Big payoff

Travis Haughton – thaughton@nwherald.com Suzanne and Russ Myers of Johnsburg have five children, 15-year-old Rachel (back left) and 9-year-old quadruplets (from left) Reagan, Olivia, Jimmy and Grant. (Travis Haughton ())

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Not every large family gets a prime-time spot on basic cable. Most usually get loads of dirty laundry and a whole lot of hugs any time of the day.

Suzanne Myers of Johnsburg is an art teacher for School District 12. During the school year, she leaves one group of little ones to go home and attend to another – her five children.

Myers and her husband, Russ, are parents of a 15-year-old and four 9-year-olds.

“I have two sisters, and we’re very close,” Suzanne Myers said. “I wanted [Rachel, the eldest] to have that.”

Because the couple were having trouble getting pregnant, they decided to try fertility treatments. After one cycle of in vitro, Suzanne Myers was pregnant with quadruplets.

“It was very overwhelming,” she said. “When pregnant with multiples, there’s a risk to the kids but also to the mother.”

But mom and all 40 tiny fingers and 40 toes were unscathed when all was said and done.

And now, Rachel has the siblings her mother always hoped she would. Suzanne Myers said her daughter definitely has become a bit maternal herself and has embraced that role.

Tina Loga, a licensed clinical social worker, said having an older sibling step into a more parental role from time to time actually helps in large families. Children with multiple siblings, she explained, do have a little less time with mom and dad than children in smaller families, so the older children help fill a void.

“The kids look up to me,” Rachel Myers said.

Loga said there always is a chance that children will feel left out because they don’t get individual time with mom or dad as much as they would like.

The Myers parents try to avoid those feelings, and the children seem to understand.

“They’ve learned we can’t always give each our full attention, and they’re pretty patient for the most part,” Suzanne Myers said. “We try to take them out one-on-one, and we try to spread our time as much as we can. They know they’re loved.”

Children who have to share their time in large families tend to develop better social skills at a young age, said Dr. Christian Straube, a child and adolescent psychologist.

He said the youngsters must learn to communicate with one another and contend for others’ attention.

This battle for attention does teach children to have patience, said Straube, something that children in smaller or only-child families sometimes lack.

“The only-child tends to want their expectations met quicker, whereas the child from a larger family is used to waiting,” Straube said.

Aside from time, another common deficit found in larger families, Loga said, is in the parents’ wallets.

Suzanne Myers said she has some financial concerns, and especially worried when the children were young.

Not every family can be paid just for having an abundance of members like Jon and Kate Gosselin (“That’s not reality,” Suzanne Myers said) who have more money to afford extra help for their children.

After the quads were born, mom and dad had a “tag team” system. She would work during the day and then Russ would work at night with their families’ help in between.

Suzanne Myers stressed that she always uses coupons and has friends who give her great-quality hand-me-downs so she can cut costs.

But more than the budgeting of time and money, what Suzanne Myers said helped her most in raising five children has been her strong support system of family and friends.

At the end of the day, all of this extra help and cutting corners in big families pay off, and Loga said one of those bonuses is the very strong social ties children have in larger families.

“There’s more help and support,” she said. “There’s always someone around. My experience has been that larger families tend to stay together more often.”