It's my week!

Having a large family is a daily challenge. It takes great organization, patience, understanding, and the ability to shuffle and multi-task.

One issue we have come to deal with is making sure that all of our children get attention and feel special. It isn't their fault, after all, that we have so many kids, is it? We chose to have a bunch of kids, therefore it is also our responsibility to give each of them time to shine.

When I was a child, my parents started the "week system" when I was probably about 10. There are four of us, I'm the second, and they learned about this from some parenting class they took or book they read (not sure). The whole idea, basically, is to designate each week to highlight one child, and rotate through them. We took that and adapted it more specifically to our family.

Currently, out of our six kids, five of them each get their own week. Sarah, our 9 month old, is obviously too young and gets plenty of special attention as it is. Right now it is Hannah's week. She's our #4 child and is almost 5 years old.

What they get to do for their week, special:
--if given the choice, they get to choose:
  ~what's for dinner
  ~where to go out to eat
  ~what's for dessert
  ~which movie we watch
--If my husband or I go out to run an errand, that child gets to go with us.
--We try to buy at least one small thing for whoever has the week
  ~chapstick?
  ~stuffed animal?
  ~choice of bag of chip or candy bar?
  ~something else that's typically $5 or under
--If it comes to the choice of who goes first for whatever, this child is automatically first.
--We rotate them around the dinner table, whoever has the week gets to sit in the spot right next to me and the baby.
--this child gets to pray over dinner
--sometimes a special trip out to ice cream, lunch, etc

Basically, they shine for the whole week. We use it as an opportunity to spend quality time with each of the kids. They all look forward to when it is their week and learn to put others above themselves.

We have gone through cycles where, each Saturday, I would take the child out to lunch with just me. When that got too expensive, we changed what we were going to do. Sometimes it is as simple as taking a walk with just the one of us. My oldest has told me on several occasions how much he looks forward to being with just me or his daddy and how much he loves the special time.

The biggest issue we have faced with this is the kids feeling entitled. They have expected to go out or have us buy something for them, and that's when we have had to reel back and teach them about appreciation. With extreme behavior we have taken away special privileges to help them understand the severity of their punishment.


This technique has worked, all in all, tremendously for us. I recommend it for a family of 3 or more. It proves very well to be effective. It takes away the question of who's first and they understand that their turn is coming.

Try it out - I'd love to hear if it works for any other families out there :-)