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Forum -> Household Management
How to raise 10 kids in a 2 bedroom home
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Tefila




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Apr 20 2007, 2:05 am
All I can say is neccesity is mother of invention and it's amazing how the human spirit can cope with life situations when it has too Exclamation . How mothers coped with multiples in days gone by with no disposables, no washing machines, no running water etc and survived. Is to me amazing Smile
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BinahYeteirah




 
 
    
 

Post Fri, Apr 20 2007, 2:42 am
No doubt multiples were very rare in the past. It is a miracle they coped, but I think that one's neighbors and family would certainly have to help in such a situation.
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Motek




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Apr 22 2007, 11:56 am
mimivan wrote:
Awwww!!! how sweet! Tongue Out


Yet I imagine that if someone were to call family services-child welfare in the US, the children would be taken away because of neglect - lack of the basics, no?
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shayna82




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Apr 22 2007, 12:12 pm
tefila, I like to think of it like this: ten years ago, there were no cell phones. growing up, there were no cell phones, and we ALL managed. you used your clock to let a person know what time to meet, and you used a payphone to make a call. life wasnt bad, or hard because you didnt know any other way. everyone managed. so its the same here. there is no other option for lots of families and thats what they do cuz what else? diapers and all that fall into the same catergory. everyone managed.
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amother


 

Post Sun, Apr 22 2007, 1:47 pm
funny you say that motek bc there was recently a case and its decide in court that you cant take kids away bc of money prob. beside in u.s. kids would get free food stamps, health care, schooling, even extra tutoring or speach therapy! cable TV and camp and spending money if they qulalify.... slightly different huh?

not quite as dramatic, in our neighorhood even if you have the money, its hard to find more than 2 bedroom apt. our good friends are expecting their fourth in a "one and half bedroom." that means that in tiny "half bedroom" they fit one bunk with trundle and changing table and crib and closet. their hallway (which has a significantly wide area to it) doubles as a playroom, and their living room is living room dining room. bedroom is ironically huge.

we live in same exact apt, expecting our second, and we have family thats freaking out for us... Smile please... our bedroom contains, two offices a bedorom set and two bikes !!! kids room is tight but not really THAT tight after reading this post Smile

one challenge is cleaning and and keeping it clean. it gets messy fast when theres so much going on in such small space
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southernbubby




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Apr 22 2007, 1:53 pm
I once asked Henna White, who is the assistant to the district attorney on Brooklyn what happens when ACS is called about child abuse or negligence and she answered that the first thing that she (her office) does is to make sure that before the ACS workers arrive, there are enough beds so that each child has his or her own.
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Motek




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Apr 22 2007, 2:57 pm
southernbubby wrote:
I once asked Henna White, who is the assistant to the district attorney on Brooklyn what happens when ACS is called about child abuse or negligence and she answered that the first thing that she (her office) does is to make sure that before the ACS workers arrive, there are enough beds so that each child has his or her own.


How does she know that they are going to show up?
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southernbubby




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Apr 22 2007, 4:16 pm
Sometimes disputes between neighbors result in one angry neighbor reporting the other to the ACS. The ACS knows that some reports will be as a result of these disputes rather than a result of true neglect or abuse. The ACS contacts the family and notifies them that they will be coming in to assess the situation. If Henna White's office gets a call from a Jewish family that they have been reported and that ACS is coming, they have only a day or 2 to clean up things, put in beds, and make sure that there is basic food in the house.
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Ruchel




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Apr 22 2007, 4:26 pm
It is funny how people are ok with hitting or locking a kid in his room or not giving him dinner because he didn't behave, but several kids in one room or not buying them tons of toys is "neglect" or worse. Just a(nother) pet peeve of mine.
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southernbubby




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Apr 22 2007, 4:32 pm
I am not sure that the ACS workers know how to differentiate between lack of beds due to a large family or lack of necessities due to drug abuse or mental illness. Also (and it is a real pet peeve of mine) ACS workers are often inadequately trained, causing them to remove children who have brittle bone disease or mongolian spots due to their lack of understanding of those conditions.
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Tefila




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Apr 22 2007, 6:21 pm
Quote:
are ok with hitting or locking a kid in his room or not giving him dinner because he didn't behave

who is ok with that shock
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amother


 

Post Sun, Apr 22 2007, 7:02 pm
As far as raising 10 kids in a 2 bedroom apt... nowadays you dont really here of those things happening other than in Israel. I think the extra Kedusha gives mothers extra strenght.
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amother


 

Post Sun, Apr 22 2007, 7:04 pm
queen wrote:
we are all living in a very spoiled generation. 75 years ago, jews did not live on the level we currently do. Think back to shtetle life, and the huts they lived in. Never mind no indoor plumbing or heating.
True, but life and society in general was soooo much simpler then! Today we are dealing with a whole lot more!
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Lechatchila Ariber




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Apr 22 2007, 7:12 pm
Motek wrote:
queen wrote:
Think back to shtetle life, and the huts they lived in. Never mind no indoor plumbing or heating.


I often do and I thank G-d for indoor plumbing.

I also wonder about those stories of entire families living in one room, how the parents were able to have the privacy/tznius halacha requires.

And I don't think they use bunkbeds because that room is the living/dining room and they don't eat their meals in a room surrounded by multiple bunk beds.


regarding what you are wondering about, I once heard someone tell of when he was a child and he had to be the mechitza in his parents bed when his mother was a niddah.
regarding when a woman was not a niddah and mikva night plus other times, my guess is they would have to wait till everyone was asleep.
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Ruchel




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Apr 22 2007, 8:23 pm
Tefila wrote:
Quote:
are ok with hitting or locking a kid in his room or not giving him dinner because he didn't behave

who is ok with that shock


many people
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realeez




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Apr 22 2007, 8:34 pm
We had a few teachers talk about their "younger" days raising a large number of children in 2 bedroom (plus living room/dining room/kitchen, 1 bathroom) apartments. One had like 6 girls in one bedroom and her two boys were in the living room. It worked well for her that her boys and girls were those numbers. Another teacher talked about having a washing machine in her bathroom and it drained in the bathtub so they had to time laundry around bathtime. She said that looking back, those years of being squished were the best years of her life. What's interesting is that 2 of these teachers now live in pretty large homes!
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workingmom3




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Apr 22 2007, 11:18 pm
I honestly dont know ho wthey have the nerves for it. I would be on birth control id I didnt have enough beds for all my kids to sleep in.
Do they really have the strength or do they have no choice?!?
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Seraph




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Apr 29 2007, 7:50 am
I told my husband that I would never live in a one bedroom home, bli neder, and I'd live in a cheapo cheapo community that wasn't ideal before being willing to live in a one bedroom.
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chen




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Apr 29 2007, 8:14 pm
chocolate moose wrote:
maybe they had living roon, dining room, family rooms too?


In meah shearim???what,`` are you kidding? a living room, called a 'salon", possibly, but those others are American concepts.
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chen




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Apr 29 2007, 8:27 pm
amother wrote:
As far as raising 10 kids in a 2 bedroom apt... nowadays you dont really here of those things happening other than in Israel.


Oh, really?

FYI in my very own building there used to be a family with K"AH 10 chidren in a 2-BR apt. Triple-decker sleeping (Bunk beds with trundle and built-in drawers) all around, two cribs in the parents' room, fold-out couch and rollaway folding beds in the LR. Dining table in the hall. All furniture multi-purpose and/or folding design. Only 1 bathroom--maybe they went to neighbors in an emergency, but they never asked to use ours.

was it crowded? You betcha! was anyone disturbed by the crowding? Not that I could tell. Did it smell? Not any more than any other household harboring a diaper pail.

How did they manage? I honestly couldn't say. I'm sure in similar circs I'd have been a candidate for the loony bin but the mother was not only quite serene but even took time to do chassodim for others. Go figure.
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