It all starts with YOU

Teaching your kids confidence, connection and fun starts with you! This episode is the foundation of what you need to know so you can become the example you want your kids to follow. It will help you get started on the path that will help you enjoy the teen years right now and build a relationship that will keep your family close and connected long after your kids are grown and gone.

Want help getting started? Book a FREE Parenting Strategy Session and I will personalize a strategy to help you with the problems you are facing right now.

Hi! I'm Jen!

Welcome to the very first episode of "This is going to be fun." I have six kids, and I know you're a busy mom too, so I promise to keep these episodes short and sweet, but packed with inspiration and ideas you can use right now to help you enjoy being a mom. Today, I wanna talk to you about something that will set the stage for everything else I will share here, and that is... It starts with you.

You want your kids to have a great life

We all want our kids to have a great life. To do the things that light their soul on fire, to be confident in who they are and what they have to contribute to the world, we want them to find fulfillment and purpose, we want our kids to feel a close connection with us and with their siblings, so that they will want to come back and stay connected with us as a family after they're grown and have families of their own, we want our kids to find an amazing spouse who they love and who loves them, so they can have a great marriage and a great family. We want our kids to know how to navigate friendships and relationships, how to be present and live in the moment, we want them to know how to have fun and take care of their own needs, we want them to be resilient and know that challenges will come and that they will know how to get through them when they do.

There are hundreds of thousands of books and courses about how to do this, how to teach these things to our kids, and they're full of so many great ideas and tips and concepts. But one of the most important things I want you to know is that

it starts with you.

You can help your kids more when you show them how to do something by your example. What you do... They will follow.

What Kind of Example Are You Setting?

To illustrate this, I want to share a story that happened after our fourth child was born. My husband had just finished his Doctorate program, and we were preparing to move from Salt Lake City, Utah to Portland, Oregon... I had a cousin that lived in Portland, so we went up to stay with her while we looked for houses. Our fourth baby had literally just been born... She was three weeks old... And we had a two-year-old, a four-year-old and a six-year-old. My cousin was so kind to watch the four and six-year-old while we went house shopping, but we took the little two with us.

At each house the realtor would go up to the door, knock on the door and say, "Hello, RE MAX" before she would unlock the door and we would go in and look at the house. We did this all day for a full day, and then we were back at it again the second day. Sometime in the second day, my little two-year-old daughter got ahead of us, and she got up to the door before the rest of us, and she knocked on the door and she said, "Hello, we-max," and we all giggled because she had just followed our example of exactly what we had done so many times before. But then she looked at all of us and she said, "Who's we-max?" And we all laughed again because she, in her innocence, was just following our example, not knowing why we were doing this, in fact, I'm sure she probably wondered who this RE-MAX was and why they were never home and why we kept asking for them...

Our kids follow our example. Are you the example that you want them to follow? What do you hope they pick up from you? What do you hope they don't? Now, I'm not suggesting you need to be perfect or that your imperfections are going to ruin your kids forever -- trust me, your kids are going to be fine -- but teaching your kids that they matter starts with you showing them that you know that you matter.

Actions Speak Louder than Words

Teaching your kids how to follow their passion and use their talents to make contributions in the world, starts with you knowing your purpose and making a contribution in the world right now, while they are there to see the sacrifice and the effort and the heart that goes into all of it. Teaching your kids to be present and live in the moment starts with you living in the moment, having fun with them, showing them that grown-ups are also allowed to enjoy their life and do things just for fun.

Teaching your kids to have healthy marriages and friendships starts with you making time to have a healthy marriage and healthy friendships. If you want a family that is tight-knit and stays close long after everyone has grown and gone, it starts with you creating space for those connections to happen now. You have to be part of them. You set the example.

Sacrificial Motherhood is NOT The Way

So many of the amazing mothers who have gone before us, were taught that they needed to sacrifice everything they were for motherhood. I'm sure you can think of some examples of amazing women you have known who have sacrificed all they were for the sake of motherhood, but it wasn't without a cost. It led to so many of them feeling resentful, Overwhelmed, unappreciated and unfulfilled, it led to a whole generation of helicopter parenting, meddling and manipulating their kids to be smart and successful because that was the only way they could measure their worth as a mother and justify a life of sacrificing everything for their kids. I don't think this is healthy, and I don't think it's necessary, but most important, I don't think it's serving our next generation of children.

I certainly do not want this for my girls when they become mothers, I want instead for them to know how to take care of themselves. So they have something to give. The best moms are the ones who take care of themselves so that they can give because they want to, not because they feel like they should, not because they feel like they have to, not because of the expectations all around them, but because they truly, truly want to give the joy of their life to their kids.

Give Your Kids the Gift of a Mom Who Enjoys Her Family

When you truly enjoy your life because you are taking care of you, you know your worth, you don't need to define yourself by what your kids do or don't do, you know that nobody else is responsible for meeting your needs except you, you stop trying to manipulate other people into validating you, and you just get to love them for who they are. You aren't trying to convince your kids to enjoy spending time with your family because you can have fun with them or without them. And the funny thing is, when you do that, they want to be part of the fun. You have passions and interests and your excitement for them is inspiring to your kids and to everyone around you.

Taking care of you isn't selfish.

Doing the regular work to improve yourself is vital to teaching your kids to do the same when they see you taking the time to work on you. They will know that it is important for them to take the time to work on themselves.

I want you to imagine that you're 20 or so years down the road and your kids are experiencing the same kind of things that you're experiencing right now. Think about your kids in that situation.

What advice would you give them?

Where would you tell them to focus?

What would you tell them to do?

Could you use any of that advice yourself?

I want to help you take care of you so that you can be the example of confidence, connection and fun that you want your kids to follow. I know you might be overwhelmed or unsure about where to start so I am here to help. Schedule a FREE Parenting Strategy Session with me and I will help you figure out a personalized plan to get you started so that you can start enjoying being a mom right now.