AssetID: 54572123
Headline: 'We’ve Got Eight Kids, A Ninth On The Way. And We Are Already Thinking About Number 10.'
Caption: WORDS BYLINE: Sarah Ingram When Richard Robbins met Lisa more than 20 years ago, they knew they wanted a big family and within a month they were talking about children. And they have certainly lived up to their youthful ambitions. Richard, 49, and Lisa, 40, now have eight children; two girls, six boys, and a third daughter on the way. The couple, from Nashville, Tennessee, are Mormons, a church that emphasises the importance of family. They have a monthly food budget of £2,000 which they spend on bulk buying and they have a whole cow in the freezer which they use for burgers, spaghetti and other meals for their hungry horde. They also buy huge sacks of wheat which they use to make their own bread, waffles and other carbs. The noise can be a lot, as well as the mess, business owner Richard says. ’There are many stressful moments involved with having a large family. Often the noise in our home can become overwhelming, especially when multiple kids are tired, hungry, or in need of more attention than we’re capable of giving. ‘During the winter, when it’s harder to get outside, there tends to be a lot of noise in our household from the time our kids get up in the morning until the time they finally relent and go to sleep at night. ‘Most of the noise involves our kids laughing and playing together, but with so many boys involved, their games (including a lot of “play fighting”) often require me or my wife to step in and break things up.’ Maylee, 18, Spencer, 16, Stephen - 14, Ezra, 12, Benjamin, 9, Christian, 7, Joseph, 5 and two-year-old Hannah all play musical instruments, so it’s not uncommon to hear multiple pianos along with cellos, violins, guitars, and other instruments. And with (nearly) 11 people in one household - imagine the washing. Richard explains: ‘My daughter Maylee has done most of our family’s laundry for the past six years. We have been blessed to have a miniature mom as our first daughter. ‘She has done much more than carry her weight in our family since she was a young girl. She preferred having laundry duties as her household chore because it was a flexible job that she could do while listening to audiobooks and being productive with one of her other goals.’ All the family are expected to pitch in with the housework and they occasionally pay the younger children to clean up. As part of their educational experience, and to help fund their sports and other extracurricular activities, the oldest three boys manage the family sporting goods business.’ They have enough children for a band, and in December, after hundreds of hours of practice, they held a Christmas concert in which every member of the family performed to a 300-strong crowd in their barn. [See video]. Although the house is only four-bed (with the youngest still sleeping in Richard and Lisa’s double), they do have a lot of space to play; their house is set on an 11-acre homestead with a self-built recreation barn and gym. ‘To restore sanity to our living space, my wife and I often have to send our kids out to the rec barn to play. We also built a commercial playground that our kids use a lot when it’s warm outside. We also have a swimming pool that gets a lot of use,’ he says. ’ They raise goats, which the kids have documented on their YouTube channel and in the summer their chickens produce up to two dozen eggs a day - which are all eaten pretty quickly. How do they have time for all those children? And what about managing conflict? ‘Every day when I work from home, my 2-year-old daughter barges into my office unannounced with a book and hops in my lap to have me take a break and read to her. We have six boys on five different baseball teams. That schedule is hard to manage’, Richard explains. So the family has daily meetings in their dining room which all members attend so they can discuss any issues and sort out any problems. They also read scripture every day and have a communal morning and evening prayer. ‘My wife and I also have a power hour activity occasionally, where we take each of our kids aside individually and meet with them in my office upstairs to discuss how life is going for them, to find out if they have anything they need help with, and to help them plan out the next phase of their life’, he explains. They have both sacrificed their spare time; Richard rarely hangs out with the guys and the couple has to be careful to ensure they get exercise and enough sleep. ‘One or both of us is normally up several nights during the week with a child who needs help. There was one particular stretch of time several years ago when our two-year-old boy’s eczema was so severe that he wasn’t able to sleep. My wife and I had to trade off sleeping and scratching the joints of his knees and elbows. There are times when raising these kids is completely exhausting,’ Richard says. But they do make time for weekly date nights at a local restaurant, which once a month a single child is invited along to. The couple homeschool their children, and next week, Lisa will give birth to her ninth at home. Richard explains: ‘Our first seven children were all born in hospitals. We started out with a more mainstream perspective on childbirth but had several bad experiences that led us to go towards a more natural, traditional approach. We found that doctors typically did not want to “waste time” being at appointments longer than 5 minutes or in the delivery room until the baby was actively being delivered. ‘Because of their desire for us to conform to their convenience, my wife had several times where she waited in a room at a doctor’s appointment for an hour or more before being seen, several of our children were induced to accommodate the doctor’s schedule, including for a golf tournament. Our homebirth experience was completely different. When Hannah was born, we were surrounded by our seven children, and we experienced the miracle of birth together as a family. It was a calm, beautiful experience, unlike the sometimes stressful and chaotic environment in a hospital delivery room.’ ‘Although we feel now like our family is likely complete, we don’t rule out the idea that we may find ourselves with another child in the future. But my wife and I are getting old enough that it’s much more difficult to have the energy required to raise kids. With eight children, we have our own little tight-knit community. Our kids’ best friends are each other,’ he adds.
Keywords: feature,photo feature,photo story,real life,real life story,human interest,large family, lots of kids, lots of children, big family, 8 kids, eight kids
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