Observations from one Father of Functional Triplets

You can’t know what you’re getting into when you have kids. You sort of think you can. You were a kid yourself. You have friends and siblings with kids. Surely those contribute meaningful insight, but not even close to an adequate amount. Like an eclipse, or a bad rash, kids are an experience you cannot have academically or second hand.

We started our family with twins. Henry and Charlotte arrived in January of 2011. What a happy time. Even after significant contemplation of how this would change my life, I never could have known the immensity of that life changing moment, overwhelmingly for the better, but also with some challenging collateral.

Annie and I had a fairly complex journey to get the twins into our lives and had had very little (at least recent) experience with contraception. The unexpected news of Caroline’s impending arrival was one of the most polarizing moments of my life. It was utter amazement and joy at the miracle of non-invasive pregnancy countered, in near equal measure, by pure horror at the thought of another baby in the fray. Keep in mind that Charlotte and Henry were 9 months old when we learned of Caroline’s impending arrival. We were in the throes of deep-sea, full-immersion parenting. We have a picture of Annie holding a pregnancy test next to the two kids in high chairs with food all over their faces. Annie’s smile is … telling.

We’ve never known parenting of one child. We have only the vaguest recollections of parenting two children.

By the time that Caroline was 2 and a half, the line between she and the twins was quickly blurring. Her drive to keep up had her walking well before she turned 1, and potty trained before one of the twins (I can’t remember which one). It was (is) often that Annie and I had to remind the other to cut Caroline some slack “remember, she is a year and half younger.” Oh yeah, that’s right ;).

In the last three years they have really become a collective organism. The “Chenroline.” When I have the chance, and as an ongoing experiment, I will quiz those asking if they can guess which ones are the twins. The answers are more often wrong than right. They each have very distinct personalities and independence, but Chenroline, in many ways, is our fourth child. Chenroline behaves differently than any of its three component parts. Often in unfortunate ways, but also in very impressive and inspiring ways.

I’ll give an example of each. The other day Chenroline completely saturated every surface, corner and nook of the main bathroom. It was an act of pure mob mentality—the subconscious math that instinctively calculates the distribution of guilt and concludes that, at a third the cost… its totally worth it! In contrast, Chenroline also perform acts of altruism and beauty that seem to transcend their individual potential – like when they get a wild hair and mutually motivate each other to clean or make something special for mom and dad. This phenomenon feels more rare, but still transcends the former, on balance.

But onto the potentially sensitive observations: Whenever I see a child alone with his parent or parents, two things happen. One is that I contemplate how wonderful that appears. I think of how rarely I am alone with one of my kids, and how heavenly that can be. How different they act, how pleasant they often are. How much I learn about their personalities. There is a real jealous desire to have more of that. At the same time, there is a bit of sadness. Mostly for the child. This is probably an obnoxious thought to some but, to me, the thought of hanging out with your parents all the time seems pretty, well, boring. At least in contrast to what my children are engaged in daily. They have a slumber party every night. I tell people that it is a party at my house every night. Then I follow up with an important clarification: This is not a tea, or even a birthday, party – it’s a rush-week frat party. I know Chenroline don’t fully appreciate it, but I think they sort of get that there is something unique happening in their lives. When their friends leave the house asking “why don’t Henry and Charlotte and Caroline have to go home?” I think it gives them slight pause.

Let me further crystalize the unique sibling dynamic. I am guessing that Henry and Charlotte have spent less than a tenth of a percent of their lives not being in the same room as each other. Read that again. They are in the same school and church classes, sleep in the same room and are super good buddies who like to play with each other. They’ve been together since they were 8-celled blastocysts! We have a picture to prove it;) Neither of these two will have any memory of a world without Caroline right there either.

As a parent you spend a lot of time paranoid about what you’re doing to your kids (or not doing in some cases). I imagine our children will come away from this unique experience with some positive things: deep solidarity with several other humans who have identical formative experiences, maybe a more powerful grasp on the idea of shared resources and the principle of compromise, and hopefully a broad built-in support web. They may also come away from the experience with some deep desire for autonomy and independence which may blow up in their teen years or just fester quietly in nuanced behaviors as they approach and/or live out their adult lives. They may lack the same relationship with us, their parents, that some of their friends and peers develop.

One thing is for sure, they will develop and they will likely continue to do it in this same proximity. We’ll keep trying to do our best. I am not a perfect Dad. I love my kids. They also drive me nuts. And not always in the “fists on the hips – gosh darn you little rascals” way, but also in the “Daddy is really sorry that he scared you by yelling at you and jerking your arm” way :(. I reflect on a bit by the comedian Sinbad about how people with kids cannot be cool anymore. “You think your parents aint cool? They used to be cool. Once you have kids you can’t. be. cool. no. more. They make you lose. your. mind!” – (this is so much funnier with Sinbad saying it (of course)). My kids have definitely made me “’lose my cool” a bit. I try hard to manage those feelings and its very important to me that I always apologize when I recognize my impatience and unkindness. Yeah, I know – wait till I have teenagers – I don’t want to think about it.

All of this has particular relevance as I consider an actual fourth child entering our home in August. My parents and oldest brother often reflect on the experience of him as the family's guinea pig. Annie and I have joked that we have three oldest children. Chenroline and the two of us have just been flying by the seat of our pants. We have expressed some frustration at the fact that no one will experience the iterative benefits of the lessons we may actually be learning as we go.

Perhaps someone will after all. Raising ‘quattro” (as I have come to know him) will be an interesting exercise in juxtaposition. I ‘ll follow up in 8 years -- - they’ll be so much to report!!