 Well, welcome to the show, Christina. Great to have you. Thanks so much for having me. Well, I guess we should start with a million-dollar question. They say nothing prepares you for having kids. Do you feel the CIA training prepared you for having children? I do. Strangely enough, there are so many skills from espionage that are applicable to parenting. Who would have thought, right? But people do ask me what's harder, being a spy or being a parent. And I almost always say being a parent because it is so challenging and humbling, right? You judge other parents until you find yourself in a similar scenario later, and then you realize, oh. So it is, yeah, it's a humbling job. Now, you start the book by saying you did dream about joining the CIA and you also weren't necessarily big on having kids early on in your career. So can you just talk us through a little bit of your backstory and how you ended up one in espionage and deciding to start a family? Sure. Well, I started by way of what I studied in college. I studied linguistics and African studies and Swahili and Zulu. And the thought was that I would do humanitarian work or document some dying language in Africa in a village. Just really loved language and fell in love with the culture of East Africa. And I was unexpectedly recruited by the CIA on my campus. I had an interview around the same timeframe as I interviewed with Peace Corps. And I received offers from both. And I will say that the interview with the CIA just went completely differently and better than the Peace Corps experience. I did not know who I was interviewing with. I just knew it was a government agency interested in applicants with foreign language. I initially skipped the interview and lied and said I had car problems because I was seeing Lady Smith Black Mombazo about four hours away from my school. And then I did have car problems. And so that was a lesson I learned from my mom. You don't lie about things like that because then they will happen to you. And the recruiter stated extra day to meet with me. And like I said, it was just such a fantastic interview experience where I learned about the ability to influence US policy and educate the president and other policymakers on a part of the world that I felt really passionate about. And I would be able to travel to the continent and really use that expertise. And so that really excited me. And so it started this amazing career in espionage and I found that I had a lot more career ambitions than I had once thought. I had grown up in the Midwest and my plan was to get my MRS degree when I initially started college. But as I became more excited about my studies, everything kind of shifted and continued to do that as I got into further into this career at the CIA because it's a very intense environment. A lot of Taipei personalities, it's very competitive. And so having a family became further and further away from my plan. And then actually the second half of my career at the CIA, I got into clandestine operations and was able to actually go and meet with assets in the field and collect intelligence and learn kind of that cloak and dagger side. Before we move forward, there's something neat there that I just want to tap into for our audience. And you didn't seek out to find classes to put you into CIA. You were following your interests. You were following things that you got enjoyment out of that you are compelled to take an interest in. And we see it all the time from our clients how many people are living lives because they think this is what their parents want them to do or this is where if they're going to get into a certain field, they have to check these certain boxes. But when you're doing that, I find it difficult to get excited about something that you think you're supposed to be excited about rather than following this inner guide that is like showing you what exactly you should be doing. Absolutely, that's such a good point, Johnny. I've always said that if people are studying something or doing a career that they're passionate about and really genuinely interested in, they're going to be more energized and you're going to be more successful. And so I think people, family, friends were a little bit worried that I was studying something so niche. But I was genuinely interested and excited about it. And luckily I was young enough that I wasn't worried about the things, the responsibilities of life and how I was going to pay bills and stuff. I just kind of thought it would work out and thankfully it did. But I would say that the question I'm asked most often if when people are interested in a career in the intelligence community is what should I study? How could I make myself competitive? And I always say, listen, the national security priorities are going to change. So if you're choosing to study something because you think that's going to make the CIA want you, like that's the wrong way to go about it. Study something that you actually are interested in because it's going to change. And there are plenty of people too that study something and then they end up working on a completely different area because things do change so much in national security. I mean, there's always those big, hard targets that are of interest but things kind of come and go and what's kind of the hot issue. And so that's a great point that you made and that is what I did and it's thankfully worked out thus far. Now, Swahili is not a language that I think many Americans even encounter. So how did you know that that could be a major and like how did that spark your interest? Well, it's funny because I knew I wanted to do linguistics because I knew I had a knack for foreign languages and not just learning them because the way that I learned isn't necessarily through like listening and picking it up. Like I don't have a musical ear. Like I learned from actually looking at the structure and understanding how language works. And so in high school, I studied Spanish and Latin but I basically slept through the classes because I was bored. And so I knew I wanted to do something that was just really different and not an Indo-European language. And at that point I was thinking humanitarian work, right? So I was thinking, okay, I wanna do a Bantu language with a completely different structure because it's so interesting but I wanna do one that is spoken, in a lot of places and a lot of people so that I can reach more people doing this kind of aid work that I was thinking I would do. And so naturally that became, Swahili was the best choice. And then I studied Zulu right before I graduated because it's just so fun. It's such a great language. It's so difficult. It's very, it's similar enough to Swahili that it's makes it confusing to learn but it's really difficult with the clicks and sounds and stuff but it was fascinating. Now you mentioned earlier that your career was taking off and I think for many women in the audience that is a challenge weighing career and starting a family and reaching that decision and worried about how that might impact your career. So can you just talk us through a little bit of your decision making process on truly starting the family, what that looked like for your career, especially as it was really picking up steam? You know, I spent my 20s in the agency and I was dating and I always like to say it's kind of like sex in the city but at the CIA because you know, you're living in this bubble and everyone you're friends with and dating they're all there because you know, we've all gone through these extensive background checks and polygraph, psychological testing. So, but my number one thing was my career and I became very much a workaholic and I worked these crazy hours but I loved every minute of it because that's just the stage where I was in life. And you know, obviously over time that changed and I decided I wanted to have a family and it's not to say that there aren't plenty of people who stay at the agency when they have families but for us we're a blended family and so our custody situation at the time meant that we wouldn't be able to take my husband's kids overseas if we continued. And so that's why we resigned, my husband's also former CIA and you know, it can be a very family friendly organization but as a woman there is always, I know Johnny's laughing but as a woman there are, you know, it can be, there are challenges and I actually think back and I cringe about the way that I treated some new mothers when I was there as a young analyst and it was the only thing I had going on in my life and I didn't understand why it wasn't number one in everyone else's life, right? But some people, you know, men and women had families to go home to and I just had no empathy or understanding for that, right? Because I was just very like single focus on my career getting ahead and I just, I'm actually friends with a former colleague of mine now we keep in touch and who, you know, we would butt heads, you know, early in my career because she was a new mom and I was not in that stage of life and, you know, it's only now that I look back and realize what she was balancing and what she was juggling and just have so much respect for that and, you know, the women that had kind of paved the way before me, which were the reason why I was able to have the career that I had, right? It was all the women that had shown that we had the ability to do all the things that men were doing. We could run clandestine operations even if we had kids, right? And so I'm thankful for that. But yeah, it was a, it can be a tricky balance but there are a lot of tandem couples and there are a lot of people who do go overseas with kids and have fantastic experiences as well. I just want to note because I think for the rest of this conversation I will be snickering on the sidelines here for a few things. But I just want to say because I view the CIA the same way as you might view a linebacker. So in a linebacker, offensive linemen, you only hear their name if they're doing something wrong. Yes, yes, that's such a good comparison. Oh my gosh, I've never heard that one. That's great. Of course, as civilians, the only time that we're hearing about the CIA is in context of something horribly wrong happening and of course in today's time, everyone's just like, oh my God, it's the CIA, where were they doing now? But we don't hear all the good stuff that the CIA does. And so yes, I'm going to be snickering because of that economy duality. There's a lot going on there. And so it's like in my head swirling but I just want to state that for all of the terrible things that we might put on the CIA, there are so many wonderful things that they were executing across the world. I don't know if executing is the word you want to use, Johnny, or maybe it is. No, that's a really good point. We like to say that it's only a policy success and an intelligence failure, right? You don't hear intelligence success. Like if it's successful, it's the policy. And if it's a failure, it's always the intelligence community. So that's absolutely right. There's so much that's not known and that's why it's been a transition for me going from a career in the shadows where all of the things you're doing well are not praised in the spotlight. I know I'm talking publicly about what I did. So that was definitely a change for me getting used to this, talking so publicly about this lifestyle. But yeah, you're absolutely right. There's so much good that isn't known. And one of the things that I talk about in the book is the values at the CIA that I think aren't really known, like trust and loyalty and the trust between an operations officer and their asset is so important. And it's something that's taken so seriously because you're protecting their physical safety and their life, which is also sometimes their families as well. But you're really creating that bond of trust so that they feel comfortable providing that intelligence. And it's not like you see in the movies where people are being blackmailed or forced to give information. It's really done in a way that there can be a lot of integrity, believe it or not. And so these are some of the skills that we talk about applying to parenting and teaching our kids how to build trust with others through common ground, developing rapport. And a lot of that has to do with making them well-rounded and exposing them to a lot of interest so that they can create that rapport and that trust with people. And that all comes from what we learn in operational training at the farm, creating those relationships. And really it's not just applicable for parents. These are skills that adults should have. I mean, in the workplace, it's so much easier to accomplish your goals if your colleagues trust you than if they don't, right? That's like the number one thing. And when I left the agency, I first went to Amazon and I was working in information security. And there were barely any women at all. And this was several years ago. I don't know that there are any more now but I don't know, I wouldn't be surprised. I always said it was like Bizarro World where there was always a line for the men's bathroom and there was never a line for the women's restroom. And that shouldn't really just say it all. But when I was there, I really had to rely on some of these skills to build trust because I was coming in from the CIA, which I openly shared, but that immediately meant people didn't want to trust me. I couldn't really talk about what I had done. And then I was also a woman. So I had all of these strikes against me. So I really leaned on those skills I learned through CIA training to build that trust and rapport to help me be successful there. When I think back to my childhood, I think about the impact of relationships but in a unique way. So I went to a small Catholic school. Everyone was very similar to me. And then I got to college and that's when I really encountered diversity, diversity of thinking, diversity of religion, diversity of culture. What I found really fascinating about your relationship building tactics at the CIA is this idea that you have to build trust with assets who speak a different language, who grew up in an entirely different culture who probably don't even have many similarities in terms of experience. And yet you're building this massive level of trust with them to get the information, to build the relationships to open doors for the CIA. So I'd love to break down how we can instill that in children in simple ways that they can really create these relationships that I find so impactful, not only in adult life but as young kids to really get past bullying and some of the problems we're seeing in schools. That's a great question. I, you know, with kids, I think the number one thing that we really focus on in our family is exposing them to a lot of different interests not in like a tiger mom kind of way, not in like overbooking them for activities but in terms of giving them a variety of skills so that they're more interesting because when you're more interesting and you know about more things there's more of a chance that you can make a genuine connection. So for example, you know, some of the cases and the pitches that I saw fail at the agency when I say pitches, I mean, you know like pitching someone for recruitment or whether it's like a cold pitch if you hadn't met them before. Those failed when they weren't based on like genuine connections when someone was trying to pretend to be someone they're not like, oh, you're interested, you know, in swimming I'm interested in swimming but you're not really and you don't really know anything about it, right? And so when we give our kids these skills and I mean it's anything from sports to music and arts and the outdoors all of these things were positioning them to make those connections with people but also it's about exposing them to the world. And of course that's been something that's more challenging over the past few years as the world has shut down and we've been isolated from the pandemic. And so there were some things that we did during those years because our youngest we have five kids and they range from four to almost 20 years old and our younger two were very young when the pandemic started. And so obviously they weren't able to experience a lot of things that we wanted them to and so we tried to bring the world to them. And so one of the things that we do and I do this with a subscription box now but it doesn't have to be a subscription box like those can get really expensive and unreasonable but you can create it yourself. So when I first started doing it I would just go to Costco and pick out some sort of international food, right? And then I would go online there are so many free resources to get like coloring pages to get the flag from whatever country the food is from and then we sit down, we actually still do it we started during the pandemic and still do it and we sit down once a month as a family and you have to go through and try every single food like that's the rule, you have to try every food even if you don't like it, it's fine, it's one bite. And then we learn about the country that we're eating the food from we talk about the language and there's really, and we do trivia and there's something for all of the kids every age level and that's been a way that we've kind of been helping them open their eyes to the world during a time where we couldn't actually travel. Now ideally we'll be able to travel you know my kids are still little and it's kind of hard but hopefully we'll get to do more of that but there are ways to learn about the world and give them that diversity of thought from our home and low cost options as well. I feel like that cultivates curiosity too so by exploring all of those interests and maybe realizing like, hey I don't actually wanna play guitar or I'm not actually interested in swimming you're still fostering a curiosity that's so essential to building these relationships and building trust in other people because the less interested you are in others the less interested you are in the world around you and what's going on well the more challenging it's gonna be to build those great relationships in your life. Absolutely and I think knowing when to let go you know if our kids decide that they're not interested in something that they've tried like knowing when to let go and say okay you've tried it so they have some experience in it they can speak to it to some level and that's the same for us as adults you know we might try something and decide it's not really our thing but at least we know enough about it that we can talk to someone who may be more interested in it and say oh yeah I tried that at one point and it went like this for me how do you do that? Asking questions and building those connections. The other point that I'd love to chat a little bit about is obviously joining an existing family and building trust with kids that aren't your own can be challenging so being not only a mom but a step mom there's dynamics there within the family structure that you encountered and I'd love to hear how you use some of these trust building strategies within your own family. You know trust is so important in a blended family and I think that was really what I leaned on so much in the early days of our relationship because Ryan my husband had three kids and at the time when we met they were six, eight and nine and I was really aware of building that foundation and so the way it looked in practical terms was that obviously any discipline always came from Ryan and even still to this day we still kind of fall back on that because I'm always very aware that I don't have the same foundation that he has with the kids that dates back to their birth years. For me it was much later and so it's built slowly over time and I really have to be aware of that and getting to know each of them they all have different personalities and relationships change over the years our oldest is in college now and I would say that even though she's not here it's probably the best our relationship has ever been because she's getting into those years but I think all kids regardless if you come from a blended family once you start to get into your 20s you start to realize all of the things that your parents did for you and you become more appreciative so my relationships with each of the kids are different and they changed over time but I definitely was looking for ways to connect with them early on based on their interests and based on their personalities a lot of we talk about give to get giving a little bit of information so that they'll talk more and really listening is such an important skill set listening to what they want to talk about and connecting with them on their interests as kids and really just being there for them something I talk a lot about and licensed a parent is this trust in a family and the words I promise it's such a big deal in our family we use that phrase sparingly because we take it so seriously and by doing it that way when we actually do say it with the kids it's almost like it gives them a piece and whatever they've been asking that they're done like they feel good because they know that when we say I promise we mean it and we follow through and I think that that's something that I didn't really understand before meeting my husband and it was something he was doing with we call them the bigs but they were little at the time but it was something he had been doing with them and I was thinking of promising was something like a pinky promise on the playground it's like, oh yeah, I promise, yeah but it's just so much more than that in our family and I think that it's important for our kids whether it's a blended family or not to know that when we promise something that we follow through and that we say what we mean I mean what we say and that we're gonna be there for them and so I think that's really been the number one thing with my bigs who are my step kids is for them to know that I'm gonna be there for them and I think that because, Ryan I've been together 10 years now that because I'm still around, I'm still here I've shown that I'm dependable, I'm reliable they can trust me and that kind of grows over time I think that's the most difficult part of it because regardless of CIA background or not we can all surveillance our loved ones all day long if we want to but of course that's certainly not going to breed trust there's a certain amount of darkness that needs to be there that we can trust that our loved ones are making the right decisions doing the right things and being honest with us and that doesn't happen when people are surveilled all the time Oh yes and I would say and one of the questions I've gotten the most about this book is oh so you're a spy so you're teaching people how to spy on their kids and I'm like well actually this book is all about giving your kids independence and autonomy so surprisingly we don't spy on our kids we give them a very long leash and that was something when I met Ryan that he was already doing with the kids and as someone who's I'm naturally just an anxious person and I was immediately like wow he gives these kids like a lot of freedom if I have kids with him I'm gonna do things differently but of course you know if you've read the book you know that's not how it's gone and I've realized that these skills actually make me feel more comfortable giving my kids a longer leash and you hit the nail on the head Johnny because if we're spying on our kids and not trusting them that's the quickest way to erode trust and there are so many different programs right now that parents can use if they wanna have an eye into their kids phones and where they are and track them and that's I like to say that's a personal choice for every family but what I do recommend is that if a parent does choose to do that that they be transparent with their kids that they're doing that right so that their child knows that there's no expectation of privacy now that's gonna have other consequences of using that approach but the quickest way to erode trust is them finding out that you have this program on their phone and you didn't tell them about it. We prefer to do things a little bit differently and balance that giving them that autonomy and trust and our kids know that when they do break our trust it's a really big deal and it's not about what they did you know if there is dishonesty, if there is lying the response they get from us is like is listen I'm less upset about what you did and I'm more upset that you lied and so that's what you're in trouble for because you have broken our trust we've given you this autonomy and that means we can't continue to give you this autonomy and so there is a level of you're not always gonna know what they're gonna do and they're not always gonna do the right thing I mean we as humans even as adults we don't always make the right choices but we need to give our kids the opportunity to make mistakes, the opportunity to fail so that they can learn from that failure and hopefully the idea is with things like technology that they're gonna fail while they're still with us so that we can help them learn from these failures and if we keep them I see all these parents who don't want their kids to have any access to social media, any technology so they lock everything down but you're setting them up to be completely flying blind when they get out of the house and you can't keep them from everything so why not expose them to things so that they have you as their guide so that you can help get them through so that when they are out of the house they're more likely to make better choices on these mediums than they would otherwise without that experience Well it's also clear that you value them being well rounded and so in order for that to happen there has to be some autonomy for them to be able to make certain decisions based on their interests and curiosities to go pursue those things rather than having all of that being controlled and watched Yes and I think that goes against so much of what we've seen in the parenting culture over the last several years with all of the technology that's out there to track our kids, to keep them safe and it really plays on I think parents' biggest fears and they make money off of it and some of it can be really useful but we also need to keep it in check and use it for when it's helpful but not let it get carried away I'm curious, what does discipline in a CIA household look like? It's very balanced and I will say that there's always this constant push and pull between Ryan and me because I have to remind myself that they can have more autonomy we're like on opposite ends of the spectrum and we meet in the middle which I think is perfect because naturally all of these things that I'm saying do not come naturally to me it has been a learning process for me I think probably if it was just me by myself and I had never met Ryan I would probably be like a super intense tiger helicopter mom I think that's like my inner because I'm anxious, I wanna keep my kids safe and so it's really remembering what I learned in the CIA and like shifting my brain to be like okay I know all these things all of these things apply here and they're capable they can do more than we think they can do but we have to let them try but with Ryan, he's just like naturally not a worrier and all of this does come naturally to him because he started in operations on the clandestine side and that's where his whole career was like he lives in the gray and I started on the analytic side and so I've always been naturally a more black and white thinker but of course I ended my career in the clandestine side so I learned to live in the gray and so it's always this push and pull of like me saying well I don't know I think we need to do more because obviously they're not learning they wouldn't keep doing this you know the other night they left we got home and like our gateway gate was open and the front door was unlocked and Ryan calls our teenager and says tell me why the door is unlocked and the front gate's open and she's like having fun with friends you can like hear them in the background and she's like oh yeah my bad yeah and like he gets on the phone and like my response is well I think she needs to just come home right now and he's like what and I'm like well obviously it's continuing to be a problem you know it's like this I want this immediate and he's kind of like his moral level and he's like listen we talk to her about it if it happens again you know then car keys are gone right so it's like this it's balance it's good to have two parents that are just you know very different so that the kids don't get like one extreme or the other yeah I definitely feel like that's essential especially in parenting that you're the team right and it sounds like in this you are a team that's far more important than them getting two different sides of the coin and not knowing what to expect as kids exactly well the other thing that was as a parent as well is that children are not stupid and they know when that team is fractured and they know how to play each parent off of each other when that fracture shows up 49 but when I was a teenager my parents split up and I quickly learned how I can leverage it to my advantage and I did and I don't think there's a child who's going to recognize that and not do that that polarity and that back and forth also keeps the kids on guard for them to know that there is no control the parents have to come together and speak to each other in order for any sort of control to be going on which leaves the kid with his hands up hoping that the parents are able to do that and wanting them to do that but once that's fractured it's go time for the kids I'm gonna take very long for them to realize what they need to do well I think it's so much about like you said being a team and having each other's back and so I have to tell this funny story about our six year old that was a couple of months ago so he was I think still five at the time but he was up late having a special night with daddy and I must have put the other our youngest to bed and I wasn't down there they're on the couch and he says to dad let's watch Transformers and dad says well I don't know we need to make sure I don't know if we should watch that and he says it's okay we won't tell mom Ryan thought it was like the best thing in the world because our son is so much like me and is so black and white naturally and like such a rule of follower to the point that he can be anal and so Ryan has been like really worried about his ability to like go with the flow and you know live in the gray and so when this happened Ryan it just warmed Ryan's heart because he's like okay he's gonna be okay he's gonna you know of course Ryan's response was no you know we can't do that without mom and you know and then we talked about it but he was secretly like you know celebrating that he could live in the gray and not be so uptight well I love that it's so good how have you and your husband dealt with the technology and all of these tools and of course your kids growing up with these tools myself being 49 I certainly didn't have any of this technology and even having a Commodore 64 and a ton of games I didn't take interest in it so it wasn't a big deal and besides the graphics back then weren't where anything that you could get interested in and right now I mean there's full virtual worlds being developed that these children can easily fall into and lose themselves. We actually the video games are starting to come up with our six year old because he's wanting to play Minecraft and the way we've always been really discouraging of any video games at our home because we just prefer our kids to be in the outdoors and so our bigs have learned to play video games I think with friends and do a certain extent but we just don't like them because we want our kids to be engaged in our family we'd rather play games together as a family or be outside enjoying nature and we live in the Pacific Northwest so that's a really big part of our lifestyle here but I also think it's important for our kids to have some of those skill sets and I do think that with all of the technology that there is today that they can learn really great skills and what I don't want is my kids to not know how to do any of these things and so it just all comes back to that balance and giving them that exposure but in terms of being online we really wanna teach our kids how to be online in a safe way and a lot of the skills that we learned at the agency the way that we looked at people's vulnerabilities and learned about people online developed targeting packages those are that makes us see things a lot differently when we look at what our kids are putting online and what we're putting online what people can learn about us in terms of pattern of life and those sorts of things and so we wanna make sure our kids know how to be safe, what to share online what not to share online and that people aren't necessarily who they say they are and all of those things while still learning how to go about it and look we're not gonna be able to keep our kids from seeing bad things online I mean that's just not realistic if they don't see it on their own device or at our home they're gonna see it on the bus or they're gonna see it at school and so I think the main thing is to have that relationship of trust with our kids so that they feel comfortable sharing things with us when they do see something that maybe they think isn't appropriate or they're exposed to something or they meet someone online or whatever it is when we have that relationship and they're willing to open up and share things with us then they're gonna be safer because we can give them that guidance and so really I mean I know I've said it a lot but it comes back down to that trust and then critical thinking skills that's something that I think is emphasized so much in CIA training because when you get on the job whether you're an analyst and you're writing for the president's daily brief book right away or whether you're going out and running an operation you are trusted with so much responsibility and especially when it comes to clandestine operations you're working independently you're going out and meeting an asset you're sometimes paying them thousands of dollars you're coming back with a handwritten receipt on an index card that you've written and you're being trusted to do this on your own and so we learned so much about learning how to do that and giving that trust and we wanna do that same thing for our kids and have that foundation there so that they do feel comfortable sharing with us I think another big part of trust and obviously being part of the CIA you understand propaganda on both sides quite well with decline of institutions, mainstream media the propaganda being pushed online trying to sort through what is reality and trusted sources has become more and more challenging for adults and kids and obviously you're adept in this skillset as part of being the CIA what have you taught your kids around trusting information who to trust online so that they can make heads or tails of what is this reality around us? It's such an important issue right now because they're just inundated with information and things that are news or aren't news or different bias news sources because every news source does have a bias every person has mindsets and biases and so first of all teaching our kids what that means and that it exists and that we're all going to view the world in a certain way based on how we grew up where we grew up what our parents were like our race, our religion, our class everything all of those things play a role in how we're going to view the world and when I in my early years at the agency I was working on foreign media analysis and we always looked at sources and had a description of what way they were leaning and what their bias was and the same goes for American media as well and that's something we start teaching our kids because we want them to understand that and there are so many different ways we can show our kids and illustrate this point we can pull up certain news stories or certain news sources and say look these stations are covering this topic this channel over here is covering something else entirely why do you think that is or comparing the headlines there are all these exercises you can go into with your kids to help them start to identify and when you really know that you've done it well is when like your high schooler comes home and tells you that like their teacher was teaching about whatever filled in the blank issue and they're able to recognize that their teacher wasn't teaching fact their teacher was teaching their opinion which obviously is a whole other issue but that happens that happens and even teachers can sometimes become political one way or the other and you know make a mistake and share their own opinion I mean I think that the best teachers are the ones who we have no idea what their personal beliefs are because they're so great at teaching objectively and sharing all the sides so that people can make their own opinions but that doesn't always happen and so we wanna make sure our kids know that because what we don't want is them just coming out of a class parroting whatever their teacher told them they should believe right we want them to be able to make their own decisions and think critically and so that comes with learning about these different mindsets and biases that even they themselves will already have because they're formed so early in our lives but being aware of them I think is the most important thing It's such a great point I think for many of us we look up to teachers especially from a young age and view them as infallible and view them as seeking and telling the truth and oftentimes we're all human we can't get around our own biases and in the way we cover information teach it to our kids and certainly in some of the classes I look back on in my own education I now view it differently realizing that there were political leanings influencing the way those subjects are being taught Absolutely and we all, I mean we make decisions as parents about what we wanna teach our kids what we believe and everyone is going to choose to do it in a different way in their family we're choosing to do some particular topics more objectively which I would have never in a million years thought that I would do and so I find myself having conversations with my four-year-old and six-year-old saying well, some people believe this and others believe this but we don't really know what do you think? And I'm like, who am I? Whereas the conversation in another family might just be, we believe this we, our family believes this other people believe this but this is what we believe, right? And so everyone's gonna choose to do it differently we're choosing a more kind of free thinking objective approach and that seems to be working for us for now but I like to say and I say this throughout licensed to parent is that everyone has to find what works for them in their family there's gonna be different levels of independence that feel more comfortable than others and then even within a family kids personalities, I mean from the time their babies are just so drastically different or can be so drastically different and there are gonna be some kids that are ready for a certain level of responsibility at one age and others who maybe hit that age and aren't ready for that same level of responsibility. And so we need to figure out what's comfortable so I always say take what works and leave the rest and we're just inundated with so much parenting advice and so like my hope is that people will just say, okay, this is what works for our family or I like this part and I'm gonna adjust it and use it in this way but it's really just about skills to help our kids be successful in life and in order for them to be successful they need to be prepared for things like emergency scenarios and danger, you know how to spot and avoid danger but then also a lot of what we've been talking about is these interpersonal skills the communication, persuasion, how to get what you want I mean, those are important skills and it doesn't have to be in a manipulative way, right? I know we're talking about espionage but there's all these different skills and it's just about preparing our kids so that when they've leave the nest they're self-sufficient and ready for whatever life throws at them and that really comes from this idea when CIA officers are trained is that they are prepared for anything and that anything you encounter in training is gonna be more difficult than what you encounter when you're out there completely on your own running an operation by yourself just you and the asset you need to be able to think on your feet think critically and operate autonomously and so we want our kids to have that same confidence as well It's hard to understand what's going on in their mind because you're only changing and seeing their shoe size change, right? But if you can understand that those growth spurts are happening physically then it's easy to go well that's probably going on mentally and emotionally as well so those kids on a trajectory that can change on a dime they can hear something, see something that can radically change the way they've been viewing things so it's constant upkeep it's constant checking in and spending time with them so that they do feel comfortable and talking about whatever is going on in their mind that time spent they're not gonna be able to wiggle out of that and that's when they slowly start to drop their guard I've said it on this podcast but my dad would do if he needed to talk with me he wouldn't come into my room and say we need to talk about this because he knew that I would be on guard and that I would be difficult about it he would pick some chore or project that we would have to do that we would have to spend all day together on rides going to the lumber store and just there's no way out of it and so I had to sit there and to eventually all of these things would be able to come out That's great, that's a great approach and we do that a lot with our kids especially if we feel like something's going on with one of them like our teenagers will plan a special night like okay maybe you take him and go take him out, go to dinner have some talks, go to a movie and then go out to eat and having that time so that they feel comfortable sharing those things with my littles it's always like as they're going to bed all of a sudden they want to share everything about their day and I have to say the other night somehow we ended up talking about spies because my two youngest were talking about their aliases if they were spies so they were coming up with their own alias names which was pretty fun and then all of a sudden it got on the topic of spies killing people and I said well do you think mommy and daddy because they know we talk openly that's one of the things I mentioned in the book is that when all the kids turned eight we told them we were CIA but with the littles since we don't work there they've known since they were babies and I said well do you think mommy and daddy killed people and my six year old says well yeah I mean you were spies and that's what spies do and it's like you're saying like we don't know what's going on in their head and I'm like sitting here thinking like has my six year old just been walking around thinking that I was like an assassin and that I killed people like I'm so glad that this has come up so that I can address it and tell him well actually honey if a spy has to pull out her gun something has gone terribly wrong she has done something wrong and so I went through the whole spies operate in the shadows we're actually collecting information we're not killing people and he's like huh you know I'm like wondering how long is he been walking around thinking that his mom is a stone cold killer I don't know Well I'm interested in this because obviously that is the classical view we look at movies and TV and danger is the name of the game with spies and of course being in CIA you are more aware of the ever present danger around the world every part of the globe probably than even your most informed news watcher so how do you view danger as a parent because it's obviously everyone's worst nightmare for their children and you tell in the book that the CIA teaches how to get off the X what does that mean and how did you instill this in your kids so that they could avoid danger get off the X is one of the most important principles we learn at the CIA and it's basically the X means danger and it can come in a variety of forms it can be a person, a place, a thing, an environment and the idea is that the longer you stay on the X the more likely it is that you will be harmed and so we teach our kids this concept in a variety of ways and some of the key takeaways are listening to your gut and it's teaching them what does that mean and when I'm in a situation what does it mean to listen to my gut and sometimes that actually means ignoring authority figures believe it or not which can be a very nuanced thing to teach kids especially my very black and white thinking kindergartner but he's getting there because the idea is that in an emergency and this goes for adults as well sometimes people in positions of authority don't actually know the right thing to do and so one of the examples is there's this really fascinating story from 9-11 about the VP of Corporate Security for Morgan's I wanna say it was Morgan Stanley I don't have my notes and I hope I'm not messing that up basically when the plane hit the first tower the New York Port Authority told everyone in the second tower to stay put and he had been actually running emergency drills because he was concerned after the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center that it would happen again and because they still had a lease he wanted to move their offices I think it was like 2,800 employees and they didn't wanna move because the release wasn't up and so he was doing these regular emergency drills so when that first plane hit and the New York Port Authority said everybody stay put in the tower he said, no, I'm getting my people out of here and he did and I think it was all but a couple people including himself unfortunately that did not live because he went back in to make sure everyone got out but it was quick thinking like that he was listening to his gut and thinking critically about what to do and not necessarily listening to the voice on the intercom and the example I give in the book is the Korean ferry boat disaster in 2014 304 out of 476 passengers died and many of them were children they were in their rooms because the voice of authority over the intercom said everybody stay in your room and it was the kids who didn't follow the rules that got out of the room that were the ones who survived and so we want our kids if they're in a situation like this to listen to their gut and get out and so we use a lot of examples in movies we'll pause movies and show our kids what this looks like this person listening to their gut and with our kids there's a great example in finding Nemo of when Marlin and Dory are swimming through the jellyfish and Dory says I think we should go over them or through them or whatever and that was her gut obviously she had short-term memory loss and that's a whole other thing but it's a great example of pausing it and then there are more mature examples I talk about in the movie Taken where the girls are leaving the airport and they're exchanging glances about giving information to this man and so we use more mature examples like that for our older kids but there are ways to illustrate what listening to your gut looks like and then talking about authority figures and we role play with our kids as well but then also visualizing our escape route when we go somewhere getting our kids used to the idea of knowing where the exits are and there are ways that we can do this that don't feel paranoid and scary for our kids because I also like to say that we're preparing them for something that statistically should not happen to them but even if it's a small statistic that's someone and we want our kids to be over prepared but not in a paranoid way and so it's important that you do things like emphasize adventure and emphasize fun when you're talking about these topics and then as they get older they can understand the more seriousness of this but one of the things we do with the kids when the bigs were little is get off the X we would drive down this road where all of a sudden there was a fork in the road and at the last minute Ryan would say someone's following us and he would jerk the wheel to the right and oh we lost him of course in real espionage you would never do that unless you were in a James Bond movie but that's just an illustration there's danger behind us we need to get away right and so it's attuning our kids to not freezing in those scenarios and so if you've talked through them and they have a game plan and they understand escape routes and getting off the X they're less likely to freeze in that situation and the hope is that they will say okay this is an X I need to get out of here right and we talk about run hide fight you know running would be get off the X and this is taught in corporate security as well running would be get off the X hiding would be your second option and the worst option it's the last one that you wanna employ is fighting because you're less likely to survive or not be injured because that means you're still on the X and you haven't gotten out of there and so we talk about giving our kids some self defense skills as well but also making sure our kids understand the fragility of the human body because we see so much in movies where people just take punch after punch after punch and they survive and it's like real life is not like that sometimes all it takes is one punch and if you're outweighed by someone you really don't stand a chance and so we talk about having them avoid those scenarios but if they are in them we talk about the idea of equalizers and that doesn't have to be a weapon it can be anything you know if you're in a classroom it can be a chair it can be you know something on the desk anything that you could throw at something at someone if there is danger and I hate that we even have to think about things like this I really do you know when we went to my son's kindergarten for like the open house you know one of the first things we did was ask the teacher you know what's your lockdown approach and what do you do and where are the exits and understanding all that and I wish we didn't have to ask those things or worry about those things but the hope is that if we have a plan our kids will have a better chance to survive if they find themselves in a situation like that and you said a lot there and there's a couple of points that I want to bring up and one you mentioned that you wish you didn't have to ask these questions now as a concerned parent I can understand however there's the other side of that it is you're getting clarity and comfort and building trust by asking those questions and having an understanding of that another thing if you go to a venue a social event and you have a lot of anxiety going on that only means that there's a lot of questions that don't have answers mapping out the venue right looking for those exits is one of those things that will drop that anxiety looking at who are the employees who is the manager who is the organizing the event answering these questions will fill in the blanks which reduces that anxiety for a lot of our clients who they haven't been out networking in a while they've been married for a while they want to shake the box and put a lot of new things into their life to take advantage of all the technology that we have and all the opportunities that you have but what comes with that is that anxiety of doing all these new things so filling in those blanks getting those questions answered is going to help that and then the other thing about that is your children are going to model that behavior so they're not going to go into a venue and freak out and allow their anxiety to take them over they are going to do the same things that you did analyze the room map out where the exits are who the people are in there and familiarizing is getting familiar with the contextual atmosphere here yeah having that preparation I think is key because it helps us with our own anxiety and like you said it can help our kids but then it can also help us when we're worrying about whether or not they're gonna be safe because we have a piece knowing that they have the skill set that we've prepared them to be out in the world and I like to say to you if there's a situation that you know beforehand you're going to be anxious in and you don't want your child to then model that anxious behavior right so for me it's things like heights skiing and so there are some circumstances where I let Ryan take the lead with the kids because for instance I have seen for you know the early years of our kindergarteners life is that he would constantly look to me as the barometer like dad would tell him he could do something but he would look to me to make sure it was okay and then even if I said it was okay he could read my face and know that I really didn't think it was okay and he'd be like I don't think so dad and so there are some situations where I take the backseat and I let Ryan take the lead so for example a couple years ago when he learned to ski I didn't go until he had already learned and I went to cheer him on after he was fully confident watch him go up the chair left and almost you know just like okay and just smiled like I wasn't terrified and he was doing great and so it's kind of knowing our own I don't want to say weaknesses but knowing our own foibles as parents and our own idiosyncrasies I'll say because things that we don't want to pass down to our kids and just being aware of those things and so when I do have the ability to let Ryan take the lead on some of those things that I know just are really uncomfortable for me you know things like climbing giant boulders that I never did as a child because I grew up in Chicago area with like cornfields so there was no rock climbing for me so the situations like that where I have to kind of take a breath and either let him be there the first few times or I just have to really be aware of my facial expressions and energy that I'm giving off and just smile. Well the book is full of so many great lessons and values that I think parents can definitely enjoy I don't think we have enough time to get to all of them today we love asking our guests what their X factor is what do you think makes you unique and extraordinary Christina? I think probably having been at the CIA and done both worlds both the analytics side and the clandestine side I think really gives me an edge because I have the skill set to write which obviously I'm doing now as a writer and but it also gives me the ability to connect with people and build relationships of trust and kind of that full the ultimate example of being well-rounded is having both of those experiences and having that CIA background I think really gives me an edge and I really believe that people from the CIA that they make you really terrified and leaving the agency like oh we're gonna take care of you here like it's a big scary world out there you don't wanna go to the private sector but once you're out you realize that you have been trained to do any job now it's up to you to convince someone to hire you and for you to explain to them how your skills translate but you really do come with this X factor of these amazing abilities that really are transferrable to so many different career paths. Well we appreciate you sharing your experiences with us and our audience where can they find out more about the book and all these great lessons? They can go to my website ChristinaHillsburg.com or follow me on Instagram at ChristinaHillsburg to keep up with updates for parenting tips from licensed to parent and also keep up with what I'm doing next. All right, thank you for joining us Christina. Thanks so much.