How I Became a Parenting Influencer

I’m sitting here on my patio sofa on a sunny May afternoon in Southern California, sipping a cold ‘Nojito’, pondering, after six years of surviving an Instagram platform, what I might be ‘about’ in this quieter corner of the internet. Meanwhile my ten month old son drops a toy car into the outside dog water dish again, and again, and again with the inquisitiveness and laser-sharp focus of a scientist on the brink of a groundbreaking discovery.

My nine year old just broke my train of thought to tell me all about a giant centipede he’s reading about. Apparently it eats bats. My 7 year old is crouched on the floor, fiercely determined to fold a paper airplane better than his big brother’s, forcing him to overcome, shall we say, an underdeveloped talent in the area of folding clean straight lines. My sun-kissed and very sandy 3 year old, my mini-me, is zonked out on the living room sofa, in the middle of it all, after a 100% tantrum-free midday spent digging at the beach.

Well, let’s rewind to the beginning to paint a better picture of a fairly typical day.

A tiny little someone crawled into my bed around 7 o’clock this morning, whispering ‘I love you mama’ in my ear, attempting to be quiet as a mouse, waking her baby brother lying beside me nonetheless. In response, my husband-turned-in-house-barista delivered a hot coffee bedside which I gladly sipped while the two little ones played and flipped through books on my bedroom floor. He went back to work in his home office and the older boys continued snoozing in their shared bedroom down the hall.

We went downstairs to the kitchen where I got a breakfast cake in the oven and whipped up some oatmeal cookies while everyone, baby included, played contentedly nearby. I served the cake (full of yogurt, milk, eggs, and Kerrygold) with a side of perfectly tart nectarine slices and a glass of whole milk, transferred the cookies to the counter to cool, then sent the big three to get dressed and ready for an afternoon at the beach while I tossed a few pounds of chicken thighs in a gingery marinade for dinner.

We practiced our homeschool poem-of-the-week, I started the kids on their daily language arts assignments, then I went upstairs to nurse the baby and to get us both dressed. Back downstairs, I quickly tossed some fruit, salami, cheese slices, sourdough, and slightly warm cookies in a yeti cooler while my 7 and 9 year olds loaded towels and beach toys into the Yukon.

I prompted the boys through some (easy and often funny) mental spelling exercises on the 30-minute drive to the beach, then clumsily steered our big ol’ SUV into a parking spot at 11am on the dot. We made our way to the sand where I was able to make headway in The Danish Way of Parenting (review coming soon) while all four kids played for hours.

We made it home just after 2pm — enough time to sneak in a few more homeschool things and a bit of work time for mom. And now, here we are.

After my husband wraps up his work day, he’ll probably grill up those chicken thighs and we’ll do an early dinner together before he takes the boys to baseball practice. Meanwhile, my toddler has big plans to deliver her latest masterpiece to the painted rock garden at the park a few blocks away.

She’ll ride her Micro Mini scooter like it’s an extension of her body (which it practically is since she had it fully mastered by 19 months) while I push the baby in our ‘neighborhood stroller’, a Bumbleride Era — both gifted products, from brands I actually support.

There are perks. Although, in retrospect, I would have gladly paid double retail price for each, just to sidestep the cortisol spikes and save myself some time and energy. Both collaborations were unpaid.

While she climbs the play structures marked ‘For Ages 5-12’ and baby boy searches for buried treasures in the sand play area, I might sneak in another chapter, or I might just enjoy sitting under the big shady tree. I’ll tell myself to relax, I’ll try to relax, I’ll probably appear to be relaxed, but I’ll be hyperaware of every parent in my peripheral — Do they recognize me? Am I setting a good example? Straighten up, hold a nice posture, just in case someone takes a picture.

Thankfully, my insecurities are always about myself, and never about my children.

Yes, watch her climb with confidence. Watch her sidestep to politely let your child pass. Watch her eye your child’s toy with envy but never ever touch or snatch. Watch her explore happily, without a grown-up or a playmate, while I keep a lookout from a distance. Watch her slip her little hand into mine when I say it’s time to go home, without a countdown, without negotiation, without bribery, threats, or tears.

Once home, we’ll tidy up, do baths, and read books. The boys will come home covered in red dirt and eyeblack, in desperate need of a shower and a snack. They’ll tidy up their bedroom, I’ll read a chapter of Heidi, and all should be tucked in by 8 o’clock.

Now I’ll admit: spontaneous afternoon naps can sometimes backfire on us epically. She may wake up cranky and emotional, and this may not be how our afternoon looks at all. But, I can say with some degree of certainty that I will thoroughly enjoy my daughter’s company this evening, regardless of her mood, just as I hope she can find ways to enjoy and appreciate me on the days when I wake up cranky and emotional and in need of extra grace.

I know. I know how annoying I sound. I do. I am painfully aware of the eyerollyness of this.

But the truth is that, although our family absolutely bickers and yells and is anything but "perfect”, we live very differently than most families, and people notice that in our children.

So, I suppose that is what this publication is ultimately ‘about’.

I started working in a daycare part-time at the age of 12 as a homeschooled 6th grader. I don’t even remember anything about earning money, I just loved being with small children. I still vividly remember a teeny tiny blonde, fully potty trained at 19 months. Toddlers are incredible. I attended every child development training class offered to me. I still have the certificates from 2003:

And when a single mom approached me about a nearly full-time nanny gig during the summer following my freshman year of [public] high school while she worked 12-hour hospital shifts, I leaped at the opportunity.

That summer nanny job spiraled into others and this mom, who I thought was the absolute coolest, kindly sang my praises to her friends and coworkers, guaranteeing me a steady stream of weekly babysitting gigs throughout my teenage years. I took a child development course as a junior and, for the very first time in my life, considered going to college.

I was almost definitely the only honors student taking multiple AP classes, with a 4.2 GPA, who had not toured or applied to a single university and had zero intention of pursuing any sort of career path. I just wanted to be a wife and a mom, like my mother and my grandmother and my great grandmother and all the mothers before her.

Spontaneously and without running it by an actual adult, or by any person for that matter, I applied for financial aid, accepted a few academic scholarships, and enrolled in the two-year Early Childhood Education program at the local community college.

Family reactions ranged from, “You’re going to… college?” to, “You’re going to… community college?” to, “You’re going to be a preschool teacher…?”

I freaking loved my classes. I freaking loved my grandmotherly professor, who taught nearly every course. I quickly became her TA. She quickly convinced me to further my education beyond community college.

Meanwhile, I worked full-time as a lead toddler teacher, in classes of 10-14 two year olds, with 1 or 2 assistants (which were always older than me, sometimes by a decade or two, and didn’t always love being told what to do by a mildly arrogant 19 year old), and I attended my in-person courses in the afternoons and evenings with a venti iced coffee in hand, always.

After completing my two-year program, I took a break from school and moved to sunny San Diego to be a live-in nanny, where I naturally filled my free time with an early morning nanny job, an afternoon preschool teaching position, and any babysitting requests that fit into my weekend off hours — as any newly independent 20 year old would do upon moving to a new and exciting city.

One early spring day on a whim, I applied to Utah State University’s Human Development and Family Studies program and was not only accepted, but offered a full tuition academic scholarship as a transfer student.

My first priority as a 21 year old in a college town? Land a job, any job, in the on-campus Early Care & Education Center — which I accomplished by October, during a working interview in which the director beamed that I was a ‘natural’ with 3 and 4 year olds and hired me on the spot. I was, elated.

Over the next three years, I worked part-time as a preschool teacher, part-time as a nanny for various professors, part-time as an early childhood research assistant, part-time supervising an evening child care program for student parents.

I also danced like I was 22 — happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time — and slept very little. It was miserable and magical, oh yeah🎶

Somewhere amidst the dancing and the acing of a full class load and the part-time early childhood jobs that always seemed to total a full-time job (or two or three), I slipped in a boyfriend, graduated cum laude with a B.S. in Family & Human Development specializing in Child Development, started grad school, married the boyfriend — and abruptly found my world rocked by motherhood nine short months later.

No 25 year old felt more equipped for motherhood than I did, yet I moved through those early motherhood days with my infant son as if an alien had been dropped on my doorstep. I could not, for the life of me, mesh my 13 years of childcare experience and training, my understanding of play and childhood, or my intuition, with the societal noise of parenting.

I didn’t find my footing until 18 months later, after earning my M.Ed. in Early Childhood Curriculum and Instruction, when I impulsively decided to start a toddler school in the living room of our one-bedroom apartment while my husband was working a full-time job and also attending business school, taking our only vehicle with him.

My passion for children was reignited, my confidence restored, my purpose confirmed. Enrollment filled so quickly that we moved from an apartment to a larger townhome to accommodate the growing waitlist.

Then I gave birth to my second son who was born prematurely and spent 16 days in the NICU, followed by frequent respiratory scares, including an ambulance ride and a PICU stay at 7 months old. And a few months after that… the pandemic.

It’s funny, looking back now. I was clearly chasing something, but the something which I was chasing was never clear to me. I remember thinking that one day, in the distant future, after I had finished having babies and was old and mature, maybe around age 35 (ha!), I would open my very own preschool and that would be my life.

This had always been more of a dream than a plan, though, and I suddenly realized that this dream I had maybe been kind of sort of pursuing all these years had already come and gone, and now I was about to enter my 30s in a world that felt messy and uncertain, still slightly overwhelmed by motherhood, entirely unsure of where to go from here.

I had been drinking the Jenna Kutcher kool-aid while cleaning and sanitizing the classroom every afternoon and transitioned my business online without skipping a beat. I spoke to my small Instagram audience of about 3k about play, childhood, and motherhood as if I had the ear of every English-speaking mom in the modern world. I began considering what I had learned over the last few years and brainstorming what a motherhood course could look like. I threw together a course about play-based learning. I poured my heart and soul into a workshop outlining my business blueprint for a thriving boutique preschool.

Then mid-pandemic, confused about and infuriated by my three year old’s post-TV behavior, I began devouring research about children and screen-time, sharing what I was learning about tv and young brains, and reviewing children’s tv shows with the extensive grading rubric I had carefully crafted, which seemed like a perfectly sane thing to do on the tail end of 2020.

And then, in a moment of passion, I compared Cocomelon to baby cocaine. Yes, that was me. And with that, my Instagram went viral.

I can only describe growing rapidly on Instagram as loud — a whiplash of love-you-hate-you-love-you-hate-you-love-you-hate-you.

I fully intended to grow a platform and offer the world’s best motherhood course and homeschool curriculum. I can’t explain where my confidence came from. Perhaps it was JK’s voice buzzing in my ears or perhaps it was the illogical but unshakeable faith muscle leftover from my evangelical upbringing. Regardless, I quickly decided that’s what I was going to do with my life and I wasn’t surprised by this spontaneous social media “success”.

What I was surprised about was the constant urge to delete my Instagram account and live out the rest of my days off the grid as a mountain woman — maybe with a few chickens, a couple of goats, a little garden.

I didn’t, of course, but the app has been deleted from my phone more often than not over the last five years and I’ve never managed to find any sort of posting consistency outside of open enrollment periods for my courses, which suck the literal life out of me.

My brain simply cannot take the constant noise, and my family, not to mention my business, can’t handle the distraction.

I’m considered a parenting influencer, yet I feel I’ve done fairly little ‘influencing’ if I’m being honest. My focus has been on creating truly high quality course content, which I have worked on tirelessly since early 2020. I’ve turned down 99% of interview requests, podcast invitations, speaking engagements, brand partnerships, etc., etc.

When I have had the time, mental space, and emotional stability required to show up as a creator in an already volatile and emotionally charged niche, I’ve aimed to respectfully show my children being their brave, creative, resilient, regulated, and capable selves, and I usually opened up Q&As where I offered long-winded parenting advice via stories.

I’ve shown babies crawling from room to room, toddlers climbing to risky heights, preschoolers building elaborate play scenes, big kids still playing imaginatively with beloved open-ended toys, all ages playing freely and directing their own time, sometimes together, sometimes on their own, 5-8+ hours per day, every single day, beginning in infancy, while mom does mom things.

When I ask people why they follow me, I hear:

• Encouragement to raise children screen-free

• Unique child development insights

• Positive mindset and lifestyle approach

• Examples of independent play

• Inspiration to mother well while doing less

• No-nonsense, intuitive & practical advice

They say I’m the “sane mom voice” of the internet. I like that.

I think of raising children as more of an art than a science. I suppose that when you begin caring for children as soon as you’re no longer a child yourself, it’s only natural to treat and communicate with a small child as a full human, rather than a mysterious other, a problem to be carefully solved and skillfully managed — and perhaps that’s precisely what modern society is missing.

Tweens and teens began leaving children in the dust of their own childhoods and not encountering these mysterious beings again until a decade or two later, when they found themselves fumbling to change a diaper for the very first time in a cold and sterile hospital room, running on nothing but shock and adrenaline, oozing bodily fluids, and feeling the nurses’ judgmental glares searing through their skulls.

It’s truly no wonder young children began to be treated as another species entirely, which caused grown-ups to over-control, over-explain, over-lecture, over-protect, over-parent.

Adults quite literally forgot what it means to be a child, and thus began actively preventing children from being children. As we shifted away from the beautiful, purposeful dance of human development across the lifespan, we drew a hard line in the sand between children and adults, turning parenting into a race to see who could get their mysterious little creature to shed their otherness, hop the line, and assimilate the fastest.

Worse still, the original over-parented children grew to be parents who not only forgot, but never actually experienced the childhood that had been stolen from under their noses by overzealous caregivers, allowing them to shamelessly push the line from elementary school to kindergarten, to preschool, to toddlerhood.

And now the modern world is in a real pickle — play and imagination are becoming extinct, with anxiety, fragility, dysregulation, sensory processing disorders, and incompetence rising up in their place. Meaning, we actually have created a new type of creature — a fearful, timid, impulsive, helpless, whiny, entitled, delicate, annoying, finicky, boring, clingy, apathetic, and unimaginative little creature — a creature unfit to thrive in this world, a creature whom we don’t enjoy raising.

At this point, my husband and I raise our children almost entirely without screen-time (aside from some televised sports or the occasional family movie). We quite literally never involve ourselves in our children’s play at any age. We own very few battery-operated toys, which often disappear to the top shelf of the laundry room cabinet.

We delay reading instruction until age 7. We don’t use playpens, swings, or walkers. We avoid over-scheduling. We encourage tree climbing. We don’t force sharing, at home or on the playground. We don’t offer ‘safe foods’ (I mean, come on, have we actually lost our minds?). We don’t listen to ear-splitting children’s music. We don’t sing calm down songs.

We don’t solve boredom. We don’t fix frustration. We don’t roll them in bubble wrap, sugarcoat the world, or tiptoe around their feelings and emotions as if they belong in a mental institution instead of our loving home.

They are humans, not others, dancing across the lifespan and inside our hearts.

The point I’m trying to make, in maybe the most long-winded way possible, is that I didn’t stumble into the parenting influencer sphere as a mom who had never before worked with children prior to having her own, nor as a psychologist or PhD who understands children as numbers and data, who studies and analyzes children as the other, or even as a pediatrician or elementary school teacher who wasn’t required to take a single child development training as part of their coursework.

I’ve had the good fortune of taking courses and attending trainings primarily taught by true early childhood professionals — those who have dedicated their lives to child development, who deeply appreciate young children and their play — and not by their opinionated counterparts, who understand children in theory, observing them from behind two way mirrors, but ultimately aim for conformity — or increasingly, to learn how to manipulate, control, diagnose, and even medicate this truly mysterious, unrecognizable, and somewhat terrifying species we’re creating and becoming.

Since the Cocomelon fiasco, I created a motherhood course that moms around the world rave about, birthed two more babies, and created a truly unique and highly praised homeschool curriculum for ages 2-9. I’ve shifted perspectives about play, screen-time, early learning, childhood, and motherhood for perhaps hundreds of thousands of families across the globe. And yet, I feel like my career has only just begun.

I did not ride the wave of 2020 insta-fame as other parenting influencers did. I said ‘no’ to opportunities. I said ‘yes’ to raising my children. I did not hire help — not in my business, and not in my home. I continued learning. I continued evolving. I continued creating. I continued finding my voice. I chose slow and steady, and I hope to be the tortoise.

As a deep-thinking introvert, young children have always been, and will always be, my safe place. Early childhood is a world I can make sense of, the only part of humanity I fully understand. The thought of no longer having young children in my home truly pains me — so much so that I’ll most definitely dive back into childcare work to fill the gap between babies and grandbabies.

I am in the weeds of raising four children, although I certainly wouldn’t shy away from more (35 is the new 25, I hear), and thinking deeply every second of every day about child development across all the ages and stages ranging from infancy to pre-teen. I believe in my soul that my purpose in this world is to loudly advocate for children, and that’s what I hope to do here, while doing my best to nurture my own children well.

In Wildflower Field Notes, I intend to:

• Explore honest and imperfect motherhood through a positive lens

• Document and analyze my observations of children and their grown-ups in the wild

• Offer glimpses into our family’s unique approach to early learning and homeschooling

• Discuss child development, early education, and common sense parenting insights

• Review parenting books — ranging from popular to hidden gems to hard pass

• Talk about our favorite (and maybe least favorite) children’s books — I’ll try to avoid the word ‘crud’ in my reviews (this will be funny for only a handful of people but feels timely)

I don’t have a proposed schedule, but I have a lot to say, am excited to write, and hope to do so as often as possible.

For $5/month, paid subscribers will have access to my advice column where I’ll offer detailed parenting advice for a handful of scenarios each month.

This publication is for parents, grandparents, caregivers, educators, and any grown-up curious about human development.

I am currently working on, seemingly around the clock, to finish and perfect Nurture Wildflowers, our PK-3 Homeschool Curriculum. I have big plans to completely revamp Mother Wildflowers, my signature motherhood course. I have a new website coming soon, complete with our entire library of beloved children’s books. I even have plans to begin sharing mini-vlogs via Instagram reels (wish me luck).

I’m also brainstorming local meet-ups, in-person consulting, family retreats, micro-schools, and of course, a parenting book. But Substack feels like a good place to start.

“We chose not to do screen time from the beginning with our kids (except for the occasional FaceTime and look at a video on my phone), so I wasn't sure how revolutionary this course would be for us. I am so grateful I decided to go for it. It is amazing what seemingly "small" tweaks have done for our days! We have stopped the endless snacking, which has been so helpful for the structure of our days, my kids' health, and our family budget. I previously felt like I was getting as much as I could possibly get done in a day, but I've been able to do much more while the kids play, and I know that will continue to improve as we continue to practice our routines. Having a predictable structure to our days has resulted in far less meltdowns. When the kids are emotional, I now feel much more capable and confident dealing with them. I feel so much more confident dealing with sibling dynamics as well, when those seemed so tricky before. I could go on and on. So grateful for the work you put into this course, Jerrica!”

“Where to begin.... this course has changed my experience of motherhood and the dynamic I have with my children. Thanks to my own screen time habit I had become overwhelmed with information and content about mothering and all the things I should be doing to support my children’s development. The pressure to curate every moment and coach every emotion had me paralyzed and honestly just not enjoying my children like I wanted to. I knew a lot of the information presented here but something about the way it was laid out week by week (alongside the journaling and action steps) just brought it all together for me. I feel a huge weight off my shoulders and a lot of confirmation about following my instincts and tuning out the noise of mommy influencers. Thank you!!! We already had limited screen time but since cutting it all out (along with some new family rules and “saying less”) my four year old is a different person. I can really see his baseline, and we are moving through our days with so much more peace and connection. His independent play has expanded so much and I have time to read, do classes, cook new recipes and just enjoy being a stay at home mom. I’ve even had a few sweet (mostly undisturbed) contact naps with my baby while my four year old plays freely through the house. I honestly think this course should be required material for all new parents - it so full of information but somehow cuts out all the unnecessary noise. So grateful!”

If raising children feels impossible, we’re probably trying too hard. I hope to illustrate, through essays and story-telling, how simply trusting childhood can empower children and their grown-ups to flourish.

Thanks for reading.