Thriving In Motherhood Podcast

Our family has been using audiobooks for years and they have become an integral part of our routines. Today, I’m sharing why we love listening to audiobooks in our home, how we listen, how to develop the skill of listening to audiobooks, and our favorite audiobooks to listen to by age.    Why Audiobooks? Audiobooks have been our trusty companions for years, adding a touch of magic to our quiet time and car rides. Here’s why we love them: A daily break for me. Empowers the kids to explore incredible stories independently. Encourages my kids to work on projects longer because they can listen while they work (or clean!). Introduces challenging books in an accessible way, fostering an excitement to read the actual book.   How We Listen: Our audiobook journey started with a CD player from Goodwill. We burned CDs with our favorite MP3s or borrowed them from the library. Over time, we upgraded to basic Kindles snagged on a Black Friday deal. With a passcode in place, the kids can only use it to enjoy audio

This is my seventh year creating a vision for my year. It is always a new experience, and I’m amazed at what comes out of this exercise. In today’s episode, I’m sharing what I’ve learned in 2023 and what I’m focusing on, changing, and working toward in 2024. Here are a few areas from my 2024 vision:  Investing More Into What’s Working: Road trips Family adventures (beach, historical sites, new experience) Vegetable gardening Having friends over for dinner Hiking and time outdoors Relationships with our siblings and parents Projects: Rock climbing wall Write and publish a book Plant fruit trees and berries Start a medicinal and culinary herb garden Fix our fence Back to Basics Home management and our weekly rhythm  Taking care of myself My relationship with God Every year what my vision works like is a surprise. It is unique and fits for the season I am in. I continue to share what my vision looks like as an inspiration for you to see that there is no wrong way to create one.

When it comes to goal setting, moms need different strategies in different seasons of motherhood. In this week’s video, I’ll be sharing what works in setting goals for the pregnancy and baby phase, when you have children under six, when you have school-aged kids and a full schedule, and when your children leave home. There are also principles that apply to all of us, no matter what stage we are in.  Tips for Goal Planning in Every Season of Motherhood: Survival Seasons (pregnancy, postpartum, baby stage): Create goals around who you want to BE. There is plenty you are learning how to do in this phase of motherhood. When You Have Children 6 and Under: This is an exploring phase to figure out what type of motherhood you want to create and what you like to do. Do projects, try new things, and start something that scares you. Keep two lists - things you can do when your kids are sleeping and things you can do when they are awake. When You Have School-Aged Children: When schedules are full, and you feel like

At the start of this new year, I realized I needed to make some changes to how I’m using my phone. In this week’s episode, I’m outlining the problems I was having with technology and how it impacted my daily life, the parameters I’ve set for myself with my phone, and how I’ve set myself up for success. 5 Reasons to Reduce Phone Usage: Often, when things are out of balance, or we’re not in our usual routines and rhythms, it’s easy to fill the lack of structure and numb our feelings with screen time. This just makes things worse. I find that when I have things I want to do on my phone - whether it’s an audiobook, podcast, course, project, etc. - then it is easy for me to come up with lots of excuses for the kids to keep playing, not involve them in helping out around the house, or for me to step away and finding ways to spend less time with them. These are great resources, but I want a break from the pull to step away. When I did my yearly review, I was surprised by the stories I was telling myself vs. re

One of the skills in the structure pillar of the Three Pillars of Thriving is automation - making a decision once and having it happen over and over again. We can apply this principle to our weekly schedule. When we sit down and create a template of when we do things every day throughout the week, we can refer back to it with many decisions already made.  Every quarter, I like to sketch out our current weekly rhythm or schedule. For years, I’ve done this on a piece of paper, but now we’ve added a two-page spread every quarter into the Thriving in Motherhood Planner for easy reference! In this week’s video, I’m going to walk through my process for setting up our weekly schedule. This exercise is called an “Ideal Week” - which I really struggled with as a stay-at-home mom with lots of young children. It seemed like there was nothing ideal in my life, starting with the lack of sleep! I’ve adapted the concept in an empowering way for me as a mom, and it doesn’t require me to have it all figured out yet. How To Se

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