My husband and I are often asked, being the parents of six children, “How do you do it?” I never really know how to respond. People look at me as if I am about to reveal some guarded secret.

“Sure, I can tell you how it’s done, but then I’d have to kill you.” Seriously though, it is not something that can be summed up into one short answer. It is an ever-evolving process that changes and grows as my children grow and change, although there are a couple of helpful traits that go a long when navigating our way along the parenting journey.

Before any of us have children, we envision how our lives are going to play out. We try to plan out how many children we are going to have, decide whether one parent is going to stay at home with the children or whether both parents will continue to work. We know how we are going to discipline them, what family activities and vacations we will try to participate in, and so on and so forth.

THIS IS THE FIRST MISTAKE WE MAKE. That’s right. We are all guilty of making a mistake in our parenting even before our first child is born. I am not saying that we should throw all plans out the window, but to make parenting work for us we need to be flexible. Every day we walk a fine line between structure and spontaneity.

We all have examples to illustrate this point; the presentation at work that is postponed because a child comes down with a fever, the new outfit that is ruined because a child has spit up on it, or more seriously the baby that is born with health problems that turns everything over on its head. The more flexible we can be, the less stressed we will become when life throws us a curve ball.

Going hand in hand with flexibility, is a sense of humor. The ability to laugh is so important. Let me describe last Valentine’s Day for you. I had two sons already leave for school, but still needed to get two more children out the door to catch the bus. Things were going smoothly when I looked over to the couch and saw my seventeen month old sitting there. No big deal, except this was the first day he had been able to climb up himself.

There was a brief moment of pride in his accomplishment, but quickly the reality of this new challenge set in. It would be one more thing we would have to monitor him around. My daughter, who was sitting next to him on the couch, began making gagging noises and plugging her noise, her subtle way of letting me know the baby has a dirty diaper. I walked over to the couch and picked the baby up only to realize the mess had made its way up the back of the diaper, up the back of his pajamas, and now all over my forearm.

Wait! It did not stop there. It was all over the back cushion of the couch. So I removed the cushion and set it aside to clean later and began to head upstairs to throw myself and the baby in the shower. I climbed about three steps when my five year old ran hysterically out of the downstairs bathroom and tells me water is coming out of the toilet. I took a look and sure enough there was water and other things flowing out of the toilet onto the floor.

Meanwhile, my daughters wanted to know if I could give them a kiss goodbye now because they needed to leave to catch the bus. So at that moment, I just shut the door to the bathroom and laughed. Life is pretty good when your daughters still want to kiss you even though you are covered in poop, and besides it will be fun when people ask how my Valentine’s Day is going I will be able to truthfully answer, “Pretty sh**ty!”

The way I look at it I could have either laughed or cried at that moment. I have gone both routes before. Sometimes the crying route needs to be taken. It can be relieving. The laughing route though, lightens the mood, teaches my children to roll with the punches and gives me the needed push to carry on.

Parenting can be very challenging. It definitely helps to be organized and patient, but a sense of humor and flexibility is key to getting through each day. I am sure this sounds very familiar to many of you, whether you have one, two, or eight children. So if you see me on the street and ask me “Stephanie, I don’t know how you do it”, you can expect me to say, “One day at a time, just like you”.

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