You Have My Divided Attention

I still think this barely-thought-out decision to have three kids was a good one.

I always knew I wanted three kids, and my reason was simple. When my friends talk about how they determined the size of their families, it sounds like something they sat down and discussed, reviewing pros and cons, determining the reach of their finances and support systems.

I always wanted three kids because I have two brothers, and I like them.

My brothers and I aren’t exactly close, but we have a great relationship. I see my older brother once or twice a year even though he only lives about 30 minutes away, and in between visits our main communication is him sending me different variations of the “My name is Jeff” clip from 22 Jump Street (his name is Jeff). My younger brother lives 10 minutes away so I see him slightly more often, maybe two or three times a year, and we actually text pretty regularly, usually about different sandwiches we have found and enjoyed around town. So yeah, two pretty flawless relationships.

We bickered a lot as kids and were mean and underappreciative to each other as teenagers, but then our dad died and we’ve been nice to each other ever since, I guess because we could finally appreciate the value of a shared sibling experience.

So I had three kids, each spaced evenly two years apart. I felt a sense of accomplishment once my set was complete. I had given my children the gift of each other. Built-in friends! They would grow up in a full, bustling household. They would always have someone to play with or talk to. As adults, they would have someone to look back on their childhood with who understood the weird intricacies of our family unit. When I die, they can bear the burden of the loss together. Great for them!

However. Maybe I should have stopped to think about what this would mean for me, because in giving my children the beautiful gift of siblings, I have stripped myself of the ability to give them the time and attention they want from me, which is all of it. They want all of my time and attention. I have filled my home with three little people who each want 100% of me 100% of the time.

Before you become a parent, you can’t truly anticipate how needy kids are. You can’t truly appreciate how little they care about societal norms and etiquette, like the unspoken rule that only one person can have a conversation with me at a time, so I couldn’t have anticipated how much it would grate on my nerves to have three people telling me three separate stories at once.

I thought that since I spent all those months growing other humans for them to play with, they wouldn’t need me to play with them, but there they are, demanding I play Tic-Tac-Toe.

“Why don’t you play Tic-Tac-Toe with each other?” I ask.

“We want to play with you.”

So I play Tic-Tac-Toe with one child while the others wait on the sideline, complaining that it’s taking too long and wondering when is it going to be their turn even though they could simply play with each other oh my god.

But I love having three kids! They all bring something unique to the table. I love that when they pair off, each pair has an entirely different dynamic. I even love that my house is filled to the brim with noise and chaos. I just don’t know how to give each one the attention they need. If three people are talking to me at the same time, that doesn’t add up to each of them getting 33% of my attention. It somehow adds up to 0%.

They’re obsessed with me though. No matter how hard I try to convince them that I’m not even fun or interesting, they want nothing more than for me to be a part of everything. When the three of them are talking about something like SpongeBob or Roblox or something called “Total Drama Island,” they punctuate each sentence with, “Right Mom?” I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why am I being dragged into this conversation?

I should enjoy this while it lasts, I know. But I’m exhausted. I can’t be the star of this show anymore. I’ve tried to reason with them that they can’t have 100% of my attention all the time.

The math finally came together for me in a Beautiful Mind moment when I realized that they aren’t asking for 100% of my attention all the time. They just want 100% of my attention some of the time. We all like our family being together, but they crave the one on one time with me, no matter how small the increments.

It’s difficult to carve out individual time for everyone between school and work and sports schedules, but that’s not even the biggest problem. The problem is that we don’t want to leave the rest of the family out. I planned a weekend in New York City with my seven-year-old daughter Mattie. As the middle child, she has never had a moment alone with me, and we were both looking forward to some bonding time, but it was still hard to exclude her siblings.

We went ice skating at Rockefeller Center and instead of having to send her off to skate alone while I tended to whatever various mishaps are bound to come up with two other kids around, we held hands and glided around the rink together for an hour. Over the course of the weekend, I started to notice how small Mattie seemed. I hadn’t thought of her as small since her little sister was born five years ago, but now that I had taken her out of the set I could see her more clearly. She isn’t an older, bigger version of her sister. In the context of the group, she had taken shape as The Mature One, but when it was just the two of us I could see she’s still just a little girl.

The opposite was true for my youngest, who we all eternally see as The Baby even though she’s five years old. It’s easy to forget that she’s turning into a full-fledged kid if I don’t set aside time to chat with her. When she starts popping off about all the gossip and drama going on at preschool, I’m given a much-needed reminder that this little thing is a complete person, and dare I say one with a little bit of an edge to her.

And my nine-year-old, whose role in the group is The Clown, is so much more than a clown. When I take him away from the audience of his sisters, he’s thoughtful and full of ideas. On our last hot cocoa date, he asked me for my editor’s phone number and when I asked what for, he said he has a book he wants to publish. Then he told me several story ideas that were much better than anything I’ve ever come up with.

I love having my own place in a sibling set, but when I think back to my childhood, it’s peppered with memories in which my parents proved to me that I existed as an individual too—and they aren’t all special moments either. One of my core memories of my dad is a silent drive to a travel softball game, a complete non-event, just a quiet drive that served as proof of my existence.

I’m stretched thin, but I can steal away moments for quiet drives and hot cocoa dates where I can give these people 100% of my attention, some of the time. I still think this barely-thought-out decision to have three kids was a good one, and it’ll all be worth it twenty years from now when they have a couple of lifelong buddies to text memes and breakfast sandwich recs to.