When Kids Bicker: A Mom's Solution

Peace, love and no bickering

For some reason, I still get surprised when our kids at college say how much they can't wait to come home. They love being home and soak it in. There's playing with the younger kids -- "Hey guys, let's wrestle," says Ethan -- and there's home cooking -- "Mmmmmm. Mashed potatoes," says Evie -- and movie nights -- some serious laughs when "The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!" is on the TV.  Games, telling stories about the crazy things the older kids did when they were little, soccer matches in the front yard, impromptu music sessions, eating ... check that, LOTS of eating, are all in the mix when the family is home together over a holiday or weekend when the collegians return.

But it's not always peace, love and family harmony. Sometimes the Sabo family kids experience a dreaded condition called "bickering." Perhaps you are familiar with this condition as well. It can be highly contagious and very debilitating. It has the potential to be deadly as well, killing any and all joy in the house.

Are you familiar with this `bickering' disease? Well, we're here to help. At no cost to you we have interviewed a world-renowned expert in the field of child bickering and sat down with a very brief interview with this noted authority. Here's a transcript of the interview.

Me: Good morning.
Julie Sabo: Good morning.
Me: You look great by the way. I love you.
Julie Sabo: Um, thanks. What do you want?
Me: Oh, nothing babe. I just wanted to ask you a question if you have a minute in between getting Seth dressed, fixing breakfast, answering a million questions from little kids and settling an argument over the ownership of that toy sword that seems to be causing some sort of internal family conflict.
Julie Sabo: And the question is ...
Me: Well, it seems to be particularly apropos at the moment. But I'm wondering how you solve bickering between children.
Julie Sabo: Just curious, but how many kids do you have?
Me: Same as you my love. Fourteen.
Julie Sabo: And how long have you had kids?
Me: Uh, well if my math is right around 26 years.
Julie Sabo: And you don't know the answer to this question yet?
Me: Well, I just thought it would be best to hear from you. You have a way with words, not to mention being an expert in child psychology.
Julie Sabo: I see.
Me: Soooooo, the answer is ...
Julie Sabo: I try to get to the root of the problem. I'm training and working on character. So instead of just training behavior in the moment, I'm thinking bigger picture. I want to be training and teaching in non-conflict moments. So I work on patience, kindness, sharing, love and forgiveness.
Me: Wow. That's really good.
Julie Sabo: Thanks.

And there you go. Some key points to highlight from my perspective include these quotes:
--Training in non-conflict moments
--Working on patience, kindness, sharing, love and forgiveness

I tell you. I'm going to start writing this stuff down!

Good Housekeeping gets advice from a Sabo on Christmas

Happy Thanksgiving! We are so stoked about Thanksgiving in the Sabo house. It's the best holiday, from our perspective. We bake, cook, eat, play a friendly game of family soccer, relax, watch movies and basically downright own the holiday. Hashtag dominatethebird.

A couple of days ago, however, my lovely bride Julie Sabo was quoted in an article in Good Housekeeping. Yes, that Good Housekeeping. You can find a link to the story in GoodHousekeeping.com down below, but it was an article on Christmas shopping for a big family. Like the insider's take on how to save money doing Christmas shopping for the kiddos. The actual title of the story in GoodHousekeeping.com is: "11 Christmas Shopping Tricks to Steal From Moms With Big Families."

I noted in the story that Julie leads the pack with 14 kids. One other woman who was quoted has 14 kids so kudos to her. I will say that Julie was absolutely unstoppable for a stretch in the mid- to late-90s. She was just cranking out kids like no one's business. In a span of 7 1/2 years her womb yielded six offspring -- a really impressive feat!

I won't spoil the fun by telling her secret to Christmas shopping. If you're reading this I imagine you can read the article for yourself with one handy-dandy click on the link. But I will say that Christmas is a beautiful thing in our house. There's a tremendous amount of joy in being together, of giving each other gifts, in seeing the kids' eyes light up when they open their presents.

Most importantly, it's another opportunity to acknowledge how blessed we are to have so much love for each other and to have the time together. My family is a treasure and a gift from God. I am so thankful the Lord has given me such a wonderful wife and all these marvelous kids and that holidays are such joyous occasions.

GoodHousekeeping.com article

Of Words and Soccer Balls

We had traveled somewhere around five hours across the searing semi-arid desert of northeastern Nigeria, timing our journey to beat the crowds pouring out of mosques on Friday afternoon prayers. That's because, in all honesty, as an American it's better to keep a low-profile on Friday afternoons in the vast swath of Muslim-dominated northeastern Nigeria where Boko Haram is known to operate. Through villages we dodged kids and livestock, stopping for lunch at a roadside food stand where we picked up two women and a child who squeezed into the back seat of our SUV for a lift to town.

At our "picnic table" beneath a fraying tarp, slender young boys hovered around us, smiling and hungrily eyeing our lunches of boiled fish and rice. I left some of the rice and fish on my plate and as I headed to our SUV watched the little boys pick up our plates, only to have them commandeered by older boys who had swooped in. My last sight of our roadside eatery was a group of teens wolfing down the scraps as the little boys watched. 

To continue, go here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/words-soccer-balls-matt-sabo?trk=hp-feed-article-title-publish

Our Secret To Driving Long Distances With Kids

These kids are stoked to drive 400 miles without stopping

On Saturday morning, Team Sabo featuring a 9-kid lineup piled into our Chevy Express 15-passenger van, minus the back bench seat for additional cargo space, and left Myrtle Beach, S.C. After 400 miles of driving we arrived home here in the sprawling metropolis of Gloucester Point/Hayes/Wicomico in just under 6 hours. We did not stop once.

I posted this trip recap as a status on Facebook and sensed some doubts among some folks. I sensed some people were asking things or responding along the lines of:
--Was he actually serious?
--Did he really drive that far without stopping?
--Did he really have a van full of 9 kids? Or were they photoshopped in?
--What kind of drugs did he use on those kids? Where can I get those for my kids?
--Were they all wearing diapers, including him?

Yes, it's true. Um, not about the diapers part, though. Only Seth, age 2, was reppin the Huggies. What is true is that we had nine kids in the van between the ages of 2 and 16 and drove 400 miles in six hours without stopping. No potty breaks, no stops for fast food, no accidents, no relieving oneself via artificial means such as peeing into an empty milk jug or other device.

So what's our secret? Well, let me ask you something if you are a parent of children and every car trip threatens to leave you, your children and your spouse mentally unhinged and the inside of your car looking like a cross between the scene of a food fight and the gnarly insides of a restaurant dumpster.
How much are you willing to pay for this secret? Because for just $14.99 we have a limited-time offer through Amazon.com where you can get my New York Times-bestselling book, "We Drove Across The U.S. Four Times With 10 Kids -- And Survived." Plus, for just $10.99 more you can get our bestselling DVD called "Driving With Kids 101" with live footage and handy action sequence tips that is a must-have for every parent. Act now and we will throw in for free our special limited edition of "Sabo Silly Songs" CD that makes the miles pass effortlessly.

Just kidding. No book, no DVD, no silly songs. Sorry to disappoint you because I know you had that wallet out and were on Amazon.com frantically searching. In fact, to be completely, totally and perfectly honest with you, we have no secret. I asked MerriGrace, our 16-year-old featured prominently in the photo above about our "secret" to van traveling with kids. She was pretty much stumped and said that basically when she gets in the van she gets calm because it's something we've always done. We've always driven long distances and it's just something they're used to. Yes, she said when she gets in the van she gets calm. That's your experience with your kids, right?

Now don't get me wrong. Portable DVD players have been a game changer. Showing "Frozen" at 77 miles per hour down a North Carolina freeway has some sort of soothing, or maybe embalming, effect on the nature of our wee lads and lasses. Our "Frozen" DVD actually broke just before we left for South Carolina and we made an emergency pit stop at a Wal-Mart on some South Carolina highway to get a new one to take the edge off of our 2-year-old's traveling angst. Or else we were all going to die because he was so out of sorts. Seriously.

We packed coolers and I believe Julie made sandwiches for a stretch of around 23 miles. We disposed of one box of Cheez-Its, a package of cookies, six bananas, a bag or two of Sour Patch Kids (affectionately called "Sour Cratch Kids" by our youngest verbalists), a couple of apples and assorted other edible items. We watched "Frozen" twice and our family has the unique ability of being to quote the movie verbatim from beginning to end. I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

Here's the big thing, though. The one thing that made a difference between us stopping or not.

I had no pop. Or soda. Or Coke, Pepsi, soda pop, whatever you call it.

I confess. The reason we usually stop is because Dad has to go. I'm the weak link in the bunch. On this trip I manned up though.

My next goal is 500 miles without stopping.

The World Record For One Woman Having Babies

Matt & Julie -- Relative minor-leaguers in the `kid' department

There's something I need to clear up. Some accusations, aspersions, and rumors that have come our way over the last several ways. It's been on my mind recently and I just want to clear the air. All those people who say we have a lot of kids? You're wrong. It's just not true. We're not even in the minor leagues when it comes to kids.

How can I say this? Pretty easily. And I'm not even comparing ourselves to the Duggars and however many kids they have at the moment. You see, I've done some research. I've asked the right questions. I've probed, nerded out, googled, whatever you want to say. And I'm here to tell you that the truth of the matter is that we might only have a starter set of kids when you compare us to the legend of baby-making. The woman with the womb in the Birthing Hall of Fame. The one whose maternity dresses we are not worthy to wear. (Especially me.)

Just out of curiosity, what do you think is the world record for one woman giving birth? Is it 24? Would you say 30? Can you imagine, gasp, 40? Let me just say, you're getting warm.

Friends, strangers and even Sabo blog stalkers, there is one woman who stands alone in recorded Western history for the fruitfulness of her womb. She put the `pro' in prolific. Let's just say she's pro-life like no one else.

Between the years of 1725-65 (Which, if my calculations are correct, is 40 years ... that's 40 years of giving birth ladies.) Ludmila, a Russian peasant woman and wife of Feodor Vassilyev,  gave birth to 69 children by 27 births. That is not a typo. That's 69 babies. Sixty-nine. Say it out loud for effect.

Yes, it's true. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, all the women put together reading this blog probably don't have enough kids between them to compare to Ms. Vassilyev. So how did she do it? Uh, let's rephrase that. How did she have so many kids? The key is multiple births. All you young mothers out there start taking notes.

She had four sets of quadruplets, seven sets of triplets and sixteen sets of twins. So there you go. It's all about multiple births. Got it? Not to mention the fact that she had babies over the course of 40 years. Does that mean she started cranking out wee lads and lasses at 14 years of age and finished at 54 years old? I'm not sure. Whatever the case, apparently she seemed to enjoy the whole child-birthing thing. God bless the woman, eh? Here's another thing: All but two of the children survived infancy. In 18th century rural Russia no less.

Take a minute to let this all sink in. Sixty-nine babies. No hospitals. No running water. No disposable diapers. No long, hot showers. No epidurals. No birthing rooms...no wipes, baby food in jars, formula, or anything else like it.

What a woman.

So I hope this encourages you all to rethink the whole child-rearing thing. Maybe recalibrate what constitutes having kids. And having lots of kids. While you're thinking about that, I'm going to go ask Julie when she's ready to start having kids.

DIY & Men With Power Tools. Is That A Good Thing?

The cornercinderblock is an essential element to a solid shed.

It started out innocently enough. I identified a need. I wanted to help. I thought I could contribute. So I opened my mouth. Gulp.

Have you ever offered your services out of a sense of compassion and then realized that you might be the least-qualified person to help? Welcome to my world. A few months ago I was talking to a young woman in our fellowship at Calvary Chapel Gloucester and she mentioned how she was building a shed and it wasn't going so well. So I offered to help. Naturally, I don't know the first thing about the proper manufacture of a sturdy shed. I very likely specialize in the manufacture of non-sturdy sheds. But that didn't stop me from offering to help.

I had a good heart. I was sincere in my effort to help ... yet I was very likely in over my head when I said those fateful words: "I can help finish your shed." Still, let's be honest here. I'm not a guy with totally soft hands. I've gotten a little dirt under my nails in the past. I once had calluses. There's been sightings of blisters after an honest day's work. The truth is, I've got some construction in my background. I've worked on houses we've remodeled in the past. I have a Skilsaw. I've pounded nails. I have a 4-foot level. Dude, I've got a Sawzall. Not to mention a manly sledgehammer I've wielded enough times that it's earned the nickname, "Sister Sledge." With that kind of resume I set out to finish this shed.

The first thing I did was recruit help from guys in our church. This was very strategic. I was hoping I'd get some guys who actually had been around the block with a shed, so to speak. I casually mentioned I could use a little help and miraculously came up with some volunteers. Of course, almost half of the "volunteers" happened to be two of my sons who were notified on rather short notice that they were volunteering. But that's beside the point.

So on a recent Saturday six of us showed up to build a shed. It was my sturdy lads Brenton and Ethan, myself, and my friends and volunteers Michael Goodman, Quinn Moulder and Tius Castor. We figured we'd knock this baby out in no more than a few hours. The structure we're working with is a DIY 10-foot-by-10-foot metal shed that's almost finished. Our job was to build a foundation and floor to put it on, secure it, get it square and finish getting the roof on and the sliding door hung.

No problem right? Well, after four hours, 6 donuts and 6 Gatorades, a trip to Lowe's, some digging, voluminous head scratching and general incompetence, we had managed to get 8 cinder blocks in the ground and level. At this rate, somewhere around the year 2021, or maybe 2022, we might get the shed finished. Hey, building the proper shed that meets all state and federal building codes, while maintaining an OSHA-approved safe work site in an atmosphere of brotherly love is no small task.

Still, we had the slight problem of whether we would finish the shed. Ever. Do we just put it on a concrete slab? Stick to the original plan of securing it to 4x4s on cinder blocks? Maybe pool our resources and hire someone to do it?

Praise the Lord for answered prayers. Over the course of the week my friend Matt Owens, a bona fide/for reals contractor, offered his services once he heard my story. I believe Matt was sent by the Lord. I think at least 5 other guys bear witness to that.

So last Saturday he showed up and boy howdy, did things get rolling. I do have to give a shout out to Ethan at this point. He couldn't make it to our second day of "work" because he was back at Hampden-Sydney College, but he managed to send this helpful text that really got the ball rolling for us: "Don't forget that the fourth wall is just as important as the third, and they hold together better with nails than wood glue." You can see why Ethan was wearing the tool belt the first Saturday and was basically in charge. You can't pay enough for that kind of advice and expertise.

Anyway, I don't know how to describe the amount of shock my buddy Matt seemed to show when we discovered that all 8 blocks we had put in the ground the previous week were level. He couldn't really hide it. But he laid out the plan for us, got us pointed in the right direction and we went to work. Then this happened ...

Shed building 101: The foundation is key

Things started coming together. Fueled by 6 more donuts and 6 more Gatorades and another trip to Lowe's, our crack crew of contractors started putting it all together. Literally. I mean, you couldn't stop us. We were an unstoppable shed-building force. Until we ran out of plywood.

Within a few minutes matter of four hours, we had nearly knocked out an entire shed foundation and floor. The amazing part of this whole thing is that my buddy Matt had to leave after an hour or so to attend to some family duties leaving the five of us alone with power tools and lumber. Let me just say that when you tick off some major miracles in world history, you can mention the parting of the Red Sea, Gideon and his 300 men taking out an entire army, and the five of us nearly completing a level, solid shed foundation and floor with no loss of digits or limbs. Check this photo out:

This is is what a shed-building team looks like

I am honored to be a part of this crew of shed builders from Calvary Chapel Gloucester. And when we finish this shed up -- and I emphasize when, not if -- we cannot wait -- I emphasize cannot wait -- to tackle another one. You've been warned. God bless you all.

The One Thing To Encouraging Creativity In Your Kids

"The Ballerinas" -- A drawing by MerriGrace

I had this thought this evening that I am enjoying the golden age of Sabo creativity. Over the past four weeks as our older kids who are in college spent time at home our house was cozily full of people, doubled as a 24-hour restaurant, featured a virtual parking lot full of cars and was a hub of creativity. Music, art, stand-up comedy, cooking, you name it. There was simply this amazing confluence of creativity in a variety of expressions.

Evie and MerriGrace were painting and drawing; Taylor and Ethan, both self-taught guitar players, were writing and singing songs; Claire and Madeline were playing instruments such as guitars, keyboards and the cajon and singing and Claire was cooking ... Brenton is an artist with his coffee-making and a gifted Bible teacher. I could go on down the list. Abram's Legos creations are remarkable. Judah makes us laugh with his creative use of language and expressions and so does Seth.

I was thinking about this after MerriGrace showed me one of her pencil drawings. I think it's beautiful and I was wondering what, if anything, has sparked all this originality in various mediums. Are they born with it? Is it something genetic. I like to joke that I was born without the left side of my brain, the part that's for math and science. I'm more the writing type, I guess, so maybe that's where some of this stems from. Julie is a musician; she sings and plays the piano so maybe that's where the kids get their music chops because it certainly isn't me.

Who knows. It's probably a combination of things and it will be interesting if somewhere in the long line of Sabo kids we get an engineer. Or a mathematician. Maybe even a rocket scientist.

As I was kicking around these things the thought struck me that maybe it's just the way they've played together that has led to these creative giftings. I haven't done any research on it and haven't made this a thesis for my Ph.D. But something I know about a large family and how the kids play together is that it's very creative and encourages creativity.

One of their favorite games over the years has been "Town." They all dress up -- even the older kids get in on the action -- and they each have a role in the town. There's doctors, lawyers, cops, bad guys, teachers, storekeepers, bankers and everything else that makes up a town. They make business signs and currency and dress up in the various costumes and come up with laws and regulations that any town has to have to function. It's really pretty amazing and requires a good level of cooperation. They learn to work together and to be a part of a team. They come up with town story lines and elaborate plots ... and they have a blast. The games of "Town" have lasted all day sometimes. Cousins and friends have gotten involved.

Who knows. Maybe it has something to do with it. Maybe more parents should encourage their kids to play together and see what comes out of it. Then again, it's possible our kids are gravitating
to their God-given talents in art, music and cooking. Whatever the case, I know that I love to hear the music, see the art and watch them fully engage in the creative process. Truly, I'm a blessed father.