How I learnt the hard way that life is impossible when you’re a family with six children

“If you want something done,” the maxim goes, “ask a busy person to do it.” As untruthful sayings go, this is up there with “It’s better to give than to receive” or “If you need super-high-speed broadband, why not sign up for Virgin Media?” 

I imagine the person who came up with this lie thought they were busy because they were the one in the office who organised the Secret Santa. But they can’t have been a parent to six young children, including two autistic boys and an adopted daughter with Down’s Syndrome, because I am so busy it’s all I can do to write this article in between school pick-ups.

It can feel like a full-time job managing our children’s needs. There are the predictable chores like laundry, cooking and a bedtime routine that stretches over several hours. 

Then there are the less obvious tasks, such as being constantly on call to fix everyone’s technological problems. I sometimes feel like I’m running a call centre for PC World and during the pandemic this only got worse. 

It is perhaps telling that my children are computer-literate only when it suits them; when it came to accessing their online school work, they suddenly became less tech-savvy than the members of the Handforth Parish Council. 

And, of course, each of their electronic devices requires a charger that will inevitably get lost or broken within a week. Chargers are now a bigger commodity in the Blaker family than money. Underage wage slaves in China can’t make these cables fast enough to satiate our never-ending need. 

A few years ago, my wife Gemma and I took our youngest child to London Zoo and for that one afternoon I had an insight into what it would be like to have a normal family. 

No buggies; no prams; no periodical stops for a head count, like I’m a teacher on a school trip. Just one child holding our hands as she walked and looked at the animals. And it was an almost Damascene moment because I realised that the world just isn’t designed for larger families. 

Like most children, our kids love theme parks but most of the rides require smaller children to sit next to an adult, so when there are six of them that isn’t going to work. You have to decide what rides to go on - and with eight people, consensus isn’t easy to come by, especially when they are suggesting rides at Chessington during a day out at Legoland. 

With six children, no one can agree when we’re having lunch or where we’re having lunch; neither of which is relevant anyway because the meal deals are always for a family of four and our children pretty much only eat crisps. 

Oxford University’s scientists came up with a Covid vaccine in under a year, but sadly no one can formulate a food that is acceptable to all of my kids. We are still waiting for the invention of the taste-free, smell-free and texture-free chicken. 

We argue about who is in charge of holding the map and who is in charge of reading the map. Then everyone wants a gift from the Legoland store but having spent £250 on entry, I am now completely skint and can barely afford petrol for the drive home, let alone six presents. 

There aren’t even that many cars we could use on a day trip because most manufacturers only make seven-seaters (five kids max). This probably explains why I’ve spent ten years driving the world’s oldest Toyota Previa, whose personalised number plate is worth three times the car it’s attached to.

All this is why, in all honesty, I will miss all the Covid restrictions. Of course, homeschooling was a challenge, simultaneously running a primary school, a secondary school, a special school and a sixth form college. 

But lockdown was also a break from the routine. A year without trying to get everyone dressed and ready for school in under two hours. A year without being stared at on trips as people try to work out if we’re a blended family or the winners of a Shameless lookalike competition. 

A year without birthday parties. Pre-pandemic, Sunday mornings involved standing in a scout hut watching some poor sod attempt to use balloon sculpture to entertain 30 sugar-crazed kids, all of whom would much rather be watching Netflix. 

So I suspect we’ll look back on the past year as a golden period in the Blaker house, when we could just enjoy each other’s company – I use the word ‘enjoy’ rather loosely – removed from a world that isn’t really designed for us. Now life has restarted, it’s back to the grind. As the adage goes: “If you want something done, don’t ask me because the girls need a bath, the boys are fighting over the Xbox, and I’m still hunting for some spare chargers.” 

Ashley Blaker’s new four-part series “Ashley Blaker: 6.5 Children” is on BBC Radio 4 on Friday 30 July 2021 and available on BBC Sounds. He will be touring the UK from 5th May 2022

Do you have a large family? Let us know how you cope in the comments section below.