Friday, December 11, 2009

Question for large families...

How do you deal with your kids wanting friends over, and to spend the night? I love my kids friends, I enjoy kids. But having friends over is always so hard... I suppose being as we live in the country, esp. when weather is cruddy there is not as much to do. It is always crazy. The thing is everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, wants to come over ALL the time! I feel so guilty for saying no, but John works every single day but Sunday. Saturday night we go to church. ....

It woudl be so easy to live in town and just invite someone over for a couple of hours. But we live about 15 miles from town and the kids go "ballistic" if I suggest a short visit. :( ... and so then I feel guilty.

Do you just not have friends over? Do you look at this as just part of your life for now? In our house there are diverse interests and personalities... so nothing is ever easy. ... :)

We have 3 friends over tonight. 2 fpr Quincy and 1 for James. Figured it best to "get it over with". They are all sweet kids! I just wish I could get away with doing this once a year!

3 comments:

  1. Hmmmm......We live in the country too....but so far none of our kids really have stressed about having others over..... :) SO no real suggestions- sorry.

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  2. We don't homeschool, so maybe that makes things worse. ??

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  3. We struggled with this issue when our first set of four were little. It took us awhile to finally realize that the spend the night thing was out of control and so were our kids when they came back from a spend the night or had someone over.
    We decided to make a spend the night out only an occassional thing because our kids thought every weekend they should have someone over. It was crazy so we brought it to a halt. We told them once every two months or less at our discretion they were allowed to spend the night out or have someone in. That way they weren't always at our house. We too were neighborhood central and it was fun but just got to be too much.
    Personally I am no longer a big proponent of the spend the nights and we have really limited it with our girls. I find that the siblings get closer when they do not always have friends to rely on and they find something to do with each other. I don't know about you but when I was growing up a spend the night was a treat and not an expectation.
    Do it only once every few months or so and make it really fun and then you are not overwhelmed every weekend.
    I have done it both ways and find the very limited spend the nights in and out is much more controlled and they know not to ask all the time.
    Chaos is going to happen sometimes when you have a large family but you really do have the controls most of the time :) I had to get better at saying no and preserving my sanity. They will expect only as much as you allow. My first set asked all the time because I said yes, this set of kids ask very seldom and then they are selective about it because they know it is a treat.

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