Thriving In Motherhood Podcast | Productivity, Planning, Family Systems, Time Management, Survival Mode, Mental Health, Visio Jessica Jackson

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 and energy.
A: Appointments - Write scheduled items on the calendar. 
C: Choose 3 - write down your big 3 for the week.
E: Everything else - Write other “have to-dos” in context-based to-do lists for the week.
This method is easy to start doing and doesn’t need to be implemented all at once. Even doing one thing will increase your peace and confidence in how you use your time. 
You are building a foundation here that will be an upward cycle, and who knows what you will create! 
Let me know which one of these five steps you’re already doing well and which ONE you are going to try this week.

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 better system to offload regular dusting, vacuuming, and bathroom cleaning.
I was thinking of making chore lanyards for them, and while doing some online research, I stumbled across something even better: chore boards.
I got so excited I purchased 10 of them so I could write the process for cleaning a bathroom, deep cleaning the family living space, as well as personal daily habits and weekly chores.
Now I can give a child a job and a board with a clear step-by-step plan to execute it and then have a clear checklist to inspect it with. Expectations communicated!

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 Are: https://amzn.to/47Dwcj1
Good Inside: https://amzn.to/3uo8bOu
The Richest Man in Babylon: https://amzn.to/49BzWDk
My Side of the Mountain: https://amzn.to/3SPyXJR
On the Far Side of the Mountain: https://amzn.to/47m0zKX
The Anatomy of Peace: https://amzn.to/49InIZA
The Outward Mindset: https://amzn.to/3MRUxK5
I’d love to know your best book recommendations from this year to add to my 2024 reading list! 
 

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  (Get 10% off with code LEARN)
Good and the Beautiful books/reading for 4th grade 
The Great Illustrated Classics
Organizational Resources
Backpacks with pencil and planner
Hooks for backpacks
Notebooking pencils 
Pencil sharpener
Kids watches
How to stitch a notebook
I’m often asked what the secret is to being consistent with homeschooling. I’ve found that consistency in homeschooling is easier to achieve when you have a reset space that makes it easy to do the thing you want to do.
I want to do all the things in our homeschooling day - math, science, history, music practice, nature study, language study, etc. - so I often would pick just doing one more thing instead of cleaning up. 
What I’ve discovered this semester is that if we just do a little less each day and leave time and energy to reset the space, it is SO MUCH EASIER to get into schoolwork the next day. So instead of doing lots of school a few days a week and getting frustrated and burned out by the amount of effort it took to keep going, we do a more measured amount each day and leave time to reset for tomorrow. It has made all the difference in our consistency.

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 was feeling discouraged and like she had missed her opportunity to be the mom she wanted to be. As she watched two of her children play in the backyard, absolutely overwhelmed by the spaces inside and outside her home, she decided if she couldn’t be the mom she wanted, she would be a good grandma.
Stephanie began thinking about what makes a good grandma’s house: curated rooms of meaningful, special things, favorite blankets, and books to read to make it cozy, and good smells from food baking. 
She realized that she didn’t have to wait to be a grandma to give her family this life now, and a fire lit that carried her through a year of massive decluttering and baby steps, including building family systems to support their goals.
It’s easy to get caught up comparing our houses to the best of what we see online or the “right way” to declutter, organize, or decorate our homes. But as Stephanie worked through the spaces in her home, she carried the mantra, “Think like a grandma,” and let her home become its own unique space with the goal to make space for relationships.
She changed her thinking from what her space should be to what it could be.
Stephanie shows up at our monthly Soaring Mother Society meetings with progress and renewed momentum to keep going as she continues to take action in making her vision for her life a reality.
This week’s conversation includes so many amazing stories and learning moments in Stephanie’s life - from her oldest child speaking late and going on a 10-year learning journey of working on speech to lessons learned in raising chickens to her specialties of budgeting and making chocolate chip cookies.
It’s a refreshing chat with a mom going through the realities of everyday mom life, too!

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.
You’ll love Brooke’s emphasis on manners that will allow our kids to be aware, kind, and connected. She also shares a glimpse into her own motherhood journey and how she went from being stuck in perfectionism and overwhelm to truly enjoying motherhood and being present and engaged in her own family.
In our conversation, Brooke outlines five ways to teach manners to kids:
Focus on one manner a week. You can talk about it directly or leave it out for kids to read so they have some autonomy in learning. Bonus tip - add your manner time to something you are already doing well, like Friday movie night or a weekly family night.
Teach the why. Kids are smart and understand.
Role Play! It is a way to practice at home and a fun way to prepare.
When you are reading books or watching movies together, talk about when the characters are using the manners you’ve learned about or when they don’t. What are the consequences? What’s the impact on those around them? 
As a parent, look for when you are seeing the manners you’ve been talking about and reinforce them with a thank you or share around the dinner table when everyone used their manners.
Expect that kids won’t get it right away. That’s okay! Think of it as planting seeds that will start to grow when they are ready. This is a proactive approach in parenting to give our children the best chance of success in navigating relationships. When our children know what to do or how to act appropriately, it empowers them and builds their confidence over time.
A great resource to make this simple is Brooke Romney’s 52 Modern Manners for Kids book (and her two books for teens). She designed it to stand upright to easily sit on a counter so everyone can read it easily throughout the week. The manner and the why are on the front page, and role plays are included on the back. Talk about setting up the environment to make it easy to do the thing you want to do!
You can find Brooke’s books here:
52 Modern Manners for Kids
52 Modern Manners for Today’s Teens Volume 1
52 Modern Manners for Today’s Teens Volume 2