say I did my best. And the thing is, if I, my biggest critic can say that, then I know that every week, each of my children felt that effort. Undoubtedly, sometimes it lands better than others, but childhood memories are rarely specific names, dates, and places. Most often they are overriding impressions of feelings, or a condensed montage of clippings that in reality spanned years of repeated activities. If you only manage to read them to sleep four nights out of seven this week, they will still feel like they were ‘always’ read to.

We fill their lives with so much activity. All of it wonderful, amazing opportunities but really at the end of the week, all they truly need is to feel loved.

I recently read the love languages book by Gary Chapman, but I didn’t take away one specific language for each child, I took away the five ways we all experience love the most… quality time, being verbally told how much you are loved and appreciated, loving touch, small meaningful gifts to show that you not only know them but you took the time to find something they would love and acts of service — the idea of having someone care enough to do small things for you to make your life easier or just because they knew you’d appreciate it without being asked.

I took away those five things and realised that to get to the end of the week and feel that I had consciously made an effort to love my children in each of those ways not only made them feel more grounded and secure, I felt better about myself as a parent. And whether you’ve been a mum for an hour or a decade, the mum guilt is real.

I guess my takeaway is this… widen your gaze. Parenting often feels like the most intense, solitary, microcosm of the wider world, but we are often so alone and so hemmed in by our worries, anxieties, and self-doubts we can’t gain a clear perspective. We have little to compare our day-to-day lives to other than the perfectly curated images strangers present to the world.

The day is too short and too immediate to be viewed at a distance, too short to correct small ‘mistakes’. If you have to judge yourself at all then do it fairly. Take a step back and cast your eyes over the whole week, see your highs and lows, see the shared laughter and games, as well as the frustrated and exhausted tears.