Christina Hillsberg and "License to Parent"
An interview with former CIA intelligence officer Christina Hillsberg about why her 4-year-old is taking motorcycle lessons,
I’m thrilled this week to bring you an interview with Christina Hillsberg, author of "License to Parent: How My Career as a Spy Helped Me Raise Resourceful, Self-Sufficient Kids." In the book (out now from G.P. Putnam’s Sons), Christina and her husband, Ryan, write about how their experiences in the CIA help them raise their blended family to be “confident, security-conscious, resilient children.”
Christina spoke to me from her home near Seattle, where she lives with her husband, their five children and two Rhodesian Ridgebacks.
What ages are the kids in your family now?
They range from 3 to 18, so they’re 3, 4, 15, 16, 18. So I’ve got the whole range. We call them the “littles” and the “bigs,” and the bigs, the older kids, were 6, 8 and 9 when I met them. So these ages up until 6 are all new to me as a parent — I’m experiencing all of this for the first time.
How similar or different do you think your children’s experience of childhood is to your own experience of being a child? What stands out to you as the major similarities or differences?
I definitely experienced the autonomy that we try to give our kids, because it was a different time. I would ride my bike around the neighborhood and I wouldn't come home until the streetlights came on. So we do try to emulate that, even though we’re not in the same type of neighborhood.
I was pretty independent as a kid, but my idea of a good day was reading my book, whereas my kids are much more in nature, and are doing activities that I never would have been allowed to do. I would never have been allowed to use a knife or shoot a bow and arrow at such a young age.
In a given week, what are some scenarios where you might find yourself in conflict with your child?
The biggest thing over the past year has been being in each other’s space so much, because we’ve been home because of the pandemic. We have a home that was probably never meant to have seven people in it, so we’ve got everything from toys on the floor, to one of my teenagers who leaves her tissues on the floor, and it’s just about to drive me up the wall.
But I try to flip it on its head as much as I can — we’ve had so much time together as far as bigs and littles bonding. Ordinarily everyone’s going in their own direction, so having the chance to spend so much time together is really a gift. For example, today everyone’s been outside, because (4-year-old) Ari is learning to ride a motorcycle today. We all get to be together to see those moments.
And I don’t know if it’s because Ari is my first, or because I see so much of myself in him, but there are some situations where I know he picks up on every feeling I’m having. Even if I try not to show it on my face, he knows. And it makes him either not want to try it, or think that I don’t want him to try it. So it affects him. Just now when we were doing the motorcycle (lessons), I could see legitimate fear in (Ari’s) eyes as he’s learning how to do it, and he looks at me to see what my face says, so I just gave him the biggest thumbs up and a big smile, because he needed to see that I believed in him.
So what do you do in those situations?
I actually wrote about a similar situation where there was a boulder that Ari wanted to climb, and I would say one thing is to lean on your partner if you can, and another is to step back from the situation. Just now with the motorcycle, I gave him that big thumbs-up and then I got out of there. The same thing happened this week, where he had a rough time with soccer camp, and after two really rough days, my husband took him, and they had a completely different experience. And that’s not just about me being the mom — it’s recognizing who each person is, and knowing who you can lean on.
For me, I was that kid who, at a young age, began to avoid things I thought I would fail at, or wouldn’t do perfectly. And I already see that in my son. So we’ve been trying to expose them to things as early as possible and encourage them even if they aren’t good at them.
We talk in the book about how the CIA trains, expecting people to fail. It really sucks when you’re the student who fails in the training, and I was! But you learn from it, and you never make that mistake again. We try to emulate that with our kids, but it is a struggle for me, because my fear is that it will be so awful, and my son will be like me, and never want to do it again. So I have to find ways to build his confidence in other ways.
After soccer camp, one of the evenings, Ryan said, “Why don’t we let him surf today,” because that was something he had tried the other day and did really well. So it’s about looking for an area where we can give him some wins, because he might be struggling somewhere else. When we believe that they’re more capable, they believe it, and they become more confident.
Thanks again to Christina for taking time to speak with me — it was lovely chatting! You can find Christina on Twitter at @christinahillsb or learn more about her and her writing at https://www.christinahillsberg.com/. If you are new to this newsletter, where I write weekly about parenting and/or education, won't you consider subscribing? And if you'd like to chat with me about parenting, education, motorcycle lessons, soccer camp or anything, please be in touch. Wishing you all a great week and an evening free from fireworks-induced stress :|