A Full House: What It’s Like Growing Up with Six Siblings
Waiting for the bathroom to be clear, fighting for the best seat in the car, trying to find one room in your house that doesn’t have someone else in it…
I experienced all these and more growing up in a big family. Here is a little behind the scenes look at what life was like for me in a house with seven kids.
My Family
To start off, I should tell you a little bit about my family. I am the second oldest of seven kids with four brothers and two sisters ranging in age from six to twenty-two. It’s been cool having so many siblings all at different ages, because they’re all going through different times in their life, and I get to pass on what I learned when I was their age. I can help one who is in high school learning to drive and then turn around and help another one work on their first-grade math homework. Also, two of my siblings are adopted, so sharing experiences with them and learning about the process of adoption is amazing. I get to learn more from that than I would just growing up with just my biological siblings.
Sharing Space
Something I, and probably most people growing up in a crowded home, experienced was always sharing a bedroom with someone else. Limited space means you bunk with the sibling closest to your age and learn to live with each other. I didn’t get my own room until I came to college and moved into a duplex. Also, getting a queen-sized bed after eighteen years of sleeping in a twin was life-changing (and I don’t think I can ever go back).
Dinner Time
Meals were also a big deal in my family. My parents liked to cook, so we rarely ate out and instead spent a lot of time around the dinner table. With so many people, most meals took a while to make and were almost always served buffet style with everyone grabbing what they could get. Also, because there were so many people to feed, if you didn’t like what was for dinner that night, then it was tough luck — no personal meals when you’re feeding the masses.
Packed Cars
Road trips were often long and uncomfortable growing up, but my family found ways to make it work — oldest siblings in the middle seats, younger ones in the way back, few bathroom breaks but lots of snacks and movies. It did get to the point where, depending on the destination and who all was coming, we had to take two cars to get us and all our luggage there.
Occupied
Sharing a bathroom with six other people, some of those people being eight years old, isn’t great. There’s no other way to say it, it’s just a bad time all around. Someone is always taking your towel or leaving their clothes on the floor. If you don’t want people to use your hairbrush or toothpaste, then you better bring it into your room when you’re done. Also, you can forget about anyone else cleaning the sink or replacing the roll of toilet paper. You will be the one doing it every time.
Growing up in a big family can be stressful and hard. You have to share everything, you rarely get a peaceful moment to yourself, and nothing ever seems to be clean and organized. That said, I can’t imagine living my life without any one of my siblings. Each of them has given me different experiences that I couldn’t have gotten from someone else, and I love all of them. So, from my family to yours,
Be well, Auburn.
Photography: Morgan G.
