Houston, We Have a Math Problem

This is a post I found stashed away in my drafts folder that I started writing almost two year ago. Funny thing is, what I was writing about still holds true so I finished it off with some more recent experiences. It's especially timely because our boys are actually obsessed with math right now. We have to ask them to stop the math quiz games so that we can eat dinner in peace.

The librarian said my children should be on leashes.
That was kind of a low point.
Days like that make me question my parenting and whether I am raising truly ill-behaved children. I have spent a lot of time pondering this and my conclusion is this: We don't have behavior problems, we just have math problems.
Individually, our children are delightful people. Take one of them, just one of them, just about anywhere and you will have a great time. They are quirky and funny and smart and cute. When you have just one child with you, even if they do start to misbehave you can quickly react with some fabulous parenting strategy: distraction, empathizing, humor, extinction, time out, mirroring, the choices are endless. Easy peasy.
Collectively, our children are a "handful". That is the number one descriptive word that strangers say when they see my family. When all five are together they CAN be delightful, but they can also be disastrous. It all comes down to math.
The first, and most obvious problem, is that once you have three children your arms are outnumbered. However, when I had three I found that, in an emergency, I could also restrain one little person using my legs. With five, my limbs are completely outnumbered.
The second problem is that naughtiness of little boys is not additive, but rather exponential.
For example, let's say you take one little boy to the store. He starts to climb the shelves or pull things off. You can stop him pretty quickly, so lets say he gets five bags of chips on the floor before you stop him. If you take two little boys to the store, they will coordinate their efforts and run in different directions. So, you get the first one who has five bags of chips on the floor, but by the time you get him buckled into the grocery cart and locate the other little guy, little boy #2 has now tossed 15 boxes of crackers. So you've gone from a level five mess to a level twenty mess by adding just one boy to the mix. When you have five mobile little boys the numbers go up quickly.
The next math problem we have is the multiplication of ideas. I have literally found a collaborative list in one of the boy's bedroom entitled "Evil Schemes". Item number 1 on the list was "mess up mom's hair" which is confusing because I almost never "do" my hair in the first place. Anyway, the point is that our boys work together to come up with more and naughtier ideas. Parachuting off the top of the fridge? Sledding down the stairs into a massive pile of toys? Tarzan swinging on cabinet doors that then breaks them off their hinges? Magic potions that explode all over the bathroom? Yep. Collaboration at its best.
Our final math problem is just an issue of probabilities. If you have one volatile chemical in isolation, you are probably safe. Two chemicals might come together and have a reaction. Five chemicals? It's almost guaranteed that something is going to blow up. Marc and I have been thinking of our boys lately in terms of that classic logic problem involving the fox, the goose and sack of corn. The idea is that a farmer needs to move all three things across the lake but the canoe only holds the farmer and one item at a time. The only safe things to leave together are the fox and the corn because the fox will eat the goose and the goose will eat the corn if left unsupervised. In our family we have a great white shark, a crocodile, a wolverine, a komodo dragon and a king cobra. You can only keep your eyes on two of them at a time and the rest of them might strike at any moment. They will either try to eat each other or team up to eat all of your emergency hidden stashes of cheetos and jellybeans.
Bonus math problem: 5 boys + costco sized jar of jellybellies = ?*
*acceptable answers might include pandemonium, chaos, destruction, the apocalypse, chernobyl or insanity