Rather than leisurely getting up to prepare for the school day, freshman Marina Nedeljkovic has to get up first in her family and wake up all seven of her younger siblings. With eight kids total, all under 15, her mother needs all the help she can get.

“It’s pretty hectic,” she said. “We have to make breakfast and pack our lunches. We all just rush out of the house.”

Students from bigger families like Nedeljkovic’s often return home to more than just homework, from taking care of siblings to coordinating large family dinners. With those added responsibilities sometimes come stress and frustration, but always intense relationships. “Basically, I do what a mom should do,” senior Amanda Zeitouni said. When her mom goes away on business, she has to care for her three younger siblings by getting them ready for school, giving them dinner and putting them to bed.

Instead of doing her homework, Nedeljkovic often has to baby-sit her one-year-old sister, which can get “annoying.”

“We all help out a little. We have a job chart that we switch every two weeks,” Nedeljkovic said. Some of the jobs include sweeping, laundry duty, doing the dishes and making snacks. Organization is key when there are so many kids to keep track of.

Having a big family also changes the bond between relatives. Freshman Isabelle Groper’s family dynamic is an interesting example of this: she lives with her father and twin sister as well as her four cousins and their parents.

“We’ve become more like brothers and sisters instead of cousins,” Groper said. “We fight all the time. We understand each other a lot more than we used to; we know everything about each other now,” she said. “It never gets lonely. You’re never alone. There’s always someone there to talk to.”

Nedeljkovic agreed about the family camaraderie. “We don’t really fight; we’re all pretty close. We’re just always together. It’s not any different from other people’s [relationships],” she said.

On the other hand, big families can sometimes put stress on relationships. “I have a pretty good relationship [with my mom], but it’s hard because I have to do a lot I don’t want to do, and because I don’t have time for myself,” Zeitouni said.

Those without many siblings often don’t realize how sacred alone time is. “Sometimes when I want to be alone, it gets annoying [to have younger kids around]. They come in to my room because they don’t know any better,” Nedeljkovic said.

Family dinners differentiate among big families, from treasuring the precious time together to not having it at all. For Zeitouni’s family, dinners are tough to coordinate. “There’s a lot of people and everyone has their own schedule so we don’t really have family dinners that often, but when we do, everyone talks over each other,” she said.

Nedeljkovic’s family, though, manages to almost always eat dinner together, as does Groper’s family. “We always talk about how it could be a reality show,” Groper said. “Everyone is yelling over each other, saying different stories about their day … it’s actually hilarious.”

The holidays especially are eventful in a family with lots of kids.

“We don’t usually have a lot of people over for holidays because we have such a big family,” Nedeljkovic said, “so we just have close relatives like my grandparents and aunt and uncle. We all help out. I set the table and my brother makes sure the entrance looks nice.”

“When our whole family gets together, it’s pretty crazy,” Groper said. “We have a … big family and we’re all really insane. It’s a comedy show.”