There’s always room for one more

Kathrine Alderman
ECB Publishing, Inc.

When they picture a large family, most people probably think of a family of seven or eight, including parents. A long time ago, this might have been considered a smaller family, but nowadays, where the average family size is four or five, anything bigger is often seen as rather large. But what about even larger families?
For those who can't imagine even having one kid, having 11 might sound insane, but for Tammy and Jason Brookins, it just sort of happened. "I never wanted children at all," Tammy Brookins said. "I wanted to be married, but I didn't want kids. I wanted to travel and do all sorts of things, but then number one came along, and I was like, 'wow, this is really cool!' And I have a sister, and we're very, very close, so I wanted her to have a sister. You gotta have a sister." From there, it just kind of kept going. After her second child, who was also a girl, she didn't feel done. "I kind of thought, 'I'm not even half done,'" Brookins said. "I don't even think two more is going to be the end." Which, it definitely wasn't, as the total number of children now sits at 11. Brookins never went into it thinking they would have a specific amount of children by any particular age. They just kind of let it happen. "We would always just say, 'let's have another one. What's one more?'" Brookins said about their philosophy on it. This philosophy plays into the joke she and her husband had when they met in Russia as students with FSU. The train cars were always packed there, and they would always joke, "there is always room for one more" on the train. So, for them, there was always room for one more child.
The first three kids were all girls, but the fourth child was a boy. "Which kind of freaked me out a little bit," Brookins said. "But looking back, I think it was good because if it had been a girl, I might have stopped having kids." Since it was a boy, though, Brookins reasoned, naturally, he needs a brother. Which was what came along next, for a total of five kids. Three girls and two boys.

After the fifth child, there was a three-year gap where Brookins felt that they could possibly be finished. She was 35, they had just moved to Monticello "and we thought, well maybe that's it," Brookins recalled. "But then, number six came along, and he was super cute. So we were like, we've got three girls, we've got three boys... let's see what happens next!" So they had another one. "But she didn't nurse well," Brookins said. Which meant that she could probably have another child soon if she wanted to. "And I thought, 'well that could be good because I'm almost 40. So maybe if I have one more before I'm 40.'" Which is precisely what she did, turning 40 in October with number eight coming in November of that year.

Well, they had one more after that, and she figured they had to be done. There was another three-year gap, she was already into her forties and she was sure they weren't having any more. But then she gets pregnant with number 10. "I was giddy happy," Brookins said. "Like, ridiculously, silly happy when that little stick turned pink." She says she just laughed she was so happy about it, relating it to the story of Sarah in the Bible. Which is why they named that son Isaac. Then, not even a couple of months later, she's pregnant again with number 11. Making Isaac, number 10, and Daniel, number 11, just over a year apart.

From youngest to the oldest, there is an almost exact 20 year age difference, the oldest being 24 and the youngest being 4. With such varying ages, it creates an interesting dynamic where older siblings will sometimes help raise the younger ones. One of the children, Olivia, number three, even delivered number nine, Petra. "She then just kind of took over," Brookins recalled. "She took care of her." After Olivia had claimed Petra as her own, there were three years before the next child was born. Number four, Courson, wanted the same kind of relationship with the next baby, though he refused to be part of the delivery process. "And the same sort of thing happened," Brookins said. "Isaac was born, and Courson just took care of him." After that, Quinn, number five, wanted the same thing with Daniel, number 11. "And it just worked out. It was great. There are some cons to letting that happen, but it has pretty organically worked out."
Along with the children helping raise each other, Brookins also sings the praises of co-parents. She has three very close friends who she trusts that she can exchange kids with. When the children have to be here or there, she can trust them to get her kids there if she has to be somewhere else, and vice versa. "I'll take yours, you take mine, we'll drop them off here, we'll meet at your house, it's constant," Brookins said. "The trust and the reliability we have with that is what allows us to do a lot of the stuff we do. Whether it's sports or theater or whatever." It allows not only her but the other parents the ability to have more flexibility and let their kids do activities they may otherwise not be able to do.

The biggest support in helping her raise the kids, though, is her husband, Jason Brookins. "If it weren't for Jason, I couldn't do anything," Tammy Brookins said. "He gives me the freedom to be home." Jason Brookins works, so Tammy Brookins can focus her energy on raising the kids, and she couldn't do it without his support.

In the process of raising so many kids, Brookins decided that she also wanted to homeschool them. She homeschooled all her children from the get-go, from one to 11, and it was all because of Pink Floyd. "In 1984, Pink Floyd had a movie called 'The Wall,'" Brookins recalls, "and it was all about taking the women and children and crushing them and refining them and making them all come out the same. I was 14, and I hated school and thought something has to be different. Still, I didn't learn about homeschooling until around 10 years later." When Brookings was around 23 or 24, she met homeschoolers in real life, and that was the first she had really heard about it. When she did, though, she decided right then, before she even had number one, that that was what she would do for her children. "It's been so great, so freeing," Brookins said. "We get to be who we are, they don't have to worry about things, they don't struggle with who they are or what they like, what's popular, what's cool, when to eat or go to the bathroom. You know, they just get to live a free life." It's worked out great for them, and now Brookins even has a bumper sticker that says, "Pink Floyd is why I homeschool."

With such a large family, you have to wonder how they function in a world geared more towards the average family size or how they feed so many people every day. But, apparently, food wasn't much of a problem. "They don't eat much," Brookins said. "It's the craziest thing. Even when they go to their friends' houses, their parents will tell me they don't eat much."

Along with the kids just not eating much, they've also been lucky. Jason Brookins has always been gainfully employed, and they've been able to get what they need. "We buy half a cow every year," Brookins mentioned. "We used to buy bulk chicken, which was awesome, but that company went out of business. We would buy four cases, which was about 160 pounds, of chicken, and we would marinate them, chop them, boil them and freeze them. So our freezer was always full of chicken." They also got into milling their own wheat and currently have about five five-gallon buckets of wheat. "So no one should go hungry. We can always make pancakes or bread," Brookins laughed.

Along with food, the other thing a lot of people are probably wondering about is housing and transportation. How can you comfortably fit 13 people in a house? How do you go anywhere as a family? Well, the answer is large rooms that are shared and a 12 passenger van.

The Brookins' first came to Monticello when Alex, number one, was four, and Katherine, number two, was one for the Watermelon Festival. "We came home with a puppy and a plan," Brookins said. As they ended up adopting a puppy from the Jefferson County Humane Society. At the time, they lived in Tallahassee, and they lived there for five years before they were finally able to buy property and move to Monticello. They had had a couple of more kids by then, but they packed them all up along with the dog and moved here. In Tallahassee, they had a small house, 1300 square feet, three-bedroom, two-bath. The kids' bedroom was just huge, and they all shared it, as Jason Brookins’ brother lived with them at the time. When they moved to Monticello, they built basically the same size house because that's what they could afford. When the oldest moved out to go to college, Brookins was pregnant with the tenth, but then she panicked a little when she got pregnant with the eleventh, as the house was starting to feel really small. So they put the house up for sale, sold it in three weeks and bought the house they live in now, which is about twice the size of their old house, but still only has three bedrooms. "But the bedrooms are massive," Brookins said. "So we started off with four girls in one room, which was twice the size of their old room, and then the six boys in the other room, which was about three times the size of their old room." As children moved out, the room dynamic has changed slightly, but it still remains, kids sharing massive rooms.

Moving to Monticello is something that Brookins wouldn't change. She says, "I love living in Monticello with all the kids. It's just right." She loves that it's small and has such a tight community. She knows that if one of her kids is doing something they shouldn't be, someone will probably see it and tell her.

Overall, Brookins says they've been blessed. "They're all healthy, strong, intelligent, creative, they're all good things," Brookins said. "There is nothing that I could point to and say we shouldn't have had another one." As you'd imagine, though, there are pros and cons to having such a large family. Brookins claims one of the most challenging things is that it always feels like you're missing something. Whether it's a production or a sport, it's hard to catch everything and go to everything with so many kids. However, the best part is that you're never alone when you have such a large family. Brookins says there is almost always someone to be happy with and someone who is happy to see you.