Advice Every Girl Needs To Hear From A Mom Who Raised 12 Daughters

My upbringing looked nothing like that. I was raised by a mother who believed home was not a place you outgrow, but the soil where calling, character, and creativity take root. It shaped me so profoundly that I now raise my own daughters the same way, all twelve of them.

This guide is the roadmap I wished someone handed me at sixteen: a gentle, steady blueprint for growing up with purpose, building a life anchored in love, and embracing each season with intention. It's not about perfection, productivity, or checking off the “right” milestones. It's about becoming a whole woman, with a strong sense of who you are, what you’re made for, and how to live a life that blesses the people you love most.

If you're longing for a slower, richer, more grounded way of growing, one shaped by faith, family, and real skills, consider this your starting place.

Ages 4–10

Focus on the arts, sciences, cooking, gardening, chores, animal care, life skills, and literature with your homeschooling family. Travel as much as you can, even if it's just day trips and simple adventures.

Let these years be full of wonder, creativity, and play. Learn to help at home, care for pets, bake bread, plant seeds, and read beautiful stories. Formal academics can wait. A secure, happy childhood and real-life skills are a better foundation than endless worksheets.

Ages 11–13

This is the experimenting stage. Try many hobbies until you begin to see what lights you up.

Keep building life skills and focus on relationships with family and friends. Pay attention to your calling:

What does your heart say?
What do you choose to do in your free time?
Do you feel drawn to create, nurture, solve problems, rescue, research, or build?

Get to know who you are, and watch your talents emerge. Start reading books and watching documentaries about people who did great things in the areas that match your gifts and interests. Let their stories mentor you.

Ages 14–18

Choose a passion, hobby, or calling to immerse yourself in. Think of the next five years as a focused track that may carry you from your mid-teens into your early twenties.

Year 1: Research and Explore

Learn everything you can about your chosen field. Read, watch, listen, and take notes. Keep a journal of ideas and dreams.

Year 2: Tools and Practice

Get some basic equipment or supplies. Start gaining hands-on experience. Play with the skills and knowledge you will need to excel. Make lots of beginner mistakes and learn from them.

Year 3: Mentors and Mastery

Find a mentor. Be willing to volunteer, work for free, or trade help for wisdom. Take a masterclass, go on a trip, shadow someone, or, if you can, pay for one-on-one lessons from the best expert you can find. Begin honing your skills in real life, not just in theory.

Year 4: Serve and Start Something

Start your own small practice, project, or business, or begin serving actively in your field. You might need to travel for two to four months, or you might be able to build something from home or online. The goal is to serve real people with your real skills.

Year 5: Income and Impact

Begin earning real money or making real impact doing what you love, and start investing in your future. As a woman, these are prime years to prepare for both family life and meaningful work. Your health and fertility are often at their peak in your twenties, so keep that in mind as you plan.

Ages 19–22

Continue working in your area of skill, but also be intentional about community.

Get involved in things that help you meet likeminded people and see their character in action:

• Mission trips

• Local volunteering

• Church life

• Hospitality and family gatherings

• Groups and communities that share your core values

Let trusted friends and families introduce you to potential relationships. If you find the right man, someone who loves God, works hard, and shares your values, don't be afraid of getting married young.

Ages 20–30

If you're married and able, these are powerful years for starting your family.

Have as many children as you can while your body is strong and you have lots of energy. Eat whole, nourishing foods and keep your life as home-centered as possible. Don't try to do everything at once.

Keep homeschooling playful and relational. Have a small garden if you can. Don't feel like you need to manage a big farm or a lot of land yet.

Your babies need you, and your older kids are still little. This is a season for simplicity, bonding, and rhythm, not for overloading yourself with projects. I personally got married at age 21 and had five babies in my twenties.

Ages 30–40

If you're in good health, you may still be having babies, and that's beautiful.

This is a great time to expand your homemaking into homesteading, add animals, and explore new hobbies. At this stage, consider moving to a homestead or getting some land if that's your dream. Your children will help care for it and will thrive in the process. My husband and I moved from Main Street to a small farm when our oldest was ten. When he was thirteen we moved to Italy and eventually Ukraine to do mission work as a family. We had five more babies in our thirties. I was blessed with wonderful health and fertility, thanks to a Mediterranean-type diet and raw milk.

Your older kids are now:

• Entertaining the younger ones

• Helping with cooking and cleaning

• Caring for animals

• Building their own hobbies

You're now a professional mom. With the help of your growing children, you can often reclaim two to three hours a day for your passions and skills. Go back to what you were doing at 13 to 18. Pick up where you left off and include your kids. Make it part of homeschooling.

Let your children help you build a home-based business, ministry, or creative project. This becomes their education too.

I started a publishing company with my husband based on concepts from Tim Ferriss’s book The Four Hour Workweek. We were both working from home, and that allowed him to sell his business, and we moved overseas for our big dream.

Ages 40–50

You may still have kids at home, but many will be launching into adulthood. The household begins to run more smoothly on its own. You suddenly discover new windows of time opening up. We used this time to adopt five more kids and move to Hawaii. Eventually, we bought the dream farm in Indiana and started a homeschool resource center.

Use this decade to:

• Travel more

• Deepen and romance your marriage

• Help your kids start businesses or ministries

• Support their callings with your experience and connections

• Build your lifelong dream

You now have freedom to give more time to your business, calling, farm, mission, or creative work, and to your husband. You can also return to more formal education or training if you want.

This is a season of multiplication. You have poured into your children, and now you can pour into your bigger vision together.

Ages 50–60

If you welcomed babies in your twenties, this can be the beautiful season of grandbabies.

You might happily drop many other things because you love being a full-time grandma. You have the joy of:

• Supporting your grown children as they raise families

• Sharing your skills, recipes, stories, and faith

• Being a living example of a life poured out in love

This is not the end of usefulness. It's a rich new beginning of legacy. I hope to get into neighborhood development, and I want to design small villages based on the Blue Zones and healthy, home-centered living.

Notice What’s Not Here

In my own life, and in how I guide my daughters, you will notice some things missing:

I did not build my life around climbing a corporate ladder.

I did not delay family for decades while hoping everything would somehow work out later.

I did not treat motherhood as a side hobby to squeeze in after “real life.”

Instead, I built my life around faith, family, home, community, and calling, and let education, work, and projects serve those priorities, not replace them.

Do’s and Don’ts

Do:

• Do seek God about your calling and timing.

• Do cultivate real-life skills: cooking, cleaning, gardening, budgeting, hospitality, childcare, animal care.

• Do read great books and study inspiring lives.

• Do experiment with hobbies and passions in your teens.

• Do find mentors, take classes, and practice your craft.

• Do value marriage, motherhood, and home as good and worthy callings.

• Do live simply so you are free to say yes to the things that matter.

• Do involve your kids in your work and dreams so they grow up skilled and confident.

• Do stay rooted in church and community.

• Do protect your health with rest, movement, and nourishing food.

Don’t:

• Don’t assume you must follow the standard script of debt, dorm life, and delaying family if it doesn't fit your calling.

• Don’t waste your teen years on endless entertainment and comparison instead of skill-building.

• Don’t build a life that leaves no room for children, marriage, or meaningful relationships.

• Don’t try to do everything in your twenties: career, big homestead, tons of travel, and babies all at once.

• Don’t outsource all of your children’s training to institutions and screens.

• Don’t overlook your husband and marriage while focusing only on kids or projects.

• Don’t believe you are too late at 30, 40, or 50. God can still multiply what you give Him.

• Don’t measure your worth by titles, degrees, or followers.

Most of all: choose a life of love. When you build around faith, family, and service, the education, skills, and opportunities will grow naturally out of that rich soil.