Helen Martin’s Blog

We have five children. The second oldest is our girl and the rest our boys. By April they will be two, four, six, eight, and ten years old respectively.

When I was emailing with a long lost school mate and the number of my children came up, so did the inevitable inquiry. Not, “Do you have any other hobbies?” or “Are you Catholic?” but the other one,

“How do you do it?”

I love that question. It kind of implies that there’s an alternative to “doing it.” Short of living in chaos, or adopting them out, I don’t know what that would be.

I guess the underlying thought might be, “How do you keep from going nuts?” or still better, “How do you do it well?” And even then there are the assumptions that we are not nuts or are, in fact, doing it well.

We certainly try. There are a lot of details that make up our approach, complete with routines and rules and a striving toward organization and having just enough of what we need. I could, and probably will, post dozens of hints and ideas that have produced pleasing results, but even the best parenting techniques can amount to just window dressing.

Probably the biggest thing that we have going for us, under God, is that Ken and I married well. We love each other desparately. We nearly always agree on most things and even when we don’t we back each other up in front of the children. It’s the old United Front thing and its importance cannot be overstated. It’s absence will be felt and capitalized on by even a 6 month old. Maybe there’s an adversarial ring to it but it results in peace. Ironically, if we weren’t of one mind our house would be a war zone. Anarchy and the advancing hoards, you know.

But I joke. Because we love our children down to our toes. They are the bushel of apples of our eyes and are of course the smartest, cutest, sweetest and most creative children in the world.

But they are little savages, too. Brought into the world entirely self-focused and utterly demanding.

They are here to be loved. And nurtured and admonished and taught, and on and on. Love is the most excellent way, right? It is the highest, and down from that flows all the rest. It isn’t that we “do what is good for them.” And we certainly don’t just “do what works.” Our goal is to do what is Good. If we are able to do that, then everyone flourishes.

And while it sounds purely philosophical, it is anything but impractical. There are endless applications in real life. I am sure to elaborate on many of them here in the days to come.