Wednesday, January 23, 2008

The More The Merrier?

Because she works for a statewide on-line public school system, Colleen often does I.Q. or psychological testing of homeschooled children in libraries. Today she was testing in a library in Greeley, Colorado. A woman came up to her all excited. She remembered that Colleen had tested one of her children five years ago.

This woman has ten biological children and seven adopted children. She is pregnant with her eighteenth! They live on five acres with some chickens and goats. She invited Colleen to load up our family of seven children and come up for a visit. She said, "I bet you don't get invited over to people's houses very often. Colleen agreed, and the woman said, "Neither do we!" Greeley is two hours north of where we live, but we just might take her up on her offer.

They had an hilarious conversation about shoes. The woman said that recently one of her children showed up at church with one flip-flop and one cowboy boot, and she did not even get the slightest bit upset. They also compared notes about behaviors of children with Reactive Attachment Disorder.

Colleen noticed that the woman's older children were really sweet to the younger ones. That is the case in our family with our biological children, who are six and seven, but it is not always true with my stepchildren, who are fifteen and thirteen. They get very jealous when they see Colleen nurturing another child.

2 comments:

julie said...

Wow - that's a huge family! Sounds like a fun visit for you, Colleen and the kids :)

Rita Loca said...

Sounds like fun. I have only four myself, although we did raise two Ye'kwana children as well. They seemed to be insecure of our affection at times, but were always great with the younger children.