Shila Henderson Interview. Ep 54

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Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of four, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, practicing position and blogger. On the side. We are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to Best of Both Worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun, from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to Best of Both Worlds. This is Laura. This is episode fifty four. We'll be talking to Shila Henderson about raising a mega family. So Shila is a listener to Best of Both World podcasts and wrote to us about her ten children that she has built this large family and has also been working while she's been doing that over the times. We're looking forward to that. So we're recording this in July, but it is airing in mid August, which is around the time that sarah kids actually go back to school. Crazy enough is that the case? Yep, when this airs, they will be starting school in six days and where I work that County one District North will have already started, So wow, that is just a little bit mind blowing. Our summer seems shorter. It's actually the same length as yours. But I do kind of wish we finished a little bit later. Yeah, we have we start after Labor Day, which we went through mid June. I mean, our last day was something like June fifteen, So it's not like we yeah have a different length of summer or anything. But I like the starting after Labor Day. It makes August feel like this whole actual month of vacation, even though we were not actually off the whole time, and having to be able to go through Labor Day is nice for having a September date as a vacation date on the calendar. I just enjoy that. I actually think I remember when I was growing up, and I grew up near where you live now, there was like it would vacillate between before and after, and then eventually there was something about like the economy of the shore. Really I don't know, like it was political because they wanted people to be able to take family vacations during that time, and I don't know, maybe the Jersey Shore lobbyish, yeah, push for everyone to come after Labor Day. Because I think it actually was both ways. But well it's true. You know, it's funny with the Jersey Shore thing and lobbying to extend the season, because I wouldn't I wouldn't doubt it. Back in the day, the Miss America pageant used to be in Atlantic Atlantic City on the Jersey Shore, and it was always held the weekend after Sorry, it's fine, we just had a quick Wow, this never happens on our podcast. I think we should leave that in. We should leave that in. Yeah, that was my three year old. But at the Jersey Shore, people wanted it the weekend after Labor Day because that would extend the shore season, like people would stick around for the Miss America Pageant into September ten, right, would be roughly, Yeah, that was one. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lobby that extended the areas. Maybe like a mob thing. I don't know, it could be a mob. But it's funny because like I was in the parking lot on Sunday morning and our local so we're recording this in July, and so it was the weekend after July fourth, and it was like empty, and one of the people who worked at the Superbar was just like, yeah, everyone's at the shore this weekend. I'm like, yeah, that's probably actually true. Like Philadelphia kind of empties into New Jersey over over those long weekends. So and I love the Jersey Shore. This was this is full of love. I have fond memories of Avalon and Cape May, and you guys go there too. Sometimes. We sometimes go to Cape May. You know, we've gone more to Ocean Grove, which is on the northern side of it, just south of Asbury Park for any of our listeners who know where that is. And Ocean Grove is like this cute little Victorian town that is you know, really we like it. We've been going there for years, so that's that's our place. Cool. Well, we digressed a lot. I was just gonna mention though, that you remember how I talked all about that like back to school boxing, and how I was so sad that we didn't have that. Remember last year, I remember that, I remember we haven't. Now I ordered it, so now I don't have to do anything and she'll have everything already. So all I have to do to get ready for school is like get her a backpack in a lunch box and my son's going to the same school as last year. So I'm excited to have this be easier than it was. Sounds awesome. That sounds awesome. I don't think we have that, and I need to look into it because that would be although the kids come sometimes like going and picking out their own stuff. So if once the kids get a little bit older, there's more of this like but I want this, you know, buying, Well, I may let her buy a little front or whatever I can. I can give her some I mean, as someone who is like a stationary hoarder, I would be really hypocritical if I didn't let her get anything. But this way, I can just let her get some fun stuff and all this sort of checkbox stuff is taken care of. Sounds good, all right, Well, here we go back into into the main segment. Here, Well, we are really excited to welcome Shila Henderson to the program. So Shila has been spent the past thirty some years raising a mega family, ten children, both biological and adopted, and she's going to talk about that. But she's also been working the whole time, which is you know something you don't read a whole lot about in the Mega family literature that moms are also juggling careers with raising that larger family. So Shila, thanks so much for coming on my pleasure. So tell us a little bit about your family situation, your your kids, your spouse, all that. Well. I have ten kids. The oldest is thirty five and the youngest is thirteen. Five are biological and five are adopted. And then I have been married for thirty seven years. Oh my goodness, a lot of years, it is. Yeah, And so you adopted some of the children at older ages, right, they came into your family at different points, the last three sort of after the last three, and then the other two were interspersed with the biological kids sort of what was the order with that, right, So we had four biological kids and then my husband was like, okay, we're done, and I was like, well, I don't think so. And then we adopted two as babies from Korea and separate adoptions, and then we had another one, and then there was a gap of five years and we adopted a five year old from Vietnam, and then I think about four years later, five years later, we adopted two more girls from China. And had you been interested in international adoption for a long time or what sort of inspired that move for building your family. Well, when I grew up, I baby sat for our pastor and they had adopted several children, both domestically and internationally, and we did look at domestic adoption when we first started thinking about adoption, and just for a variety of different reasons, we ended up adopting internationally, and we had a lot of good friends that had also adopted internationally. Yeah, and so along the way, you've also been working this whole time, So tell us about your career journey. Yeah, so I haven't been working the entire time. There have been years where when we added a new baby, I would there were years where I didn't work at all. There were some years my husband was in the military the first twelve years of our marriage, and so there were times where I would know we're only going to be at a place for a year and a half or something, and I didn't work during those times. Or I worked, like as a home day care provider, so I would just have like one I was watching. And so it has been kind of this career of working part time for the most part. Right now, I have two different part time jobs that I do that are very different and yet the same. What are your part time jobs currently? So I work for our state in their foster and adoptive care, placing children in foster and adoptive families, and that's one halftime, and then the other half I work as a therapist specializing in attachment and adoption. So I'm sure you have a lot of expertise on this having gone through it yourself, and and can have a great perspective for your clients with that too. So I mean, you know a lot of people listening to this have probably around two kids the average, and so you hear you know, a family with ten children, and it sounds like it must have been, you know, chaotic. But was it? I mean, tell us like, what was what was it like? People always imagine that it was chaotic, and maybe if they would have come into my home they would have thought that, But from my perspective, it was usually organized chaos. I guess you could say my husband is a pretty organized person and I am not, but I have worked very hard to become very organized, and I think with a big family you absolutely have to, and so it really wasn't chaos at all. It was busy. I would say, and what is that sort of you know, walk us through kind of what busy means in a house with like you have like six activities on one day. I mean, they're the older ones able to take care of the younger ones, Like, how did that work out? There were times where we had like multiple All of our kids have been in sports and activities and we feel like that's just a really crucial part of growing up. So yeah, there were times obviously where we could not be at four different ballparks at the same time. And luckily we live in a community where people were able to give rides or coaches and then we would you return the favor. But I think definitely using our older kids in a good way because we never forced them to do it, we did pay them to do it, and I think responsibility is really good for kids really often. I think that was my fantasy about all of it, that you were going to leverage the older ones and that it became sort of a part time job for them, extra connection time with their siblings and super helpful. So that's cool that you actually the fantasy could come true. We would actually pay no more if they went the extra mile, and like would play a game with the kids or help them with their homework, and the younger kids also got paid a small amount if they made it easier for the older kids to watch them. Lots of incentives there for everyone to make it work. Yeah, that's awesome, great, and I love some of these notes you sent us, and you love finding ways to spend one on one time with your kids. So talk about the different ways you've managed to spend one on one time with your kids. That I really do feel like there's such a stigma in big families that the kids are not going to get enough attention, and that can be true for sure, So all along, I think I've really made it a priority to spend one on one time with my kids. And that can be traveling with my kids just one or often we'll take two kids on a trip, even to go back east to see their brother and his family, or if my husband has a business trip, we might tag along and take two of the kids. But even it's just do it. Like right now, my son and I my son who's sixteen, we are going all around Portland this summer trying to find the ultimate donut shop, and quite frankly, I don't even like donuts that much, but he does, and so it's been just kind of this fun And then when we're in the car, I don't like to have a lot of noise in the car. I'm an introvert, which is kind of funny because I had ten kids, like who would have thought, but we all turned the radio off and just talk to him. I try to think of like things to talk about. It doesn't come naturally necessarily, but like this week, we've been talking about the soccer players that were rescued in Thailand and what that would be like, and just really trying to be intentional. I guess is the word that I would want to cut up with. Yeah, And I'm sure you've got a lot of sort of big family hacks that have come out of, you know, share necessity. I once did a story years ago when I interviewed a bunch of mega families and they all had a system with socks in the laundry. So I'm very sure you have you have a sister for your socks worst I do absolutely, which I wish I knew more big families because I've had to learn a lot of this on my own, But we absolutely had a way we would have only white hain socks, where all the younger kids didn't matter if there were boys or girls, two different sizes, and you just buy these big packs of them, and so you don't really even have to sort them. They have a color on the bottom. The only downfall of that method is that we never did find out which child was stuffing their socks into the couch. That's true. There's no telltale sign then, I know. And it's the same with like who's not flushing the toilet? You know nowadays, like there's DNA tests probably for this, Like I could I could finally find out who wasn't flushing the toilet. But so that number of kids, it could have been more than one of them. That's so you have the white socks for the laundry. So you know this. You just grab what socks you need and the size you need, and you don't sputter. Other than that, What else did you come up with in terms of these these way these systems that made life work, folding clothes right from the dryer into individual baskets. In our old house, we didn't have a laundry room. It was in a pantry, so I just used some of the pantry shelves for like small little baskets, and we would fold right from the dryer into those, or I would have them. When they got to be in middle school, they did their own laundry, and so just folding right in and not having those stacks of laundry that tend to get all over the house or the bed. And then you do the laundry dance when you go to bed, and remember all those clothes are on your bed. So that's something that has worked quite well. And how about keeping track of shoes and stuff like backpacks to go out the door in the morning. We had like a check off list for the kids before they would go to bed at night. Instead of saying have you done this? And have you done that? I would just say have you done your check off list? And it wasn't a literal checkoff list, because I'm not good at like checking on those things. It was posted though on the fridge and they could go look at it, and it was have your backpack by the front door, your shoes and socks by the front door, any athletic equipment or anything like that right where they knew where it was, homework signed, brush your teeth, that kind of thing. But it sounds like a little bit more of that may have been on them, which in the end might have actually helped to foster independence out of necessity. I mean, I see that even a tiny bit with three kids, there are certain things I wouldn't have minded doing for my olders, but now that I realize I can't and they can. It's so I've been seeing that. I can imagine that being incredibly magnified with the number that you had at home at once. Right, which did you find that you cause them to be more independent at a younger age? Yes, and no, I would say as a whole, had our kids be more dependent when they were little, just things like sleeping through the night and that type of thing. We didn't really expect them to sleep through the night when they were super little, and we practiced attachment parenting, and so they were just with us a lot more. And even when our older adoptees came home, we spent a lot of time kind of taking them back through some of those younger developmental ages and just keeping them close. But then when they got older, they definitely had a lot more independence. And yeah, I was speaking more about the other school age. Yeah, no, absolutely, and I feel like that's one thing I've really seen over thirty five years of parenting is that kids now do not have nearly as much independent and they don't get the chance to go to the pharmacy and get our refill on their acne medicine or you know, whatever it may be. And so yeah, I really do think they have had, in a positive way, more independence. So how do you sort of do chores around the head? Do you have like lists of chores for each kid to do or how do you handle that? Well, on Saturday, we have the magnificent hour of power, which my kids would say it's the dreaded hour of power. And so everyone in the household, it didn't matter how old they were, they could be two years old, did an hour of work and I would usually just make a list of what needed done and then when at a time, they can pick which one they want to do, and at the end it's just maybe me assigning who has to do what. And so that's on Saturday. It could be indoor work, it could be outdoor and then on a day to day they have one regular chore and it rotates, but it could be like emptying the dishwasher or take out the garbage and then in the summer they have two chores. Very organized. And no, that's amazing, and I guess you could harness a lot of productivity power when you have a team that large. Yeah, and you mentioned I mean in your notes to us about having you know your planner is your life right? And yes, I want you need to manage the schedules of everyone. Or is it just like it's on the kids to manage their own schedule? How does how does that happen? I? I definitely manage the schedule and there are still learning. Let's put it that way. We have a so I have a planner. It's a monthly and weekly. It has daily, but I don't really use my daily unless I have like a super busy day. Then I have a whiteboard in the kitchen that's also a weekly planner, and I'll put on there everything you know, camps, ballet, whatever, appointments and all of that. And my husband is the one that doesn't always read that one, and he'll be like, wait, I didn't know what it was occer eating tonight, But the kids are The kids are pretty good about that looking bad and I'm seeing what's coming up and I guess the question that's the obvious one here that everyone it sounds like ten children would be rather expensive, So was it. I mean they're not all home now, of course, but has there been ups and downs in terms of how expensive it has been? I mean, how have you managed to sort of economize on all these things right now? That is a very very good and a very big question. And we have kind of been on both ends of the spectrum in terms of where our income has been and how we make it work. And kids just they don't have to cost as much as a lot of people think, and they can cost a lot, especially as teenagers when they get into all the activities and if they get on like a traveling soccer team something like that. But in the years when I was home more, we actually spent a lot less on things like convenience and so I work a lot more now. But I also if they need a pair of clets, I just go to one store and get them and don't shop around. So quite often I think if we ask people if we're looking for something or if we borrow something. When they were younger, we did a lot of home activities and not as much airplane travel. We did a lot more car travel, so just all those normal ways of making it work. It says in your notes that you drove seven thousand miles around the US with seven kids in twenty eleven. What was that about that? That was I had just finished my master's program, and in the last the last two years of my master's program, I did have to work twenty hours a week in an internship while also going to school full time. When I graduated, I didn't yet have my current job, which I did get at the end of the summer, and so we had this summer free and it was kind of like wow, like we may never get this chance again to just get in the car and go. And of course my younger kids thought it would be a great adventure, and my teenagers thought it was the worst I did ever. But one of the ways I got my teenage son on board was he brought his scooter like they would use at a skate park, and we went as we went around the nation, we would hit various skate parks and take photos of him. And so he got to hit a skate park in every state, which you know, when you're traveling with seven kids in a Honda Pilot, and you have to make room for scooters and helmets. It was. It was quite an interesting to figure out how we put all that in, but it ended up being a wonderful, wonderful trip and they have fond memories which I think sometimes you just have to push past all the angst, you know, in getting to that point where you go through and have a great time. In the end. We saw a lot of relatives along the way, a lot of relatives and a lot of friends. Yeah. To cut down on the coss with that, I have to stop and say something. You just said you were doing a twenty hour week internship and going to school full time while you also had at least seven kids at home. Yes, so what would a day have looked like for you? Then? You know, is that sounds like quite a juggling act. It was, and we had just adopted our youngest daughter. My mom helped a lot. My internship wasn't very far from my house, which was a huge blessing, and then my master's program I had it where I could just go. At that point, I was only going one day a week from morning until late at night, and so it was all about like reorganizing the time. Yeah, making it all fit in. Well, Shilah, this has been fascinating to hear about it. I like this idea of only doing white socks, and I think I might look into it because although I know for sure which child has been putting his socks in the sofa and not, that knowing stops it, so I'm not sure really that there's any point knowing it because it keeps happening regardless. But yeah, Sarah, did you have any more questions? No, I just wanted to add and I realized I was mooted. Oops that she had like three strategies in one in that last comment, which is help from family members if you're able to do that, obviously, not be having things be very close together. That seems like a common theme, although it always makes me jealous because I work pretty far from where I live. And finally doing things in batches and planning, so that was like a trifecta of how she made that crazy schedule work during that time. Awesome. All right, well, Shilah, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Well, that was fun to learn her large family hacks so our Q and a in lou of a Q and a and actually in Loua, we were going to do a love of the week and then we realized we've kind of said what our love of the weeks were in the opener of this episode, that Sarah's love of the week is getting to buy this box of school supplies that's already set together, and my love of the week was starting school after Labor Day. And then we're looking at her notes and we're like, wait, we already said that. So anyway, moving on too, And also in lou of A Q and A, we had a couple of weeks ago we had a question from a listener who wanted to know what she should do before having kids, And this was one into this whole digression because of course this is my genre of least favorite blog posts. It's like the thirty things to do before having children, as if your life is over once you have kids, and so you know, we were like, yeah, take that bucket list trip to New Zealand. But other than that, you know, whatever, she traveled for work anyway, so we were like, well, maybe she's gonna be stuck in New Zealand whether she wants to be or not. So I can't really think of much, but of course we were being a little bit less practical than many of our upstanding citizen blog readers. I wrote in with all the things that she should do. So I posted this on my blog Laura vander caam dot com, and one of our readers gave us a good long list, and Sarah loved the list. Right, you were like, oh my god, I was so impressed that. I mean, I'm a planner. But when I saw this, I was like, well, clearly I did not. Yeah, I don't think I did a lot of this. She like totally blew me out of the water in terms of how much she had thought about all the logistics and all these sort of to do items that wouldn't have occurred to me. But I thought this might be a helpful list for others. So yeah, we'll just read through some of them. Were yeah, we were going to notice note some of them. Okay, so here we go, and I'm gonna I'm gonna truncate a little bit. But she mentions she got life insurance because you actually get cheaper rates pre pregnancy. She got disability insurance. She looked at her health insurance issues. She got serious about emergency savings. I will actually give a huge shout out to that. I think I mentioned this on the podcast, But took us so long to have kids. I had been socking away a certain amount every month. By the end, I actually had enough to pay for like the first year of daycare, which was huge because your post kids' expenses are generally going to be a lot higher than your pre kids and it helps with the sticker shock to have a little bit of a kind of Number one, you're used to spending less, and number two, you have that money to spend. Okay, so that was good. Back to her list, she continuously had conversations with her husband's about expectations for family life. Also smart right, like people have scripts going back and even if you know, maybe you think that you're both on the same page, but you've really never discussed it like you've you know, maybe one party assumes that the other party will just want to get up with the kids on weekend mornings automatically or something, I have to discuss the idea of trading off, or like, you know, maybe one party assumes that his or her career should take precedents and the other party does not agree. But these are conversations that people don't even really think to have, you know, with the really nitty gritty of this. So that's that's great that she's doing that. I agree. She attended an flm A f m l A training at work and to figure out how to use FMLA. Of course, this doesn't apply to everyone, depending on the size of the company you work for, or if you're in the US or not I mean yes, or if you're in the US. Love our international listeners. Don't want to leave them out. She started sketching out her leave plan. She got to the point where her home felt decorated. Well, I still have not that's you don't have to do that before you have kids. That's optional. She traveled more so we did kind of mention that she identified books she wanted to read about fertility, parenting, and pregnancy, and read some of the parenting and pregnancy books her husband kept picking up from free little libraries in the neighborhood. I hope the husband was reading them. Two. Yeah, So I will say this that I don't I would not necessarily read What to Expect when You're expecting while you're a Yeah, there's not all these books they focus on all the my because they're supposed to be encyclopedia, and so they focus on all these things that can go wrong that could happen for reference, for reference, these things do not go wrong in the vast majority of pregnancies or births or whatever. So it's it's kind of like it depends on your personality whether it will help you or hurt you. Did not want to do any of that stuff, but anyway, she worked on her health, so she exercised more, she got regular occupuncture, which, by the way, she loved. She occasionally this is so smart. Perused Craigslist for big ticket baby items because it's so true, like if some wealthy family just had their last kid and they're ditching, like, you know, their three Bugaboo strollers or whatever, like, you might as well, if you have space, which she did, scoop them up while they come up, because you never know. And as she said she could, she could sell them at a profit, like she was only getting the big ticket items that were wrote if a kid never happens, I'll sell them for a profit. Brilliant. She had more fun with her husbands, and she does note that she enjoyed planning her weekends to help, So we'll take that as a compliment. She explored hobbies of her own. Andrew say that bucha brewing and ukulele lessons that is a bit of random. That's impressive. I mean that's a lot of hobbies. That's wow. Although I would say you could take ukulele lessons after having children too, So if that is on your in fact, your baby might enjoy that baby or your babies like, stop torturing me. So she identified childcare places when we did talk about that. She worked on her wills and advanced directives smart smart to do that. She went on an international trip with her mom. I love that because you know what, while you can travel, you might be more likely to travel with your family, and that special one on one time with your mom might be less likely to happen. So I like that. She talked with her in laws about how frequently they'd be interested in assisting. Time wise, she considered car options, and she researched college saving items, savings items, and finally she identified some well this is similar to the craigs, but some big ticket baby items to continue to source more affordably. Wow. So yeah, long last I can't say I did much of that. I did some of it. Not all of it, and I'm not saying that everyone needs to do all of those things. Certainly people's propensity to plan is going to vary. But that did bring up a lot of things I might not have even thought of, and so hopefully this helps someone else. The life insurance one is probably smart, and the savings and the FMLA, yeah, just to know what I like. The Craigslist one, yeah, I mean it depends like if you if you have your heart set on something very specific it's super overpriced, or let's say, like you know, you want pottery, barn nursery furniture that's like almost new, but you really don't want to pay the full price, Like just look at it once a week because probably you won't find anything. But you also might find something like ridiculous, because when people clear out baby stuff, they often are just anxious to get at the hell out of their house. So it it could it could go for very little. So I think, depending on who you are, that might be a great thing to do. Yeah, and you can play the ukulele apparently, so all right, well this has been best of both worlds. We have been talking large families and also things. The more practical list besides going to New Zealand of things to consider before getting pregnant. So we'll be back next week on more on making work in life fit together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore shoe Box on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.