Transcript of CS#111: Rebecca Hagelin 30 Ways in 30 Days to Save Your Family

Transcript of Interview with Rebecca Hagelin about 30 Ways in 30 Days to Save Your Family. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

30 Ways in 30 Days to Save Your Family at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1004060/30-Ways-30-Days-to-Save-Your-Family/

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Chris Cash: This is the Catholic Spotlight, the show where we talk about what’s new, cool, and exciting in the Catholic marketplace. I’m your host, Chris Cash, director of e﷓Commerce from catholiccompany.com, your source for all your Catholic needs. Today, in the spotlight, we have Rebecca Hagelin; she is a senior fellow with the Heritage Foundation, author and a family advocate, welcome on the show, Rebecca!

Rebecca Hagelin: Hey, thank you. I’m so excited to be with you today.

Chris Cash: Now, one of the things that I find exciting about this week is this is the first time I’ve interviewed somebody who’s actually been on Bill O’Reilly, who’s one of my favorite nighttime shows, so this is awesome.

Rebecca Hagelin: Well, Bill is a very advocate for the family and for the pro-life cause, as you know. And so I’ve been honored to be on his show a number of times as well as Sean Hannity, since we’re talking about my book today, 30 Ways in 30 Days to Save Your Family. It’s probably interesting for people to know that Sean Hannity wrote the foreword to my book and Shaun is also a very committed Catholic and very strong pro-family and pro-life advocate.

Chris Cash: Absolutely, absolutely. Now, this is not specifically a Catholic book, just to let everybody out there in the audience know before we get started, but the values espoused in this book and the outline of the 30 Ways in 30 Days To Save Your Family is just absolutely fundamental to what we need to accomplish as a Catholic family out there. So I am just absolutely thrilled to have you on, Rebecca. I first found out about your book when my wife picked it up in Borders before I even knew that we saw this so we’ve been using it in our family already and I’m hoping that some of our listeners would find out ways that they can improve their family through a lot of your suggestions. So I guess, starting off, let’s talk about why did you decide to write this book?

Rebecca Hagelin: Well, I’ve been a family advocate and worked in family policy issues in Washington for over 20 years, Washington D.C. and as much as I believe that we should be involved in government every single day of our lives in shaping the nation’s policy, I also know that the struggles that families face, the answers to those questions and struggles and solutions are not found in Washington, D.C. They’re simply found in the hands of moms and dads and I really want to encourage moms and dads to take control of their family reigns and lifestyle and in a whole new and powerful way. I have written a column for many, many years on family issues. Right now, my column is in the Washington Times every Monday called How to Save Your Family and then it runs in townhall.com on Tuesdays and you know, working in family policy and then in hearing from thousands of families because of my column through the years, I know that there’s a real hunger out there for parents in information on how to fight the culture war and help. Parents just want help. We get Catholics and good Protestants, moms and dads understand that there is a culture battle for the hearts and souls of our kids. But we often feel helpless and powerless and don’t know what to do in order to fight it. So I spent the last four years traveling the country, talking to parents, giving speeches before parents’ groups whether they be civic or religious groups or school organizations. I’ve spoken at a lot of Christian schools about the culture battle and then listening to parents as to what their greatest challenges are and then I took those greatest challenge, came up with a list of 29 of them and in a few minutes we’ll explain why it’s 30 way and 30 days but only 29 challenges. But just the greatest 29 challenges and then I went to research how would the solutions work to these most common problems and I invited parents around the country to share their ideas and then I did a lot of research and so I come up with the greatest challenges that parents fight in today’s culture and the real solutions that work. And that’s what 30 ways and 30 days to save your family is all about. It’s a real practical handbook. As a matter of fact Chris, the way I encourage people to read the book is when you buy the book, the first thing you do is you go through the table of contents and you find the issue area that you’re having a problem with in your family and that’s what you read first. For instance, it might be the internet. I’ve two chapters per family whose kids are spending too much time online or have stumbled across pornography and how to fight that or maybe you as the parent are feeling like you’re the only one who has these concerns. You’re the only one who has these values. Well, I have a chapter on how to secure allies in the battle. Maybe you’re having the problem with your kid’s school. I’ve a chapter on how to direct your child’s education whether you’re home school, private school, or public school. So I really divvied it out into the problem areas and challenges that good families face and then gave the solutions and encouraged people to read the book that way.

Chris Cash: Now, I know looking through the chapters here, most of the chapter titles seem like pretty commonsense things to do. Write a letter to your teen would be a commonsense way to get across a message; however, you’re going into a lot of detail about best practices and how we can utilize those resources that are out there in the best way to help foster a good environment for our family as well.

Rebecca Hagelin: Right, in that particular chapter, actually I’ve been surprised. That is the most frequently asked about chapter in the book. It’s chapter 9, how to write a letter to your teen and the reason I put the chapter in the book is because I found that many parents who had really great relationships with their kids when they were small, when their children reached those teenage years and the parent is all of a sudden faced with a sullen teenager who answers, “Wrrrr, wrrrr” to every question you ask. They answer kind of a grunt. The parents are often at a loss on how to communicate so I have one chapter that’s learn how to have meaningful discussions with your teen and then this one how to write a letter to your teen and what I focused on in this chapter is really today’s teenager because of technology and instant messaging and email, most of them have never actually received a handwritten letter from anyone in their life much less their parents. And so I talk about the tremendous impact that it has on your child when they get a handwritten letter from you. You know, a letter written in your own hand where you give a clear declaration of your love, where you state out a vision for their life, where you remind them that you’re committed to them and you’re watching their back for their whole life long and I found that it’s a great tool to open the communications with your teenagers. And so you’re right. I take a commonsense idea and then I expand, okay parents, here’s how you do this. Let me stand by your side and walk through how you do this to have that breakthrough with your teenager and that chapter is a great example of that.

Chris Cash: Now, I would assume you would also encourage parents to engage their children in those online forms, Facebook, Twitter, text messaging things like that as well, right?

Rebecca Hagelin: Yes, a lot of parents mistakenly think that technology is the enemy, and do you know what? They are hard wiring the metal, the glass, the iPods, those are the valued neutral and parents have to realize that our kids’ brains are wired differently because they have grown up in an era of technology. Technology is not the enemy so embrace the technology, parents. The enemy is the same enemy we’ve had since the beginning of time. It’s the forces of Satan that are looking to manipulate our children whether it’s through a snake slithering across the tree, trying to manipulate us as parents or whether it’s coming through the internet. It’s the content and the people of that are in control and the forces that are controlled are the enemy, not the technology itself.

Chris Cash: And as a note on that, this show itself is part of that technology and comes through those little metal boxes so obviously…

Rebecca Hagelin: That’s exactly right.

Chris Cash: There is a lot of good stuff out there. It’s just a question of monitoring what the good stuff is, what the bad stuff is and making sure that your children are staying with the good rather than the bad.

Rebecca Hagelin: Yes, I encourage parents to embrace technology, learn to communicate with your children in the spaces and in the message that works for them and make sure, for instance, if you have the internet in your home, after you’ve listened to this podcast, the number one thing you should do is to get a good reliable filter for your internet. That’s the first step you should take because the reality is according to the London School of Economics and the Department of Justice, nine out of ten kids who go online on the internet, will encounter pornography. That’s 90% so it’s not a matter of if your child is going to it. It’s when your child and does…and once you have a good reliable internet filter, so you can take some commonsense practices, I go over a lot of the tips in the book, how to keep your kids safe in online social networking, on the Facebook and MySpace and what to look out for. You know, I do say there are some things that you say no to online. For instance, my column last week in the Washington Times was just say no to chatrooms and I give the dangers of being in chatrooms in my book as well. But I highly recommend…the reason I wrote the book was to be a commonsense guide for parents and I’m very encouraged to find that parents all across the country are writing me now saying, “Wow, thank you. I was having a problem teaching my son respect and I read your chapter on Address Your Son in Respect and now of all sudden, his attitude has changed” or there’s another chapter in there that teaches moms how to stop fighting with their daughters over the trashy clothes they’re wearing. And how you can actually have your daughter look trendy but yet be moral as well.

Chris Cash: And you know, back to the Facebook for just a second, I have some friends who have learned tremendous amounts about their children by being friends with them on Facebook and just seeing their interactions with many of their other friends, the comments that are posted, the pictures that get posted and so forth.

Rebecca Hagelin: Yes, and here are some of the guidelines, I guess for using Facebook. Number one, you first have to sit down and talk with your child about the dangers of the internet, about how important it is that they keep a clean profile on Facebook…

Chris Cash: And talk to them about the future implications on employment there.

Rebecca Hagelin: Yes, yes. Right, you know the moral reasons should be enough but our kids also need to know the practical reasons why they have to keep their profiles clean. Colleges are now routinely checking out Facebook pages of prospective students. Employers are looking at Facebook pictures and statements and so what I told my…I’ve got a 17-year-old daughter and what I told her long ago was, “Look, you can have a Facebook page. I’m all for that but I need to have the pass code, you and I are going to sit down occasionally and sit down and go over your Facebook and we’re going to go over what postings your friends have put on your site and if they’re unhealthy or immoral or I feel there are safety measures there that need to be taken, we’re going to delete them and I’m going to explain to you why. So I’m going to teach you how to best use these tools without you becoming a victim of any of them.” And that’s a conversation I try to help parents through in the book.

Chris Cash: All right, well, we’re going to take a short break here to hear from our sponsor. We’ll come back in just a few minutes with Rebecca Hagelin to talk more about 30 Ways in 30 Days to Save Your Family. This is the Catholic Spotlight.

Chris Cash: And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight. We were talking with Rebecca Hagelin about 30 Ways in 30 Days to Save Your Family. Rebecca, can you tell us a little about…you had mentioned earlier about having 30 chapters but only 29 problems you addressed. You want to talk about why that is?

Rebecca Hagelin: Yes, the last chapter is entitled Make Your Own List. As we stated earlier in the program, I designed the book for parents to look to the table of contents, read an issue area that they’re having trouble within their family, and read that chapter first and then start taking the actions I recommend. But there are some issues that parents have that are unique to your children, some situations…and so, after you’ve gone through the book and you’ve seen how I help parents, you identify, you state what the challenge is then give solutions and resources and practical steps, chapter 30 tells parents how to make their own list of things that might be unique to their family and how to zero in on what the problem is and then how to zero in for help and resources. I might also use that chapter to give a lot of tips and real world stories that came in from the readers of my column who give some great tips on a variety of issues that maybe aren’t worth a whole chapter. So chapter 30 is a real important one to take parents to the next level. And the other thing that I’ve done is since I launched the book and I’ve started getting such a good response is I found that parents really need somebody to come along beside them on a weekly basis and remind them that the battle for the hearts and souls of their children is well worth fighting and they’re not alone. So the other thing I did was establish a free weekly e-newsletter. It comes out every Wednesday and parents can go to my website which is howtosaveyourfamily.com. It’s howtosaveyourfamily.com and you can sign up to receive my newsletter which comes straight to your inbox every Wednesday outlining the culture challenge of the week and how to fight back and just encouraging parents to practice what I call deliberate parenting. I want this book to be more than just a book you read and put on the shelf but I want it to help be a paradigm shift in how parents are parenting today. In this day and age with all the challenges that are before us and all the competitions for our children’s time and brains, we as parents have to be very deliberately pass our values on to our children everyday and equip them to tower above the pop culture. So we have to constantly be thinking and waking up every morning saying, “How can I on this day reinforce what’s highest and best for my child’s life? How can I help him become all that God meant for them to become and not get caught up in wasting their time in mindless or useless activities that might compromise their integrity or their future?” So my newsletter is designed to help parents do that on a weekly basis and again, it’s free and you can sign up at howtosaveyourfamily.com.

Chris Cash: Now, when you were sitting on to write this book, you got your list of questions together, what did you find was the easiest question to address? Was it something that you had previously struggled with personally and you already had the resources pulled together or how did that go?

Rebecca Hagelin: Well, it’s a funny question you should ask that because when I started working on this book, I started as I would see pattern with what problems parents were having. I would actually sit down and go ahead and start working and saying, “Okay, I know that’s going to be in the list because I’m hearing that everywhere and the first chapter I actually wrote was chapter 23 which is about setting clothing standards for your daughter that reflect she is to be respected and admired for who she truly is and the reason that I wrote that one first is because actually I had a book that came out about four years ago called Home Invasion and it was a general book about the culture war and what I found when I did speeches on that book and when I did radio interviews with Mike Collins is that we talked about how today’s 10- and 11-year-old little girls are walking around looking like little streetwalkers. And invariably a parent would call and say, “Oh my gosh, that’s the problem I’m having with my daughter that when I go shopping, there’s just nothing that is respectful of who she is as a human being so I have to give in.” And you know, I had a daughter at the time that was 13 years old so I was going through that same issue and so I knew that that was an issue that real moms and dads were struggling with on a daily basis. So I wrote that chapter first.

Chris Cash: Yeah, we had Colleen Hammond on the show just a few weeks ago talking about…oh, what’s the name of her book now? [Laughter].

Rebecca Hagelin: She’s a great author and I don’t remember the name of her book either but I know she is a wonderful person.

Chris Cash: Right, absolutely so you know that…that is definitely a very prevalent topic going on right now.

Rebecca Hagelin: Well, it is and here is like the one gold nugget, they can read the book and that chapter for more but here’s the real take-away…when my daughter and I go shopping, again, she likes to be fashionable and trendy and I want her to feel comfortable in her clothing so we have one simple rule and I remind her of it every time we go shopping, and here’s the rule: We both have to like it. End of story and it stops the fight because she knows that means two things. Number one, I’m not going to plunk down bucks on the countertop for clothing that I feel makes my daughter look less than what God created her to be or compromises her morality and her integrity. But she also knows that I’m not going to force her to wear something that she feels dorky in. And you know, some days we may come home empty-handed, but you know what? We’re going to go out again tomorrow until we find something because we’re not going to let the mass marketers win. Our values are the ones that are going to reign in our family, not somebody else’s and it just is a real commitment that I have to her and she knows that while I have the commitment to her and that at the end of the day, she is going to look cute and fashionable and so that ends a lot of the fights.

Chris Cash: And that book is Dressing With Dignity by Colleen Hammond.

Rebecca Hagelin: Yes, there you go.

Chris Cash: I looked back in the Catholic Spotlight archives to find my interview with her a few weeks ago. Moving on with us though, which of the chapters did you find the hardest to write and why?

Rebecca Hagelin: You know that’s an interesting question. I don’t really think I had a really hard time writing any of the chapters because again, I’ve been working on the cultural family issues for over 20 years. My greatest challenge was really limiting the number of chapters. You know I could write another book 30 more ways in 30 more days to save your family. So I think the hardest part was really paring it down and by the way, getting back to Colleen Hammond, I just flipped through my chapter Set Clothing Standards for your Daughter because I knew I had mentioned her book and you’re right, it’s Dressing With Dignity and that’s another thing that I did in the book, when I write the chapter, I write the chapters…first of all, they’re all short. They’re meant to be read in a car pool line or when you might just have 15 to 20 minutes, if you had younger children and they’re napping, to zero in on an issue but at the end of each chapter, I actually have a section called more help and it’s where I give parents more resources to go to, for again if you’re having…maybe you’re having a surface problem with one issue or maybe your problem really is you really are having an issue with pornography in your family. I give resources for parents to dig in a little deeper and the other thing I give at each chapter is something called Act Now, and it’s actually a pledge that parents sign to themselves saying that today on this day, I’m going to take this action and solve this problem with my child and I find that it’s…you actually date it and sign it in the book so you’re not just begin saying, “Oh, I’m going to do that someday” but you’re actually taking the action on that particular day and vowing that you’re going to do it.

Chris Cash: Now, is there any specific chapter that has gotten a response far greater than what you would have expected?

Rebecca Hagelin: The one on how to write the letter to your teen, far greater response that I ever expected and the other chapter Understand How Marketers Target Your Children…I have found that’s a real aha for a lot of parents because the culture will tell us your teens don’t want to talk to you, that you’re the last person in the world they want influencing them, and really, it kind of…the culture tries to set you up as a parent to be silent and to make you think that you’re fighting your child. Well the chapter on understand How Marketers Target Your Children along with the chapter called Battle the Culture, Not Your Child, I felt had been really empowering, an eye-opening both to parents and teenagers because they do two things. Number one, it shows that our kids are really being manipulated by the popular media and culture and that a lot of teenagers don’t realize it and parents certainly don’t realize it. But the reality is, our teenagers are the most affluent generation of teenagers in all of history. They’re spending an estimated $200 billion a year of their own money and the mass marketers know that so I’ve done a study and I’ve been in marketing for 25 years and I know how marketing works and the way that it’s working on our adolescents today, is the mass marketers to kids have figured out how to manipulate our child’s hormones, get their adrenalin pumping and get them coming back for more and they do that through highly sexualized programming because it keeps the kids coming back for more especially the boys and what they do then is that they sell their products and they sell their world view of that highly sexualized culture and so that kind of shows how our kids are being manipulated and why are all the materials over-sexualized today. So that…then again taking with the chapter Battle the Culture, Not Your Child is a reminder to parents, “Hey, it’s adults that are creating the pop icons, the Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Adults are sending your child *** [00:26:30] pornography. Adults are deciding who their pop icons will be and when kids realize, “Oh my goodness, these are not…this is not a grassroots up movement. It really is adult manipulating all this.” Then suddenly, they realize they should be more savvy and parents suddenly realize, “Oh my gosh, it’s adults selling my kids a world view, not me and I need to tell my kids my world view and encourage them to be all that they can be.” So I found this a very unifying chapter for both parents and children.

Chris Cash: Yeah, I would imagine when you come to the realization at some point that Disney created Hanna Montana long before Miley Cyrus ever came along to play the part, that’s got to be…

Rebecca Hagelin: That’s exactly right, Chris. I mean that’s the perfect example. Hanna Montana concept was carefully researched by the marketers to find out what kind of shows they could use to appeal to young girls. They created the character and then they went out looking for Miley Cyrus to fill the role and they created the star out of her. That’s a perfect example of how the marketing decided what was going to sell and they created somebody to fill in the blanks.

Chris Cash: And now you could say that once she leaves Disney, she’s going to have a huge career as well spurred mainly by an invention by Disney.

Rebecca Hagelin: Yes, you’re right. It was all an invention, an invented character, an invented lifestyle. All the stuff that our teenagers are watching on MTV which is selling a very crude and crass lifestyle to our kids is all created specifically to get their adrenalin pumping and keep them coming back for more. I actually outlined in the chapter interviews that were done with the creators of the MTV and with the mass marketers and they bragged about not how they know what teenagers want but they brag about how they learned to manipulate the teenage mind and it really is an insidious way to sell products and to bring about a greater world of materialism.

Chris Cash: Now, you mentioned having your teenager read at least some portions of this book, at what point do you think it’s appropriate and what chapters do you think in particular they should be reading?

Rebecca Hagelin: Well, I think this again…it’s really an individualistic approach and I highly recommend that parents look at the maturity level of their different children and nobody knows your child better than you do. This is why I have a chapter on How to be Your Family’s Movie Critic and that you as the parent are the ultimate television control. You know the maturity level of your child. What might be appropriate for your 15-year-old may be totally inappropriate for your 7-year-old but there might a 10-year-old who’s more mature than a 15-year-old and so you as a parent really need to look at your individual children and share information according to the maturity level that you as a parent knows best. Don’t ever rely on Hollywood’s movie rating system. There are a lot of parents who…they go to the video store…this is one of the things I love to do when I’m on the road giving speeches and I say, “How do you choose the movies that you let your children watch?” Well the number one way parents say is, “Well, by the movie rating system.” Well guess what? In the last 12 years, there has been something called ratings creed and that is today’s PG rated movies are 12 years ago would have gotten an R rating. And first of all, parents don’t realize that at all but there has been a change in the rating system. The second way they say is they take the video, they flip it over and they read the description on the back and that’s how they decide and I say, “Well guess who’s written that description on the back? The people who want you to rent their movie!” So you have to be smarter than that. So I recommend some trusted movie review sites like screenit.com or pluggedinonline.org which is a free one. There are some paid ones and there are free ones as well and of course, the best thing you can do is if you have time is to actually watch the movie yourself before you let your young children watch. You may be even surprised by the content that’s hidden inside that you don’t know about.

Chris Cash: And I have seen many movies where there’s been very odd and objectionable content even in the PG, PG-13 realm so I fully understand that.

Rebecca Hagelin: Right.

Chris Cash: Well, we are about out of time today, Rebecca. Was there anything else that you wanted to share with our listeners before we finish up here?

Rebecca Hagelin: Yeah, before we close, I would say to take away 30 Ways in 30 Days to Save Your Family and my life’s work now is to really encourage parents to wake up every morning and be very deliberate about how you pass your values on to your children because our children are like sand going through our fingers. You’re going to turn around one day and your young child is walking down the graduation aisle and out your door and you really wanted to equip that child with an internal compass so that when they walk out in the world, they know what’s right and what’s wrong and they know how to stand up for what’s right and what’s wrong and the only way they’re really going to know how to do that is if you as a parent are very deliberate about passing on your values. You love your child more than anyone else and you know what’s best for your individual child. So just make a deliberate effort to remind them of your undying love and commitment to them as a human being, that you want what’s best for them and helping build inside them the integrity and character and values that will carry them for the rest of their life. And again, my free weekly e-newsletter is to walk along beside you long term and it’s at howtosaveyourfamily.com where you can sign up and also email me with questions and challenges that you might have.

Chris Cash: Well, thank you so much, Rebecca. It has been an honor to get to talk with you and hopefully, there will be many, many listeners out there who can find something…excuse me, something in this book that will greatly impact your family in some way. I think it’d be hard to open it and not find at least two or three just absolutely golden nuggets that are going to impact your family. So thank you for putting this book together. It is great resource and I’m quite certain that it will be a great resource for many years to come. All you fans of the Catholic Spotlight. It is beginning of the month time. Head on over to Podcast Alley right now, vote for every one of our recommend Catholic shows over there. Help us to get some positive culture. Pushed up in the ratings over there so that more people will be able to find it. Also head on over to iTunes.com, leave us a review. It helps to push us up in the ratings there as well and it gets us in front of new people and helps to spread the positive culture message. Any other questions, comments, send them in. We love to hear from you. This is Chris from Catholic Spotlight and I believe this is the end of our interview. So have a great day everyone and God bless.
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Transcript of Interview with Rebecca Hagelin about 30 Ways in 30 Days to Save Your Family. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

30 Ways in 30 Days to Save Your Family at The Catholic Company.

http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1004060/30-Ways-30-Days-to-Save-Your-Family/