Looking for an alternative to the Gosselin's over-the-top drama? Want to get back to a time when reality TV families looked like people who could be your neighbor? TLC has just what you're searching for: Meet the Hayes family of "Table for 12."



Eric and Betty Hayes have ten children: Twins Kevin and Kyle are 12, Kieran and Megan (also twins) are 10, and septuplets Tara, Rachel, Rebecca, Ryan, Connor and EJ are 4. With that many kids -- and that many multiples -- the Hayes' must get asked some pretty wacky questions. "'How many gallons of milk do you use every day?'" Betty Hayes says with a laugh. "Really? Does it really matter?"

But sometimes idle curiosity about the groceries slides into idle curiosity about other parts of the Hayes' life. "I'm amazed that people want to com into my bedroom -- everyone wants to know how we conceived them," Hayes says. "I think, wow if I started asking you how you had sex with your husband -- it's amazingly invasive."

It's funny to hear the subject of a reality show talk about people's questions as "invasive," but Betty Hayes doesn't act like a TV diva. She's a friendly, down-to-earth mom who really seems to have her priorities straight. So how does someone like that wind up with a television show?

Hayes initially didn't want to do a reality show, but her husband talked her into it by pointing out that it might help their daughter, Rebecca, who has Cerebral Palsy. Her main hope for the show, she says, is "just seeing her advance." Hayes also hopes that her story might help other moms like herself. "I felt overwhelmed and not full of knowledge about [CP]," she says, but now that she's lived with the diagnosis for a while, she knows that her story, and Rebecca's, might be useful to another family going through the same thing. So does she have advice for parents of disabled kids? "You learn a lot from people who have been there before you," Hayes says humbly. "Ask questions -- don't hesitate. If you don't ask, you're never going to learn anything."

Have the Hayes learned anything from America's other TV families? Maybe; they seem to be working hard to keep their feet -- all 24 of them -- firmly on the ground. In order to maintain a sense of normalcy, Hayes works with the TLC production crew to schedule filming days around her children's activities, rather than doing it the other way around. "They call us beforehand and say, 'Do you have any activities coming up?' They ask if they can come and tape -- whenever we have activities, they come." But the schedule, Hayes says, is primarily driven by her family's scheduling, rather than the network's. "I didn't want it to be fake; I wanted it to be laid back and real," she says. So is there a down side to being on television? Sometimes, Hayes says, "the kids want to go out for play dates and we have to postpone."

Hayes has a good sense of humor about reality TV stardom, and about people who envy that. "Who wants to show the whole world your inside secrets?" she laughs."Now I have to clean!" She and her husband are confident that they can keep themselves and their family grounded despite the presence of the TV cameras. "We constantly say, 'We're not that important,'" she says."Its just us, it's just every day. We're very middle class, we're not trying to live above our means." She pauses. "We have our moments with people yelling and fighting," she says, but "for the most part, it's just us loving each other and being happy."