Dealing with Parenting Multiple Children

When I had my first child it was easy to parent her because she was an only child for four years. She had my undivided attention and since I worked outside of the home when I was home I was not thinking about getting her to sleep so I could log on and get work done. I went to sleep with my daughter and woke up with my daughter, dropped her at home daycare and headed to the office. Life was very different raising my daughter versus when I added my second child and then my third child.

My daughter was always a great sleeper, she had no issues. My daughter would co-sleep with me and we slept the same hours. I would even take naps with my daughter during weekends I didn’t work and she was with me instead of her Dad. Life of parenting seemed so easy, so beautiful and carefree.  When my daughter was four we welcome Aj to our home, he is my first born son who carried a ton of health, emotional and behavioral issues.

My middle child, first born son was always an angry baby. He cried often and he wanted to eat all of the time. I just assuemd he was hungry all of the time because he was a big baby, he came into the world at 9lbs 5oz. What I didn’t realize is that it had nothing to do with his size because my last child, a boy, was born at 9lbs 4oz and had none of these weird hunger issues.

Every day is a challenge when you are  raising three kids and sharing your attention to having one of the three needing a different kind of attention due to ADHD or whatever anger/aggression type issues he has going on. I have found that with my four year old you will never have a consistent daily behavior with him. My Aj can be the sweetest most caring and loving child one day and the next day or even moment sometimes, he can turn and be angry, aggressive and just totally destroy the house.

I think the hardest thing about parenting three children is a combination of my choice to work from home and having one child who requires a little bit more guidance than the other two. I show my love through hugs, kisses, silly dancing and interaction with all three as often as possible. I just hope that my other two children don’t start having bad feelings towards their brother Aj because he takes so much out of me.  I can say I see my daughter getting frustrated with her brothers needing me more than her, she sometimes feels left out and not as loved.

It’s hard when your child tells you she feels left out of the family circle or is sad about having to share so much of me with her siblings, but she also needs to realize that we are a family and we all work together the best we can. Take one day at a time and love fully every day because you can never know if tomorrow will come.