Three Tips to Prevent Step-Mom Burnout with Jen Rogers on Mindset and Motivation Monday

hey guys i'm jackie finnaman i'm a parenting strategist and coach and after 30 years and with more than 50 000 hours of experience working with kids and families i promise you there is a solution for your parenting challenges the key to this parenting gig is to guide and lead your kids with less fear and more confidence you don't have to know everything to be the expert of your child so let's get to the root of what is going on in your home with you and your kiddos and then we're going to prepare for the worst and change the conversation. Kick fear, worry, and guilt to the curb. You are exactly the parent your child needs and wants, and you are more capable than you sometimes give yourself credit for. I launched the No Problem Parenting Podcast to reach more parents and share the Cliff Notes version on how to solve a variety of parenting problems in the moment as they are happening in your home. Problems are a part of life, and they're meant to be dealt with and overcome. So I teach parents how to turn any problem into a no problem. In this podcast,

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All right, welcome back. No problem, parents. I am super excited to have Miss Jen Rogers with me. Today, we're going to talk about the top 10 tips to prevent stepmom burnout and how to approach the emotional roller coaster of co-parenting. I'm excited to introduce you to Jen. She's a number one Amazon bestselling author, a certified professional life coach. Jen, I'm just so excited to have you. Welcome to the show. Oh my gosh. I'm really excited to connect with your audience today. And I want to say that even though we're talking about the top 10 tips to prevent step-mom burnout, here's the thing. If you are a woman in a family, these tips will work for you. So if you thought I might check out because I'm not a stepmom, come on back to us, check back in,

and let's talk about things that you can do to really uplevel your game as the woman of influence in your family. Awesome. I love it. And it's so true. These tips can help any mama out there.

First of all, let's talk about why you started these, how you developed them. Because I was one angry, pissed off stepmom, and I didn't know what to do. And I realized that my marriage was on the line. And because my marriage was on the line, I had a decision to make. Do I want to fail in my second marriage or do I want to succeed? And even though everything was upside down, inside out and sideways, I knew I did not want to get divorced again. And so I needed to lean in to who God was calling me to be. And I went kicking and screaming. I was pretty angry.

and that's not me but that was in me and I had to recognize that maybe my step kids were not the problem maybe Jen had something to do with what she was experiencing and so I began to take an analytical approach and in my old life I'm a certified public accountant and I like columns in rows. They make me type A, right? Yes. And so let's be analytical about it instead of emotional, because let's face it, to be a confident parent, you need to step away from the emotions. You need to be able to say, even though I'm experiencing all this suck in my body, I want to be the calmest person in the room so that my calmness can emanate and influence the people around me.

And so I had lots of practice of doing it wrong, but that's how I came up with these tips. I thought I'm not the only one. And as I worked with women and coached women, I realized how much they're struggling in this area. And I thought, I think sometimes we overcomplicate it. So I wanted to make it simple and break it down. So that's what we're going to do today. We're going to break it down. That's super awesome. And just for the listeners, did you come into your second marriage with children of your own? Did you come, were you combining families? Just a little brief summary of that. Yeah, what a great question. So when people would ask me how many kids we have, my husband would say four and I would say six. So we had two boys, two girls and two dogs and the dogs,

I learned a new expression in a blended family. Those were the ours babies as in the babies that you have in your current marriage. So we had the dogs and of the six, the dogs were the easiest to parent. So my girls, they were older and out of the home. So I just become an empty nester and bought the white chairs for the dining room table. Then I got boys and the chairs are no longer white, just FYI, they are no longer white because the boys were 13 and nine. And that's who my husband been brought into the relationship and I got a bonus ex-wife that was not very nice. So that's how it went down when we came together. And when did you realize burnout was on the horizon?

You mean outside of when we got the call on our honeymoon that something was going on with one of the kids when the ex-wife wanted to disrupt the honeymoon outside of that? Bummer. I didn't know that was burnout then. And really it was too soon for burnout, but it was, I call them, You know, the monster in the mirror moments when you scream at your kids and then you go in the bathroom and you cry and you don't even you don't feel good.

You don't recognize yourself. And you look at that woman in the mirror and you say, who is that monster? That's when I realized something was really off here and I couldn't keep living this way. I literally ran away.

I ran away from my own home and went to the hotel. That's not cool. That is burnout. Yes.

so was this like a few years in the making did things just kind of progressively happen then it would be okay then you'd you know be irritated annoyed hurt whatever so how I describe it is that you are approaching your marriage with so much optimism if you are in your second marriage so there are couples who come together and create a blend and one person has never been married before but you're coming into marriage with expectations just like you're coming into parenting with expectations. Like the baby's going to sleep through the night, which doesn't happen.

And the two-year-old is not going to throw tantrums, which doesn't happen. So you have all these expectations that aren't met. And when they're not met and you've come in saying, wait, I'm a woman of confidence. I know what I messed up in, in my second or in my first marriage.

and that's not going to happen. There's a line in the sand that you draw and then you realize, oh, well, you're everywhere you go. So some of that stuff that was going on in your first marriage, guess what? It's knocking at the door on your second marriage. And it happens very, very quickly because I was a girl mom and I said, God gave me girls for a reason.

and then he gave me boys and boys are stinky and sweaty and rude and oblivious and they were in my home these creatures were in my home and I didn't know what to do with them I thought I was doing it right I prepared the room I had them pick out some of the colors all of that I went to meet their mom for a lunch so she would know who her kids were spending time with think of the game of Yahtzee when all the dice are in the cup and you shake it up, that's what it feels like right away.

Because you say, hey, we're going to play the game and you start shaking the dice right away. That's what happens right away, that everything is disrupted, even though you thought you had it all together and you had a game plan for how you wanted to be married and the kind of family you wanted to have. The thing is that everybody's coming together from loss. Even if it's your first time marriage and you haven't had lost, you have the loss of the children and their trauma, their trauma, they're experiencing trauma from a divorce or a death of a parent. And so then you come together with them and you don't even recognize that's what they're experiencing because you're having your own trauma and you're all put there in that Yahtzee cup together. And that's really difficult and confusing and great. There's so much grief in that too. A loss of dreams maybe and aspirations and optimism and all of that stuff. So this is where your 10 tips to prevent mom burnout, whether it's stepmom or mom burnout are really powerful. And one thing that's important is family rituals, which can be tricky because you may be coming into your family. If it's two families coming together, each family may have different experiences or histories with family rituals. So tell us about how you do that in a blended family. Yeah, you make a lot of mistakes. That's how you do it. You make a lot of mistakes because there are a lot of conversations

that you don't even think that you need to have. So when you're thinking about family rituals, I'm going to use my birthday as an example. The first year, the first person to tell me happy birthday was not a person at all. It was the YMCA recorded welcome to the Y when you sign in, because my husband forgot to tell me happy birthday before he left and went to work.

And how I grew up is birthdays are big and they're not just one day. You are the star of the show for a good solid week. And there's planning and there's what's your favorite meal and what would you like to do? And there's presents, lots and lots of presents.

I come by it honestly from my mama. So I know this is how birthdays are done everywhere on the planet, correct? Everybody has birthdays this week for a whole week. But I just didn't realize something as simple as that.

I didn't think about, let's have a conversation about how we want to celebrate birthdays. So then we had a conversation about how do you want to celebrate birthdays? Now, if you are in a blended family, if I can speak to that portion of your audience, because about half of us are in blended families, the most important ritual that you can set up your family for success would be transition day. And transition day is the kids are at their mom's house and then they come over to your house.

That's transition day. And on that day, it's very disruptive. So think about if you were required to move from one house to another every couple of days or every other week, depending on what the custody schedule is. So the kids are a little unsettled.

And if you're the step parent, you also are unsettled. so avoid the big amusement park kind of let's make this a great day because there's so much energy and expectation that's put in that and then you can't meet that the next week and it's it it just sets yourself up for failure so transition day for the blended families out there is a great day to set up a ritual so when the kids come over how much time do they need now it's going to be different if they're two they're going to have different needs and if they're 12, but still having some sort of routine every time they come over, this is what we're going to do. Keep it simple. Maybe it's pizza night so that you don't even have to worry about that.

If it's a 12-year-old, do they get an hour in their room to themselves before they need to come out and be part of the family? Do you have a family meeting every week to set the expectations for the week? Those are things to think about. So rituals are important because they create consistency. And even though kids tell you they don't like consistency, you know, as the parent, you are the expert as a parent and you know, they need consistency, whether they're two or 12 or even 22. This is a really important topic to cover as a new couple bringing children into the relationship, whether, whether both are bringing children in to the family or one parent, or like in your situation too, your kids were grown. I wouldn't have thought other than,

you know, the semantics of where are we having Christmas or Easter or birthday parties or who's got who on what day and all of that. I wouldn't have thought of having that conversation, not only with your partner, but also with the kids at some point. Right. And planning that and really hearing from everybody how they want this to look.

Yeah, that's right. And what's important to them. That's exactly right. And think about things like who's going to do the laundry?

Who's going to put the dishes away from the dishwasher? Who's going to walk the dog? Who's going to feed the cat? These are all questions.

Who's going to pick the kids up on transition day? Who's going to drop them off? Who's taking them to school? Are they in a different school district where you need to drive because of where both homes are located, that they're far enough apart that they can't catch the bus if that's something that they would do. Or a lot of stepmoms that I coach, they are the stay-at-home mom to the stepkids and they're homeschooling them. That brings up a lot of challenges. Oh my gosh, yeah, I'm sure. So what I really like about this is that it's also, it's very respectful of your partner in this new relationship with kids. And it's also very respectful to the children because they're going through such a big transition. One of my other favorite tips of yours is the implement tip. Oh yeah. Yeah. So here's the thing. You can listen to all the podcasts that you want to. You can check out all the books from the library. You You can take them home and even read them and leave little cards in there and take them all back.

And you can write in your journal and you can do a bunch of other stuff. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. I don't believe in talk therapy, by the way. I don't think it works because all you do is spiral downward in all the stuff that you're talking about.

That's becoming a common theme. I do believe that talk therapy can be very beneficial for a lot of people. It's if you're not seeing progress. but what good is it if we're not implementing? Right. So that is why this is such an important tip. And here is the thing to be aware of. There is no need to go into overdrive, which leads to overwhelm or burnout. So when you're implementing something, you read something in a book and you say, oh, that's a really great idea. Let's use the example that we just did. You heard this on the podcast, oh, transition day, it's really important to set up a routine. Here's one small action step that you can take. And I'm going to invite you to do this within the next 24 hours.

So if it's midnight, then this is, you know, by midnight, the next night that you talk to your partner about transition day. That's an action step. It's saying, I heard this on the podcast, transition day is important to set the tone for a great week when the kids come over. So in the next 24 hours, I'm going to talk to my partner about setting up a transition day. I'm not going to come with a bunch of stuff. I'm just going to present, hey, I was talking or I heard this on a podcast and I would really like to talk to you about it. What do you think? And then go from there. So it's small, it's easy. It's these easy, easy wins instead of this big, oh my gosh, so we have to set out, we need to pull out the calendar and we need to pull out all the markers and the colors and sync our watches and put what we're going to do on transition day for every single week. That's what we got to do. No, no, no, no, no, no. You just need to start with a conversation and then you can schedule a time for your next conversation to say, okay, this is the approach that we want to take as a unified couple, because as parents, we must be unified because those kids, they know how to pick us off one by one. So do not do this in isolation. It's important that you are unified as a couple. And so take small action steps. That's how you implement.

That's one example of implementing and winning at taking small action. I love it. Just do it and don't overthink it and get all like it has to be perfect. And it has to be this big, you know, again, putting large amounts of emotion into it and all that. It's just like, nope, let's, let's just tackle this one thing and have a conversation about it. And then the last tip, I guess for today of the 10 or of my favorite three would be the community tip.

Oh, yeah, definitely. It goes along with what I just said about don't be in isolation or you're going to get picked off. So here's the thing. I love the expression side door coaching.

So when you are in community and you're listening to someone receive coaching from a professional, you get side door coaching as in sometimes you don't need to bring up what your own issue is because that person has brought it up and you get ideas from what's happening in that conversation. And so it takes some pressure off and it reminds you that you are not alone. And this is the thing, humans, we want to belong. We have this sense. I believe God put it in us to be in community, to work together, to solve problems and to up-level our game and to avoid comparison. And I was thinking of that as I gave the example about taking action And I want to speak this into people who are listening.

Your family is so special and you are a critical piece of your family. And there's no family like your family. There will never, ever, ever be a family like your family again. and you have this calling to learn, to acquire new information, to take your family to the next level.

And the way you do that is by avoiding comparison. There is no comparison in community. In community, you come in and you say, this is where I am. You know how they set the runners up when there's a race around the track and everybody starts at a different starting point?

We all start at different starting points. And it's so important to appreciate the beauty of the uniqueness of who you are as a family. And we often lose sight of that because we're exhausted. We're tired.

It's not just about friends and family and things, but it's really about get yourself attached or linked or connected with people who are going through similar things as you maybe. You're going to pick up things that you didn't even know you had questions about. So let me segue into then your community, Miss Jen Rogers. you have a really fabulous community where moms can find affirmation, assurance, accountability, and a place to give back. If you're a mama out there that's experienced a lot of this and you want to share. Yeah, you definitely do. And you grow from that. So it's always the teacher that when you're preparing your lesson, you get to learn as well. And this is why I love teaching.

So I am a certified coach and I'm a certified coach because one of my giftings is encouragement. And I love working with women. And that's why I'm building this community for stepmoms. So I'm sure you'll put the link in the show notes.

It's the Brave Stepmom Facebook community. And we have women in there who are about to get married, women who have just gotten married and their minds are blown. Oh my gosh, what just happened? and we have women in there that are also certified coaches and love to serve and minister to other women in the group.

And I would be honored to have you come and join us. We are a implementation group. So if you would like to vent about your troubles, this is not the group for you because I am all about moving forward, not going down deeper into the trenches and getting mired in the muck. So if you are a parent, if you are a woman who is interested in making a difference, and here's the thing. If you're a step-mom, let me, let me just keep it real here. I know you want more control. Yeah, I know you do. And the truth is you lost a bunch of it. When you said I do, you have less control than what you did before you got married. And in this loss of control, we can get frustrated with that, but here's what you do have. I have good news. There's good news. You have influence and you know, you may need to be reminded to learn how to use that influence to create the family that you're really craving. You'll never have a normal family. There is no such thing, but you can have the family that you've dreamed of if you're willing to do the work. So if you're willing to do the work, come join the community. I'd love to have you.

Yeah, that's awesome. And we do lose a lot of control, even just with having kids in general. You know, it's, it's kind of like the mom that like wants help around the house. And then the kids or the partner helps, and then it's not good enough, or it's not done right, or it's not the way we would have done it, or it's, you know, sometimes we feel like, oh, just do it myself.

But there is a lot of, there is a lot of control that we lose. I think you're absolutely right. And at the same time, if you're willing to put some work in and to take a look at how you can influence your family, you can reclaim a lot of that control. And it really starts with confidence, which is what I love about all of the services and the offerings that you have.

You are a fun person. You're not making light of challenging situations or real issues and problems, but you're saying, hey, there's a way that we can deal with and overcome them, which is what no problem parenting is all about. you know, creating confident parents, but also dealing with and overcoming problems. There's no need to feed a problem. Their problems are big enough as they are, right? So let's not add fuel to the fire. Let's figure out, okay, what's the solution for this and then make that happen. And so, yeah, I just really appreciate all that you're doing for moms, step-moms, blended families. We will put a link in the show notes for your freebie, which is these 10 tips. So mamas go check the show notes out and you can get the other seven. You can get the whole PDF on these 10 tips. Tell us about your podcast. Oh yeah. So I'm looking at the sign behind you,

which is your motto that says, become the confident parent your kids crave you to be. And I want to focus on that word. As you were sharing, I was thinking we are becoming all too often. We focus on, I want to be there. I want to get there. I want to win the race, but the race, This is a lifelong journey.

And so I want to encourage you to think about 10 years from now, when you look back, what do you want to say about yourself? And I talk about this all the time on the podcast. Who do you want to become? So I love that you are also a becomeer.

And when you're a becomeer, that means you're an overcomer as well. So I'd love for you to take a listen up and join us in the podcast community as well. That is excellent. Awesome.

We're going to have a link for that in the show notes as well. Oh my gosh, Jen, this is fun. Thank you so much for being here today. Oh, thank you.

My pleasure. Hey there, parents. There is an update to Jen's podcast. It is now called The Empowered Stepmom.

Jen was originally on the show back in episode 156, and I wanted to re-air the episode, most of the episode, so that we could get the update for her Empowered Stepmom podcast. You can still find the rest of the 10 tips at her website. We have a link in the show notes for that as well. And thanks for tuning in to Mindset and Motivation Monday.

Be sure to click that plus sign or follow button on the podcast app that you're listening to today so that you get updated when the next episode drops. And if you're listening to Spotify, you can now leave a comment, share your favorite tip or aha moment from the episode today. As always, guys, hugs and high fives. You got this.

Thank you.