The Parenting Stage No One Seems to Write About

I love nonfiction books.

Parenting books. Productivity books. Books about simplifying your life. Books about getting more done. Give me a practical book, a highlighter, and a cup of coffee and I am happy.

But lately I have noticed a huge gap.

There are approximately ten million books about pregnancy and babies. Then come the toddler books, the preschool books, and plenty of books about raising children in general. There are books about teenagers and books about becoming an empty nester.

But where are the books written for the parenting stage I am currently in?

I want the book written by a mom whose kids are old enough to have lives and activities of their own, but not old enough to drive themselves there.

I do not really care whether she stays home or works outside the home. I just want somebody who understands this strange stage where your kids get dropped off for practices, games, rehearsals, clubs, and activities, and then somebody has to go back and get them again.

I want someone whose kids go to public school, because I actually really love public education, and that creates its own rhythms of schedules, buses, school apps, practices, events, and commitments.

And I would especially love it written from the perspective of a Christian family who wants church, faith, and time together to remain important even when everybody's calendar starts exploding.

If that book exists, please tell me about it.

Because lately I have been reading quite a few books about productivity and simplifying life, and I keep running into advice that sounds absolutely wonderful.

If your kids are toddlers.

Or they are home with you all day.

Or you homeschool.

Or you do not have children.

Or maybe it is July and nobody has anywhere to be.

But some of this advice bears absolutely no resemblance to my actual life.

So, because apparently I have been collecting these grievances, here are my current top three pieces of parenting and productivity advice that make me roll my eyes.

1. “Put your phone on silent and turn off all your notifications.”

Oh, I would love to.

Unfortunately, my children are at school.

The school nurse could call. A doctor's office could call to reschedule an appointment. A teacher could message me. Practice could suddenly be canceled. A coach could announce that everyone needs to stay thirty minutes late. One of the approximately ten million apps required to raise a child in 2026 might inform me that somebody needs to bring two dozen cupcakes tomorrow.

Sure, I can set my phone so calls from my husband, parents, and kids come through.

But my phone does not know that one unfamiliar number is the school nurse and the next unfamiliar number is trying to sell me an extended car warranty.

There are absolutely times when I need to put my phone down and be present.

But “just turn everything off” is not especially helpful advice when a large portion of the information required to run your family arrives through that phone.

2. “Create a peaceful evening routine. And if you need more time, wake up earlier.”

I recently heard a young mom talking about how hard evenings are because you have to clean up dinner, get the kids to bed, and somehow find a little time for yourself.

And I thought...

That sounds wonderful.

Not the exhausted part. The part where everybody is actually home.

My evenings can look more like picking up one child from one end of the county, driving another child somewhere else, figuring out who has eaten dinner, going back for the first child, then waiting for another kid's practice to end at 8:00.

And games?

Sometimes the bus is not even getting back to school until 9:00 or 10:00.

Some nights we eat dinner in the car. One kid eats at 4:30. Another eats at 9:15. I spend more time in parking lots than I do sitting on my couch.

So when someone tells me to create a relaxing evening routine, my main question is:

Which evening?

Then comes the companion advice.

“Just wake up earlier.”

Need time to exercise? Wake up earlier.

Need quiet time? Wake up earlier.

Want to accomplish something before the kids need you? Wake up earlier.

Except if I am picking up children at 9:30 or 10:00 at night, exactly how early am I supposed to wake up and still get enough sleep?

And while we are discussing sleep, teenagers apparently need quite a bit of it. Has anyone informed the school system? Because my kids' bus arrives at 7:30.

The math is not mathing.

3. “Only let each child sign up for one activity.”

This might be my favorite.

The theory is that if every child only chooses one thing, your family will not be overscheduled and you will still have lots of family time.

That makes sense when “one thing” means soccer practice Tuesday night and a game Saturday morning.

When kids get older, one thing might mean four practices a week plus a game, meet, performance, or competition.

That is ONE CHILD.

Now multiply that by three.

And no, obviously the practices are not conveniently scheduled at the same place or even the same time.

One practice happens right after school. Another starts at 5:30. Someone else ends at 8:00. One has an away game. Another needs picked up from school.

Suddenly every child has followed the rule and chosen exactly one activity...

and you still do not have a single free afternoon or evening.

Because here is the part nobody tells you:

One thing is not one night.

Sometimes one thing takes up most of the week.

So what is my advice?

This is the part where I am supposed to tell you that I have figured out the secret.

I have not.

I do not have a magical morning routine. I have not discovered the perfect family calendar. I cannot tell you how to create three extra hours in your day.

And if your family is in this same stage of life, I am certainly not going to tell you to solve the problem by waking up at 4:00 in the morning.

The best advice I know is still the simplest: pray, pay attention to what matters most, and accept that you cannot do everything.

But I have found one practical tool that helps me carry some of the mental load.

I use ChatGPT.

Not because I want artificial intelligence running my family.

I use it because I would rather use my brainpower on my kids, my husband, my work, my faith, and the decisions that actually require me than use all of it trying to remember who needs picked up where, which night I can realistically make dinner, and whether I somehow scheduled two children in opposite directions at the same time.

Sometimes I just need another “brain” to look at everything with me.

I can give ChatGPT our calendar, tell it what is unusual that week, dump everything I am trying to accomplish into the conversation, and ask it to help me figure out what actually fits.

It can point out that Tuesday is already ridiculous before I decide Tuesday is also the perfect day to grocery shop, clean the bathrooms, finish a work project, and make homemade lasagna.

It can help me see that two pickup times do not actually work.

It can look at our evening schedule and tell me which nights dinner needs to be made ahead, which nights leftovers make more sense, and which nights we need to accept that sandwiches are a completely respectable dinner.

And sometimes it can simply look at my giant list and say, “You do not have time for all of this.”

That may be my favorite feature. 😂

The goal is not to cram more into the week

This is important.

I do not use ChatGPT because I want to become so wildly efficient that I can squeeze one more task into every available fifteen minute window.

That sounds exhausting.

I use it to help me make decisions.

What really needs to happen this week?

What can wait?

When are we already stretched too thin?

Which little gaps on my calendar look available but are not actually useful time?

What should I prepare ahead of time?

Where do I need to leave some margin?

What am I forgetting?

Those are the questions that free up brainpower.

Because sometimes the problem is not that I need a better planner.

The problem is that I am trying to hold an entire family's schedule in my head at the same time.

I made a free guide for this

Once I realized how often I was using ChatGPT this way, I started writing down the prompts and little tricks that were actually useful.

That turned into The Busy Mom's Guide to ChatGPT: How I Use ChatGPT to Manage Our Crazy Family Schedule.

It is written specifically for moms who are not interested in becoming AI experts. You do not need to learn “prompt engineering.” You do not need to understand how any of the technology works.

You just need to be able to explain your life.

The guide walks you through how I set up one ongoing family planning conversation, what information I give ChatGPT about our normal routines, how I use voice when I do not feel like typing everything, and how I optionally connect my Google Calendar to save even more time.

Then I included the actual prompts I use for the problems that come up over and over again.

There are prompts to help you plan a realistic week, catch transportation problems, plan dinners around activities, decide what you are NOT doing this week, organize a giant brain dump, summarize long school emails, write messages when you do not have the mental energy, prepare for events, find realistic family time, and salvage the week when Monday's beautiful plan is completely dead by Thursday.

I also included a full copy and paste prompt library at the end so you do not have to reread the whole guide every time you want to use one.

My goal is not to help you do more.

It is to help you spend a little less mental energy figuring out how everything fits together.

Because if your kids are old enough to have busy lives but still need you to drive them everywhere, I am guessing you could use that brainpower for something else too.

And maybe someday one of us really will write that book for moms in this stage of life.

For now, I will be over here using ChatGPT to figure out who I am picking up tonight.

Probably from a parking lot.