Have you ever had one of those weeks where you’re technically “showing up" but you don’t feel like yourself?

For busy parents, burnout doesn’t usually explode into your life. It builds quietly. You start forgetting small things. Your patience gets thinner. You feel stretched in ways you can’t quite explain.

And then comes the dangerous thought:
 “I should be handling this better.”

So many intentional parents assume that if they’re overwhelmed, they must be doing something wrong. We compare ourselves to other families. We assume they’re managing work, home, marriage, and parenting with more grace.

But what we see is often just the polished version, not the missed appointments, the mental overload, or the quiet exhaustion happening behind the scenes.

What if burnout isn’t proof you’re failing, but a signal that something in your life needs adjusting?

In this episode of Parents Making Time, we reframe burnout for busy parents. Instead of treating it like a character flaw, we explore how it can serve as feedback. A prompt to pause, reflect, and simplify.

Drawing on wisdom from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, we talk about the discipline of focusing on what’s essential and letting go of what isn’t. In modern family life, there is no shortage of good things to do. But not all of them are necessary.

When busy parents learn to identify and remove the non-essential, they create space for energy, clarity, and more intentional parenting without adding anything new to their calendar.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU’LL DISCOVER:

• A healthier way to think about parent burnout
 • Why comparison keeps busy parents stuck in guilt
 • One powerful reflection question that can reduce overwhelm immediately

If you’re a busy parent trying to put family first without burning out, this conversation will help you step back, reset, and refocus on what matters most.

Easily improve your intentional parenting efforts at mealtime with our FREE resource, Dinner Conversation Starters.

Download our FREE resource, 30-Second Micro Moments of Intention with Your Kids, created for busy parents like you who need easy, actionable ways to have daily meaningful connections with their kids in less than a minute!

Parenting Questions? Email us at [email protected] (Please note, your question may be featured on the show).

For parenting inspiration, time management ideas, and encouragement for families, follow the hosts' individual accounts:

Anthony Craiker: Instagram | LinkedIn

Jennifer Craiker: Instagram

Interested in joining our free online parenting community? Send us a DM to receive an invite!

Enjoy the show? Leave a rating & review: Apple | Spotify

Transcript

Parents Making Time Ep. 25

Anthony: ​[00:00:00] Hey everyone. Before we get started today, I wanted to make you aware of a free resource that we have called 30 Second Micro Moments of Intention with Your Kids. This is a list of quick and easy things that you can do to have meaningful connection with your kids in 30 seconds or less. You can get that by going to our website at parentsmakingtime.com/freeresource.

Go there today so that you can start building lasting memories. One micro moment at a time. 

Jennifer: Have you ever noticed how burnout doesn't usually arrive all at once? It shows up slowly with shorter patience, quicker frustration, the sense that you're moving from one responsibility to the next without ever fully catching your breath. As parents, it can be especially confusing because you love your kids deeply, you love your family.

Everything you're doing is because of those things, and yet there are moments when you don't feel like the parent you want to be [00:01:00] because you are exhausted. Many busy parents quietly carry the belief that burnout means they're doing something wrong, that they could be stronger, more patient, more capable of handle.

Everything on their plate. But what if burnout isn't a verdict on who you are as a parent? What if it's feedback on what you're doing right now? What if it's your mind and body telling you that something needs to shift? Not who you are, but how you're carrying the load today on parents making time. We're talking about burnout.

What it really means, why it happens, and how it might actually be pointing you towards a healthier. More intentional way of showing up for your family and for yourself.

Anthony: This is parents making time. The show that helps busy parents put family first without burning out. We are Anthony and Jennifer Craiker. We don't just give parenting tips. We help you become the parent you want to be.

So the thing with [00:02:00] burnout is as a parent, it doesn't just show up in your interactions with your children. It can affect all aspects of your life.

It can show up in how you do your job, how you handle other responsibilities that you have. It can show up in your mood. It can affect. A lot of different things if you're burned out as a parent. You know, recently I've realized that I needed more sleep. My body was telling me I wasn't getting enough rest, and so that was a sign to me and I didn't feel like a failure because I felt like I.

Wasn't being as productive as I wanted to be or whatever. It was just my body telling me, Hey, you need to get more rest than you've been getting if you want to be as productive as you want to be. And so I started prioritizing getting to bed earlier so that I could have the energy that I needed during the day.

That's really [00:03:00] what burnout is. It's a sign to us. It's not an indication that we're failing as parents. It's just a sign that, hey, something needs to change or you're not gonna be able to sustain this for much longer. 

Jennifer: Yeah. So. That's really the mistake we make is feeling like if we're feeling burnout, we're failing, we're doing something completely wrong.

Now, it does mean we need to shift, but it doesn't mean that we're inherently bad or we're doing a bad job, but we think this because we compare ourselves to those around us, and we really just don't know their whole story. The reality is other people around us are going through the same stuff we are.

You know, I heard a story once about a family picture, so picture in your mind, this beautiful family picture. Everyone looks perfectly dressed, the parents are smiling, the kids are happy. But what do you know about that family? Or what do you know about the backstory of that picture? So the story I heard, they said that the.

A 2-year-old shirt had to be turned around to hide a blood stain. The oldest son's arm was [00:04:00] strategically placed to cover a grass stain on his knee, and they had to wait 20 minutes for one of their kids to stop crying so their eyes weren't. Beet red during the photo, and they'd even arranged another son, so to cover their athletic socks because they refused to wear those itchy socks that matched the outfit.

So the truth behind the picture, the picture is beautiful. We could be very jealous of this family, but the truth was they were just like the rest of us. We just happened to know the nitty gritty details and feel that burnout. That we don't know about other people. Because of that, we tell ourselves that others aren't as burned out, they're not failing like us, and that is so wrong.

Just last week I had three instances where I did silly things two times. I totally messed up my calendar. One was I said I was gonna be somewhere on two different days, and I showed up on a whole different day that. I said I wasn't gonna be there. The other is I completely missed a party that I was actually looking forward to going to.

And the last one, and probably the worst, was I was at the grocery store and I was so distracted and thinking about [00:05:00] so many different things that I did the self-checkout and I did my whole week's worth of groceries. And then I walked away without paying. It took me about five steps to realize what I'd done.

And when I turned around, you bet that worker was right behind me, ready to tell me that I had stolen my groceries. It was so embarrassing. 

Anthony: Yeah. When we let ourselves believe that burnout is a failure, then we kind of stay in that negative mindset, and we don't listen to what burnout actually is, which is, it's a cue for change.

It's a prompting for change, or at very least for some reflection. 

Jennifer: Yeah. So a couple weeks ago you asked me. What I would call a thought provoking question , , it was somewhat surprisingly difficult. I mean, I don't even think I've fully answered it. Yet. You asked me if I were to eliminate the non-essential things in my life, what would that be?

I think that's maybe the good question to ask when we're feeling burnout. So do you wanna talk about more about that question and maybe what caused you to ask that of [00:06:00] me? 

Anthony: Yeah, so I've been reading Marcus Aurelius's meditations. If you don't know who Marcus Aurelius was, he was a Roman emperor in the second century and he wrote this personal journal, which is now called.

Meditations and he didn't actually write it for publication, he wasn't writing for an audience. He wrote it for himself. And it's kind of the series of thoughts that he had over his life about all sorts of different things about how to live a good life about. What death means about practicing his philosophy.

He was a stoic philosopher, and so the values of stoicism were really important to him. And so I've been reading through this meditations and if you still. If Marcus Rails doesn't ring a bell, if you've ever seen the movie Gladiator, he was the old guy at the beginning of the movie. But anyway, I came across this quote and that prompted me to ask Jen this question about, if [00:07:00] she were to eliminate non-essential things in her life, what would that be?

And so I'll share the quote with you. He wrote "If you seek tranquility, do less or more accurately do what's essential. Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you'll have more time and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, is this necessary?" 

Jennifer: That's pretty good.

Anthony: Yeah, it's a pretty profound reflection that he wrote in his journal and you know, it, we can eliminate. Things in our lives that are not essential, we have the choice to do that. What are those things? Well, if you think about that question what could I eliminate that's not essential. You might be surprised by what comes to mind a, as you ponder the question, there are actually quite a few things that.

If you think about it, aren't really essential to your life. We're busy people in the 21st century [00:08:00] and we're recording this in 2026 and it's a busy time for most people. We have a lot going on and the technology that we have that's supposed to make our lives easier and allow us to be more productive seems to just force us to be more and more productive and that.

Causes us to be more and more busy and we're often busy doing good things, but just because something is good doesn't mean it's essential. There are an infinite number of good ideas, and so if you wanna avoid burnout as a parent, stay focused on what's essential in your life. Don't be distracted by the things that aren't essential.

You'll be a better parent if you follow that advice. You'll also be a better spouse. You'll be a better employee or boss or whatever. You'll be better at everything if you. Focus on what's essential and get rid of the distractions or the things that are non-essential in your life. 

Jennifer: You know, I suffer from [00:09:00] wanting to fill every minute of my day, and in some ways I like that, but in other ways I sit and think like I could be so much less busy, but I'll feel guilty when I'm sitting and resting or doing something.

Quiet and reflective. I have a hard time allowing myself to do that, and I have found myself in the last few months, even thinking about my own mother when I was growing up and how I'd come home and my mother would be reading a book or writing in a journal or doing something reflective, and I think, why don't I allow myself to do that?

I think this is something that I could really apply. Myself, but I think it would be so helpful for others because I don't think I'm the only one that suffers from this need to fill every second of my day. 

Anthony: Yeah. So if you like today's episode about parent burnout and you found it helpful, we would be so grateful if you'd leave a rating and review on Apple or Spotify, and if you would share this episode with a friend, help us get this podcast out there to help more and more parents.

Jennifer: And coming up next time on parents making [00:10:00] time. Have you ever noticed how some of the best conversations with your kids don't happen when you plan them? They happen in those in-between moments. In the few minutes driving to school, on the way home from practice, sitting side by side in the car without distractions, without pressure, just.

Being together, there's something about the car that creates a different kind of space. Your child doesn't have to make eye contact. They don't feel like they're put on the spot. And sometimes if we take the opportunity, they'll open up in ways they wouldn't anywhere else. So next time we're talking about how to make use.

Of the time in the car as one of the most powerful opportunities we have to connect with our children, not by adding more to your schedule, but by being more intentional with the time that you already have. Until next time, make time to become the parent you want to be.