Thriving In Motherhood Podcast

In this week’s episode, I’m sharing the #1 thing moms need to do for 2024 - and I can’t think of any exceptions. In my 10.5 years of motherhood, this is the thing that has helped me in EVERY season, from hard pregnancies where days creep by to full schedules with lots going on in life and business. Every mom needs to create a vision for the year.  There are an almost endless number of paths each day, but with your vision as a guide, you can walk in one direction and get to a destination you want to end up at. You can go to bed confident with how you spent your time and energy and wake up excited for the day ahead. Here are three steps to start creating your vision for 2024: Start a technology fast. Determine what you will and won’t do for the next 14-30 days. The goal is not to have outside influences present - even good ones! This will help you get mental clarity about what matters to you in this season of life. Make it so the only factors in your life are your own thoughts, your spouse and children, and i

I have spent a lot of time inside with young kids who have loads of energy (even though we get out as much as we can). We’ve been in tiny grad student apartments and smaller houses without clear places to physically move their bodies for all 10.5 years of motherhood. As we get into winter, I start to feel a sense of panic about what we will do for months with shorter daylight hours, colder temperatures, and lots of need to move our bodies. In this week’s episode, I’m sharing how we’ve set up our home (even when we lived in tiny apartments) so the kids have places to play hard inside, as well as activities I have to direct the energy when needed.  Setting Up Inside So Kids Can Play In The Winter: Create a few intentional places for big movement. Even in our small apartment, we had a picker triangle and a small trampoline. We’ve added a pull-up bar in a doorway.  Have self-directed activities like yoga or calisthenics cards and teach your kids how to use them. Have a list of activities you can refer to wh

If you had told me ten years ago that I could be a full-time stay-at-home mom, living 30 hours away from our family, homeschooling my four children, and running a business in small pockets of time, I wouldn’t have believed you.  In those early years, the days ran together in one big blur, our cinder block student housing had stuff strewn around the floor, and I felt horribly guilty if I put my baby down, let alone did something I was interested in. In this week’s video, I’m sharing my brand new 5-step PEACE Method Planning system for your week that has transformed my life from surviving the days to waking up excited. Many other productivity strategies work when you have uninterrupted blocks of time, but that is rarely the reality as a stay-at-home mom. This method is different because it takes thos interruptions into account and allows you to create a schedule that works. 5-Step PEACE Method Planning System: P: Purpose - what matters most to you? E: Energy - review the previous week for wins to build momentum

How do you feel about chore charts? I like the idea of them, and I don’t mind creating them, but when it comes to having a marker or stickers handy to actually fill them out, we drop the ball pretty much every time.  This week, I’m sharing a new discovery I made that is simplifying our family cleaning routine: chore boards. This completely self-contained system allows me to clearly communicate each and every step that needs to be completed in a job, like cleaning the bathroom. In business, there is a crucial principle of writing standard operating procedures so that someone besides you can do a task and you can scale over time as you systemize. It’s the same in our families. As my kids are getting a little bit older, I’m ready to delegate a bit more to them in things that it takes to run our household smoothly. We have lots of great habits in place (they all have jobs to keep the kitchen clean, they know their personal habits, and they each have a zone they know they have to pick up), but I need to have a bet

Every month, I write down the books I read or listened to. Today, I’m sharing my 12 favorites that I read this year from a wide variety of topics and subjects.  Reading lots of books has allowed me to actively learn while being a stay-at-home mom. When designing a planner for my needs, keeping track of the books I read or listened to each month was an essential piece.  Why? Two reasons: it helped me to read more because I wanted to be able to write things down AND to remember all that I’ve read, learned, and enjoyed. A Books Read section is still in the official Thriving in Motherhood Planner in the monthly review. You can get your 2024 planner today and have it arrive by Christmas! Here are my 12 favorite books of 2023: How to Break up with your phone: https://amzn.to/3sDNw8J The Coddling of the American Mind: https://amzn.to/49L62g8 What Happened to You?: https://amzn.to/3unnc3b Habits of a Household: https://amzn.to/3GchGmo Love Life and See Good Days: https://amzn.to/3sy10Tv Grace Where you Ar

In this week’s video, I’ll take you on a virtual tour of our homeschooling setup for this year. As a homeschooling mom of Kindergarten, 2nd grade, and 4th grade kids, I’ve tested a variety of resources and materials over the years.  So, if you’re a fellow homeschooling parent looking for inspiration, you’re in the right place! We’ve made a few tweaks to how we are doing school this year. Now that I have three school-aged kids, we are shifting to more of a family school focus with a few individual subjects, instead of primarily individual studies.  Here is what we are focusing on this year:  Family Subject Resources Science: Science in the Beginning  Picture Study  Addition Facts That Stick  Subtraction Facts that Stick  Language Study  History - Story of the World  Picture books from the library on a variety of subjects Individual Study Busy town Eye Found It Game Spot It All About Reading  Rightstart Math Minimalist Math Curriculum Research Parent/ Right start  Hoffman Academy  

Have you ever felt like it’s too late to be the mom you hope to be and you’ll be a good grandma instead? In this week’s video, Stephanie Stutznegger shares how she has radically changed her life in the last year as she got clear with her vision, took lots of baby steps, and celebrated each month in the Thriving in Motherhood Planner and Soaring Mothers Society. Stephanie lives in Northern California with her husband, Jeff, and their four kids. They love being outside together and doing woodworking projects. They have a backyard full of chickens, ducks, a beehive, a newly finished treehouse, and a suspension bridge over their creek, connecting them to her brother and sister-in-law’s house. Stephanie loves being a wife and mother, and she’s grateful to be part of the Thriving in Motherhood community. Stephanie’s favorite type of day is dishes piled high from cooking three meals, children laughing in the backyard, the doors and windows open, and fresh cookies in the oven. Last fall, Stephanie shared that she wa

Do you struggle with manners in your family? Do you wonder if they are outdated and even worth teaching? In this week’s episode, Brooke Romney shares her simple system to effectively make manners part of our everyday lives with kids.  Brooke Romney is a writer, speaker and leader of an online community who helps moms of teens and tweens to create meaningful, healthy, and enjoyable relationships with their children through practical application, education, and community. Her goal is for every family to feel confident and connected. The mother of four boys ages tween to adult, Brooke knows parenting perfection isn’t real and takes an honest and hopeful approach with her audience. Her best-selling book 52 Modern Manners for Today’s Teens (Volumes 1 and 2) provides weekly tips to help parents and teens navigate the complexities of today’s world. The follow-up 52 Modern Manners for Kids features tips for kids and tweens aged four through 12.  Brooke and her family live in Utah. You can find her on Instagram HERE.

This week on the podcast, I’m answering a fabulous question about how to use nap time well. Maybe you can relate to hitting the quiet moment of the day and feeling exhausted and wanting to take a nap yourself, but also wanting to be consistent in what you want to do. It can be hard to figure out what to do when it feels like everything needs to be done while also lacking motivation because you are exhausted. In this week’s episode, I’ll be sharing strategies and tips so you can feel confident about using nap time in a way that is intentional and productive for you. How to overcome lack of motivation: Keep the time frame short: I just need to make choices for TODAY. I can do anything for a short period of time. Write down what you want to be doing: A weekly or daily rhythm or an ideal week plan is a great way to ensure you know what you want to do and when. If you already know what you want to be doing, then it is easier to take the steps to do it than if you have to figure it out every day. Every night,

This week’s question is about how we do Poetry Tea Time in our family. This is an idea I got several years ago from Julie Bogert @bravelearnerhome, and we’ve incorporated it into our weekly rhythm.  In this week’s episode, I’ll share how we set it up to make it easy to do at our house, when we hold our tea time, the books we use, and our favorite snacks that everyone looks forward to. The What, How, and Where of Poetry Tea Time: Poetry Tea Time is basically eating food and reading poems together. Each child picks a poem and either reads it aloud or hands it to me to read.  Getting set up is crucial. The easier you make it, the more likely it is to happen. I made a trip to Goodwill and got mugs and tea cups. You could also have a special tablecloth and candles. Often, for us, just sitting down with a snack and a clean table is victory enough.  Keep the snacks simple and delicious. My oldest loves going out to gather lemon balm or mint leaves and steeping them in water for our tea. Other common tea-time s

In this week’s episode, I’m answering a question from a mom in our Thriving in Motherhood Community about possible routines (besides sitting in bed together, playing with toys, and watching movies) that you can have with severe morning sickness during pregnancy when you have other little kids at home.   I’ve had four really challenging pregnancies, the last three with kids at home, and in this episode, I’ll share what worked for us during those hard months and principles you can apply to make the best of an honestly challenging situation and feel some joy along the way too.   Routines for Mom: Monthly reviews in the Thriving in Motherhood Planner: These monthly reviews are ESSENTIAL. It helps you reality-check what is actually happening. I told myself, “All I do is lie on the couch, grow a baby, and hang out with the kids.” Not a helpful story. Once I started writing down what I learned and discovered, accomplished, places we went, significant things for our family, and books I read or listened to, I had a

It's here!! The 2024 Thriving in Motherhood Planner is ready to make its way into your hands to empower you in creating a life that you are excited to wake up to each day.  In this week's episode, I'm sharing the story of the planner, the overview of how the whole system works, and all of the changes and updates that have been made for next year's planner. I am very excited about the details we've added and the revisions. It is the best version yet! What makes the Thriving in Motherhood Planner unique? It’s not just about getting things done - it’s about getting the RIGHT things done. This is unique to every single one of us. Create your vision first to help you get clarity about what matters to you and then easily refer back to it all year long. Plan your weeks, not your days. Set a weekly Big 3. Monthly review to CELEBRATE. Quarterly reviews to check in with your vision - see what works, see what you need to let go of, and know what goals to focus on. Context-based to-dos instead of a long, runn

Do you get to the end of your day completely exhausted but weren’t able to do the things you wanted or wrote out in your time block? I got this very relatable question from a mother in our Thriving in Motherhood Community: “I put in time blocks and write my routines, and it helps to schedule around meal times, but by the end of the day, I fill in what I did instead of actually doing what I wanted to do. I’m feeling so burned out, unable to rest, and feel like there is never any time to work on projects or time for myself. Any tips on how to plan effectively so you don’t get burned out?”  In this week’s episode, I talk about five steps to planning in a way that avoids burnout: Plan your rest and exercise first: You are going to need energy to do the things you want to do and manage a household. We established a daily Rest and Read time in our home years ago. A daily 10-20 minute power nap can give you a recharge to have an effective second half of the day. As moms, we are facing our own challenges that we ca

I got an excellent question from a mother in our Thriving in Motherhood community, Kate, about how to find activities you can enjoy with all your children. In this week’s episode, I’ll address how to manage the different personalities of your children and their own interests, as well as the resistance that comes when you try to get everyone to agree on what to do together.

In this week’s episode, I’m answering a question from a member of our own Thriving in Motherhood community about how to handle negative attitudes with her child when it comes to certain things about homeschooling. I’m no stranger to negative attitudes in our home (from myself and the kids), but we are very intentional with addressing those attitudes.  Here are seven questions we ask when one of our children has a negative attitude: Have they moved their body today? What is the reason for resistance? How can I give them more autonomy? Is the environment set up so it is easy to do the thing they need to do? Am I ready with my part, or are they waiting for me and getting interrupted from what they started to do? What skill am I trying to teach? How can I partner with my child in this and mentor? What principles or truths do they need to understand to want to change the behavior themself? These questions help me get to the root of the problem and are part of seeking to understand so we can come up

A few weeks ago, I did an episode about my morning routine. I got a great follow-up question about how to do this when you have a baby or toddler that wakes up super early. I remember that season well.  A friend and I would meet up at 7:45 a.m. with our two toddlers and baby, each of whom woke up too early and went for a run and talked about how our kids wake up too early! But I’ve learned a lot from that season, and here are my best tips for doing a morning routine in the early years to get the brainstorming started for what could work for you. This is such an essential piece of the puzzle when it comes to not just surviving motherhood and fits into the Soul Pillar of the Three Pillars of Thriving. Here are a few things I’ve done that work for our family: Do your morning routine with your kids - I started doing my morning routine with my kids instead of jumping into kid things. I still do this with my youngest, who wakes up before the rest of my kids. The expectation is that I’m not available right now so

For the first time in 10 years, I recently traveled across the country and left all my kids and my husband for six days. It wasn’t as impossible as I had made it out to be in my mind. In fact, everything went great! In this week’s episode, I’m sharing practical things I did to prepare everyone for a smooth week at home. Next time my husband travels, I’ll be using some of these tips to make things easier for myself too.   

As we transition from summer to fall, I like to pause and reflect on how the last few months went as a way to close the tabs and move forward with confidence into the next season.  It can be easy to get to the end of the season and wish it went differently. But instead of sitting in a place of discouragement or looking at the things that didn’t go well, we can pause and look for the lessons learned to help us be intentional about the little changes we make in our lives that make a big difference over time. You either get the results you want or the lesson you needed. So, if you want to try to do your own summer review, here are a few questions to get you started: What were you hoping summer would look like? What went well this summer? Was there something this summer that you stressed about that turned out not to be a big deal? What were some of the things that didn’t go well? Look for the lessons and how to reframe. What do you want to remember in your planning for next summer? In this week’s epis

After a summer of different activities and routines (or maybe no routines), I get excited about settling into a new rhythm as we transition into the school year and fall.  In this week’s episode, I’m sharing the process I’ve used for years to help our family get clarity about what matters to us right now and how to make sure we make time for it in our daily life. I’m really great at thinking of the ideal in every area of life. But the reality is that things are going to change, balls are going to drop, and we let go of things as our enthusiasm and energy fade. So what matters most that you want to make a top priority and invest time and energy in? What is the thing that you can go big on this fall? This can be your vision for the fall to help you know what to say yes to, say no to and to structure your days and weeks around. Here are some other tips to transition back into family routines: Write down your schedule as it already is - not as you want it to be. Decide the one thing you want to go big on for

For years I’ve gotten up before the kids (or with the kids and let them play near me) while I do my morning routine to get myself in a good place. This is one of the ways I keep my Soul Pillar intact. When I don’t do my morning routine, I find that it doesn’t take too long before I’m irritable, grumpy, and snappy at everyone around me. Now that I’m aware of that, this morning routine is one of the first things I put back in place when we are transitioning from the novelty and trips of summer back into our school year routines at home.  In this week’s episode, I’m sharing exactly what I’ve done for my morning routine that sets me up for success. My Morning Routine: Free write about the last 24 hours: I write about anything that was meaningful and significant in the last 24 hours. This creates space in my brain.  Answer questions in the Thriving in Motherhood Journal: I ask myself key questions in the Thriving in Motherhood Journal - What’s one thing that could make me feel successful at the end of the day?