The Reback’s have ten daughters and six sons, ranging from age two to 23. Every season is different, but currently ten of the children play lacrosse, three compete in track, one takes on triathlons and another plays beach volleyball. Lyette never misses a game.
She gave birth to her first daughter Daly Kay, now 21, when she herself was just 21, and has since had 12 more biological children, including latest addition Vaughn, two, as well as adopting four others.
Her other children are daughters Ryli, 20, Bliss, 19, Kemper, 17, Glory, 15, Trinity, 13, Liberty, 11, Sojourner, eight, Victory, six and Verity, four, and sons Courson, 12, Judson, 10, Shepherd, 10, Ransom, eight and Stone, five.
The kids participate in 88 sports practices each week. Their dad, David, is a coach. And since they can’t all fit in a car, so the family has a bus, which Lyette also drives. And everyone is expected to help with the chores, including the littlest one.
“It’s a full-force family effort,” said Reback. “It’s never just me doing everything.”
Reback says her family works together not only to get through the day, but also to help others. “We’re kind of a little army,” she shared. “So people would ask us, ‘Oh! Can you help us with this project? Oh can you help us with the project’?”
It means Lyette – who grew up as an only child – has spent ten years of her life pregnant, gaining and shedding a total of 600lbs in baby weight and going through labor – without a single C-section – a dozen times.
The mother of 16 regularly ferries her children around in a minibus – taking them to 88 different sports practices a week.
Despite having her hands full, the supermother – who has written a book about parenting – still finds time to work out and go for dinner with friends thanks to a strict chores schedule.
Lyette admitted that when she was younger she would have thought having 16 children was ‘crazy’ – but believes it’s the ‘best job in the world’.
‘If I had known then that by the time I was 40 I would have 16 kids I would have thought it was crazy,’ she said.
‘If the number of children we have comes up in conversation or people see us out and they don’t know our family, they are like, “holy mackerel”.
