Not much more to say really.. one is a baby, 3 are toddlers and the other 3 are 8yo+
Will reply when I find some time in my hectic life :)
[AMA] I Have 7 Children Ranging from 1 Month to 12 Years Old, 3 of Which Are Toddlers
MrKnowItAll on 28/06/2021 - 21:03
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What is this parenting payment partnered?
See here. If you are the primary carer, you can be eligible for the parenting payment, either single or partnered.
The combined income to be eligible is pretty low though, sub $60k
How many mothers are there ?
Just the 1. 15 years together so far
lol so far love it
The average Australian marriage is 12 years. You are 3 years overdue, mate. Do it before #8.
Is that 12 year thing true, sounds grim
SO FAR… 8 more to go. You are doing it just to fill up the gaps i.e. people who dont want to have kids
Congratulations! May your family life be full of laughter and joy.
I hope you had enough at 7 now. Are you both driving separate cars for family outings?
How many hours would you say you are spending with each kid per day. If you spend 1 hour playing with 3 kids at the same time, then that would be counted as 1 hour spent per day for each of those three kids.
Honestly, not as much as I'd like - I work in healthcare, specifically reporting and analytics and there's a serious demand for my work during recent times thanks to Covid. For instance though I've spent the better part of 4 or so hours interacting with the kids this evening between work (12hr day today). Family time is super important to me and I try my best.
Keep up the good work!
Are you paid overtime or are you salaried and "expected to do what's required within your salary"
that is impressive you spend that much time with family after that long shifts. well done
Thanks for volunteering to do this AMA!
You're a rare gem in these time. Your children are very blessed/fortunate
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Do you drive mini bus 🚌 to take your kids out?
Yes, we recently upgraded from our '07 Kia Grand Carnival (8 seater) to a '17 Hiace Commuter - 12 seater as I call it, my wife calls it 'future proof'.. whatever that means haha
lucky bastard :)
you guys are awesome, this cracked me up about being future proof !
The new model is much safer than the outgoing model, would you swap to that one just for the safety aspect?
dad had a 57 (ish) Chev
the (up to) 7 kids in the back seat sat one forward, one back, one forward, one back etc.
mum and dad sat in the front with a baby in bassinet in between them.they had at one stage 8 kids under ten years with no multiple births.
when the youngest of those turned two, mum started full time work as a teacher.
dad ran the family farm, where he had worked from the age of 14.I chuckled at "future proof".
I'm the youngest of ten. five year gap to my sister then another five year gap to the next youngest.edit: also you have future generations to look forward to. My mum had 37 grandkids. I was an uncle at the age of two. I've lost count of great grand kids at this point but its getting up near that already. Already started on great great grand kids. 2 or 3 atm.
Lol! Brilliant
OP will only come back to answer in 2035.
2039
after the young one is 18 and out of the house!I'm still here guys!
Its only been alive for 15 mins Bud lol .
Let him change some nappies tks .All OP’s kids wants a turn to reply!
You'll only get (mostly) legible answers from the oldest three!
How do you afford this? How much do you and your partner earn?
A combination of a few things:
- Good budgeting
- Shopping around for the best price
- Ozbargaining (though I've been known to impulse buy from here)
- Thinking in a 'long-term' capacity.. for instance cheapest products are not always the best in terms of longevity.
- Afterpay / Zip for larger purchases.
- We pay all utilities in fortnightly installments (180 to power bill, 30 to gas bill, 40 to internet, etc.). This eliminates bill shock and any extra money just compounds over time.
- Cash rewards and other incentives often drive where / what we purchase, you'd be amazed how much you can save here.
- Planning ahead. We know this time of year is school photos so we keep $$ aside for it, end of year is school book list so we stockpile some stationery throughout the year.
- WFH has saved me a lot of money in travel to/from work ($250 a fortnight), plus my boss at the time got tired of hearing PPE this and PPE that so I stepped up to his role after he left.
Salary is around $115k from me and my wife looks after the toddlers (my job is far easier btw..) and runs a small-scale home business. We make it work well and have spare money left each fortnight.
I think what you do and how you manage it all is fantastic. You have my greatest respect and admiration!
Do not let the haters here get you down.
There is nothing wrong with having lots of children as long as you love them and look after them well which you definitely seem to do!
I wish you and your family all the best!Thankyou :) I know not everyone will agree with our choices and thats fine, they're entitled to their opinions and it doesn't bother us at all.
We do try our best to provide everything they need to succeed in life - the most scarce resource time.. With work and school and day to day life it can feel like a losing battle, but weekends are where we'll just randomly go somewhere as a group or do stuff around the house with them - all about finding that balance.
Do you have a mortgage to pay or that part is sorted out?
We're quite lucky here in that my dad owns the house and we pay 'rent' to live here. It's fairly cheap compared to a proper rent agreement but we do cover land and water rates as well so it kind of levels out - perhaps the biggest advantage of this is the freedom to modify living arrangement as needed.. things like replacing a dated inefficient aircon, moving to solar power, etc. These decisions are all made to reduce overall costs of living with power and water being the most expensive of all utilities.
@MrKnowItAll: Yeah 180 a fortnight seems insane.
I've got one kid on the same money as you and am going backwards financially with my wife working part time too.
@MrKnowItAll: So basically.
If you have a parent that will buy you a house to live in go and create as many offspring as you want?As for the 99% of millennials that don't have that luxury, looks like we'll be stuck with 0-1 kid then.
Killin' it!
Start a YouTube channel.
Do you own your home (no mortgage)?
Edit: never mind. Answered above
Word of advice, you shouldn't pay your utility bills fortnightly. You should stretch them out as long as you possibly can. eg: setup a 90 day billing account instead. This way you can maximize your interest saved.
Have you ever owned a TV?
Lets be honest, theres very little on TV thats worth watching anymore.
*with kids… there's a lot more that's worth watching for entertainment, you could watch til you die and not see it all
Yes, we have a few of them - the toddlers often occupy the main TV though. This is always entertaining in meetings as my 'office' is in the loungeroom - I always get asked what's on TV, my usual answer is Blippi, Morphle, Peppa Pig, or morphle.
I agree with pharkurnell though, nothing good on FTA, we mainly use youtube for entertainment - US youtube can stream full movies making a VPN a seriously good investment.
Interesting. We have a different philosophy - our 5+ & 3+ have never watched the big screen TV. They might watch 2 downloaded music clips a day (e.g. Ode Joy flash mob) < 10 mins on my PC. Eldest did watch a couple of Wiggles DVDs when younger and we might watch a short ivestream church kids service or clips of their school poetry day.
But it does take a lot of time to get them to walk and play outdoors, with their imagination and with physical things.
Am I the only one who feels troll feeding in action?
Have you ever seen the condom deals on here?
Yep, we've bought them before too!
It's a waste if you don't use them…
Pregnancy is a very effective contraception! though it's kinda after the fact which isn't ideal in most situations.. If I added up how much I've saved on condoms it'll be not at all close to what it costs to raise 7 children! here's to hoping they look after my wife and I when we're retired so we can get a good ROI hahaha
@MrKnowItAll: Make sure you educate your children well, I have lots of uncles and aunts they all hesitate to look after my grandmother, btw congratulations, as mentioned above there are haters but I think haters are just envious of your achievement. Great post.
How did you manage the young ones sharing rooms?
This was fairly easy to do, I'll break it down by bedroom:
- Bedroom 1 (converted garage) has Child 1 (12yo) and 3 (8yo) in it - they both have a keen interest for minecraft and other online games so bond over that.
- Bedroom 2 has Child 2 (10yo) in it - she's super independent, opinionated and wants her own space.
- Bedroom 3 has child 4 (3yo) and 5 (2yo) in it - these two are close in age but very different personality-wise, child 5 only uses the room to sleep and does his own stuff during the day. Child 4 loves to use the room for his activities and personal space.
- Bedroom 4 has child 6 (16mo.) in it - she's a real girly-girl and needs the space for her outfits ('pretty' as she calls them), also super opinionated and independent.
- Child 7 (1 month) currently sleeps in our room, once he's a bit older he'll likely share with Child 6 until we can work something out.
We do have one spare open-plan room (previously used as a photo studio - no walls leading into it), it's super easy to wall it off and turn it into a bedroom when needed.
god the feels
What happened between child 3 and child 4?
Condom deals were aplenty I suppose.
We were content for a little while, but then fell pregnant and lost the baby at 16 weeks.
Did you give them numbers instead of names to save arguments with wife over name choices
Give them names! LOL
What car do you drive?
mini bus
Hiace commuter! it's super slow and really loud on the road but is very spacious and suits our needs perfectly.
12 yards longs, 2 lanes wide, 65 tons of Australian pride.
Some people dont agree with our lifestyle choices and I'm ok with that - I figure as long as they study hard and strive to make their impact on the world it will offset any perceived 'negatives'.
The oldest three are in school and their grades are really good so I have very high hopes for them :)The noise pollution though is bloody fierce at certain times (dinner time and first thing in the morning), though not as bad as you would expect overall.
I don't have a question but I'd just like to say that I love your attitude and level headedness dealing with people like this! World would be a better place with more people like you!
No one asked about you mate.
I reckon larger families would use less resources per person than the average 2-3 child family.
More shared resources so less consumption per capitaNoise on the other hand, well that would compound.
Devil's advocate just for the sake of the planet. You are right if you look at per capita. But overall more people means more resources.
Really depends on the person.
As long as they're raising the average IQ I'm all for it. Bang away marc kay
Ugh. Cant imagine having that attitude.
Have you had a vasectomy yet?
no, weirdly my brother keeps suggesting we go together (he has no children and no plans for any)
Interesting. Curious on the dynamic at family gatherings then. Does your brother get any grief about not having or wanting to have kids? I am very much in the mindset of your brother, so I hope not.
Negotiate a group discount on the vasectomy - the true Ozbargain way!
How do you manage their sleep, do you do CIO? I've got 2 under 2 and bedtimes the biggest struggle.
No, bedtime is undoubtedly the most stressful time of the day but the 4 toddlers (16mo, 2yo, 3yo) are fairly easy.. from a young age, we've put them down in their bed, said goodnight, and left the room. If they cried, we were there to comfort them. We tell them we will be back shortly and periodically check in on them so they've learnt that we're never far away, and allowed them to feel safety and comfort even in our absence. Now as toddlers, we usually allow 30-60 minutes to wind down before bed, lay them down with a bottle and say goodnight. They almost always fall asleep with no troubles. The youngest sleeps 8 hours overnight, has a bottle then back to sleep for another hour or 2. The hardest part about having so many little ones is when more than one wakes up overnight, and trying to juggle their needs without everyone being woken up. Some nights have been challenging but learning to multitask and comfort more than one child at a time, has made a HUGE difference!
Jealous! My toddler takes 1-2 hours to go down between 8-10pm and my husband sleeps with her while I'm with the baby (who also refuses to sleep unless on me), it would work well except my husband gets up at 230am for work and he's pretty wrecked on 3ish hours a night.
How does your wife manage to feed 4 babies with 2 boobies?
the 2 and 3 year olds are hardly babies! most likely weaned at that age.
Catholic?
No, no religion at all.
You've got enough people to start one ;-)
Or a footy team
number 8 brewing? :P
No, and no plans to do so.. that being said - not many of the kids were planned haha
What method of contraception do you use?
Sounds like the ever reliable Pull out method
We've tried a few methods over the years, hormonal contraceptives, IUD, condoms and tracking ovulation. None are 100% effective though.
Do you own a tarago?
We have a Hiace Commuter!
Thoughts on overpopulating an already overpopulated world?
This was my first thought. Having 7 kids these days shouldn't be a badge worn with pride, it's inconsiderate and unnecessary.
Yes this is judgemental and people are free to do as they please, but in today's world this is NOT a good decision.I'd like to hear from OP on this. I'm not asking you to justify your actions, I'm politely asking why you think having 7 kids is a good idea?
I could also be seen as hypocritical as I have 3 myself. But the difference is 2 and 3 came along as a package deal, so hardly planned.
Was 7 kids planned? If so, why? If no, why not get the snip or something?
@RocketSwitch: I'm not sure what the vast majority has to do with discussing if OP is eligible for it or not when they do have 6+ children…