Transcripts For CSPAN Campaign 20240703

[applause] so glad you came. Good to see you. [applause] good evening everyone. I want to welcome you to the public charter school. When im unable to handle the winters here, you can tell me what to do b i started coming int was cold. It just stayed cold and stayed cold and stayed cold. So im enjoying the ward warm weather but i know you are ready for the cold weather. Today was the first day of school for Founders Academy. Lets give Founders Academy a big round of applause for hosting us tonight. [applause] its been a long day for kathy. Theres no doubt about it. Moms for liberty is a nonprofit grassroots organization. Our mission is to educate, empower, parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government. Thats exactly what we are doing. Had a wonderful roundtable with education advocates, a lawyer and some mothers. We talked about some of the issues affecting you and New Hampshire. These are not unique issues to just New Hampshire. You guys are struggling with educational failure, issues about secrets being kept from parents happening all over our country. Knowing that you are a champion for moms and dads and you are really keeping the pulse on this issue and tackling these issues headon, we appreciate that. We are excited to hear from you today. Tiffany is what i hope every american realizes they can do is when she saw a problem, when she saw the issues happening in schools, she didnt just say something. She rallied all the parents saw the same problems and how many members do you have . We have over 120,000 members. We just added idaho. When they say one person cant do something, look at what she did and thank god you did it. Im going to give credit. Tina is the cofounder and we have an Amazing National team that helps and its the moms and dads on the ground. The truth is im a mom of four and i serve on the local school board and i realize Public Education was broken. Running for office as a woman and a mom was a big responsibility and now you are running for president of the United States of america. Give us some thoughts. What were your thoughts on the roundtable today . Its always insightful but i come to this as a mom. We have one job as parents. Thats to make sure we keep our kids safe, we raise them in a way that they can make the most of their life and be successful. Thats our number one job. When i see whats happening in schools now, we have to end this chaotic cycle. No parent should ever wonder whats being said or taught to their child in the classroom. We need full transparency in the classroom always. We need parents to be able to decide what schools their parents go to. You look at kathy and this amazing charter school. Having opportunities like that when you know all kids dont fit in the same old, making sure they have options that matters. We are coming off of the situation where kids were mandated to wear masks. Think about the kids in kindergarten where a lot of what they are learning his facial expressions and you couldnt see the teachers face. Then you wonder why we are having this social anxiety because the kids got scared through that. They didnt know what it meant, they just knew they had to do it. It was a really scary situation for them. Then we learned what happened when you did online schooling, what a mess that was. God bless the teachers, the teachers did the very best they could. Teachers are giving so much this year now they have to be the pastor and the nurse and the guidance counselor and the teacher and they teach to the test. All these pressures are there but you have these School Bureaucrats and teachers unions. What bothers me is there trying to take custody of our kids. We cant allow that to happen. They are our kids. We make the decisions on what happens in their daytoday life. To see the slippery slope suddenly feel like were falling off a cliff, its going to take all of us to fix this because our kids deserve better than they are getting. I was talking to a senior at New Hampshire school the last time i was here. At the end of the town hall, she took me aside and she said in every class i go to, they talk about transgender. She said its fine but i feel like im walking on egg shells because i dont know what to say and im scared if i say the wrong thing people will get upset. Thats the last thing i want her worried about in school. I want her thinking about how she is comfortable in her skin, i want her growing her confidence. I want her trusting in her ability to think for herself. I want kids reading math, science, history. Not all these other things. What i think this is doing that they did an amazing job started, lets not let it and. Now we are seeing this creep back in. I didnt have sex ed until seventh grade. Even then you had to have a parent sign before you could take the class. My dad wouldnt sign it so i had to sit next door. But thats the parents role. Thats not for the schools to decide. Now we are getting to a point where the schools think they know better. We cant have that happen. What were doing here today is to talk about the strengths of people who stand up and say we are going to do something about it. All of us using the powers of our voices but correcting this and making sure we reverse this trend and put parents back in charge where they belong and make sure our kids are healthy and safe in the process. Absolutely. We have a saying, we do not coparent with the government. A message to president biden, we do not coparent with the government. Its time for parents to stand up and push back. Weve asked parents to sign them something called the parent pledge. If you know someone running for office, you can go to our website you can download this. You can go on the website to see if your elected official or candidate has signed it. What we say is we are asking you to pledge, to honor the fundamental rights of parents including but not limited to the right to direct the education, medical care, and moral upbringing of their children. It seems simple. The pledged it advanced parents in decisionmaking involvement, defend against government overreach and secure parental rights at all levels of government and we would just love if you would sign the parent pledge for us. Absolutely i will sign it thank you but i want to say this too this is not a republican or democrat issue every parent regardless of their education regardless of where theyre from knows whats best for their child i trust every parent. When you give birth or youre the spouse that have been with the woman thats given birth you know all of that process. When that happens we are literally we have it ingrained in us what we need to do to protect that child and so i trust every parent i dont think government needs to judge every parent i dont think that this should be republican or democrat and the reason why i bring that up is joe biden just attacked me saying that i was being a maga extremist for doing an event with moms for liberty. And if joe biden thinks im being a maga extremist for being a mom for liberty then count me as one of them because we have to be extreme when it comes to our kids. Thank you for that nikki we appreciate it. So were really excited to take some questions i hope you brought your questions tonight. We talked about a lot of different issues in the round table that are affecting you and your families and your community and so im sure were going to have some really interesting questions thank you nikki for assigning that. Wonderful thank you so much for that. Of course and we will take questions there is nothing we wont answer so dont be shy because if youre thinking that someone else is thinking it too andrew has the mic miles has a mic and so well let yall go ahead and start. My name is rachel i noticed that in 2014 you reallocated around 200 Million Dollars in South Carolina from um other places to your k12 systems with that education reform what does that look like at scale at the federal level. So we it was actual education reform and what we did at that point was we knew if a child couldnt read by third grade they were four times less likely to graduate high school. And we saw a lot of our kids were not able to read by third grade and they were pushing them forward. So what we did was we created a system where we held those kids back we brought in reading remediation we brought in their parents and we set them up for success and it was the fact you cant keep pushing these kids through just to say check i did it because guess what at the end of the day if these kids cant read theyre not going to be able to get a job theyre not going to be successful theyre not going to be able to contribute to society the way they deserve to be to the way they deserve to be successful. So we did reading remediation i think we need to do that all over the country especially since whats happened with covid but more than that being a governor i saw that a lot of what happens in d. C they come up with these big ideas and they push it down to the states and say if you teach this well give you this much money if you teach this well give you this much money if you teach Critical Race Theory you will give you this much money thats the wrong approach. What i will do is we will take those funds from the department of education and send it to the states. Lets take away the power of the federal government reduce that size of the department of education and empower the parents on the ground empower the people in those states that way youre getting it closer to the kids more money is actually going to teaching and then you can control whats being said and taught to your child in the classroom. You know i strongly believe we have to bring vocational classes back into the high school. In South Carolina we were teaching our kids to build the things we were making we had apprenticeships all over but guess what vocational classes in South Carolina would look different than vocational classes in New Hampshire so send that money to the states and let New Hampshire decide what that vocational class looks like. Let every state decide that think about that when it comes to special education think about that when it comes to reading programs think about that what that means in terms of innovation think about what that means in terms of all of these issues that we want our kids to excel at when we suddenly reduce that Big Department of education and you use that money that youre paying for to actually go to the kids that we want it to go to instead of pushing boys into girls sports and things of that nature because theyre not really giving a choice anymore theyre just mandating. I think that its incredibly dangerous when we look i will always fight for girls i have said as long as i can remember strong girls become strong women strong women become strong leaders and i will continue to say that and every time i hear someones got a daughter i always say raise a strong girl raise a strong girl because its important and the idea that youve got these girls whove worked so long to get to the point in their High School Career and then have a biological boy step up whos physiologically going to be different have them step up and take over all that hard work that theyve done and then youre gonna go and say oh and they get to change in your locker room. My daughter ran track in high school i played tennis in in high school i dont even know how i would have that conversation with my daughter. How do we get them used to biological boys in their locker rooms you cant and so why do that to them why focus on that. And so you know the priorities have been lost in our Education System and its really simple you go back to the basics we need to focusing be focusing on beating china beating india making our kids smart enough to topple them not sit there and worry about whether were hurting someones feelings thats not what this is supposed to be. So my question is in our educational setting right now our special Needs Children are being left behind drastically. They do not have their oneonone help. Their ieps are not being met. We have children who are behavioral we have children with autism we have children all over the spectrum who arent even getting an ounce of what they need into our Public School systems. What is something that you could bring forth thats going to help these children thrive instead of redistricting these children because these School Districts cant handle them. Or even having to move these kids to another state you know if you have a child with autism and we know that those therapies early on can really make a difference with those kids if you dont have those therapies think of what a family goes through when they want to do as much for their child and they have to look at moving because your state doesnt provide it a lot of that is look at the waste thats going to dc and think about if we actually had that money go to support the child that they need. Every child is different and special in their own way and whatever challenges they have. Parents need to feel like theres a support system not just one teacher. You need to feel like youve got a guidance counselor there a reading support there youve got someone who can help them if theyve got dyslexia youve got someone who can help if theyve got challenges someone whos its all about prioritization. This is not rocket science. We are parents. We know what our kids need. Its just get that support around them. When you got so many bureaucrats that are so detached from what it is, they are sending down what they think is scholarly to tell you but they are not sending down what is the practical help that you need . When that money is sent down not with Strings Attached but with the idea that states have a basic right to give you support for any child that has a special need at the full level, not at a personal level, they have to have the environment for that child to thrive, they have to teach the basic academic of mass, reading, science, history, they have to set you up for a job, not just to go to a college or university because thats what youre supposed to do, that they actually go and teach kids how to think, not what to think, thats where we need to go. This isnt going to be that hard. But what it does take is you have to clean up the department of education and you have to clean it out completely and when you do that, that is when magic happens. When i was governor, everybody said, what legislation are you going to do . Thus the wrong question to ask thats the wrong question to ask. I went to all of my agencies and replaced the head of every agency and then i sent people into every agency to clean it up, pull down bureaucracy, pull down red tape, get rid of problems, streamlined it down and create benchmarks to prove to the taxpayer that they were getting a return on investment. Some agencies, we tweaked, some agencies, we gutted. But guess what . Then the legislature saw what we did and they knew there was a new tone. When Congress Sees us do that same thing with these agencies and they see we are pushing down these block grants to the state, it will set a new tone in d. C. To let them know that government is meant to work for the people, not the other way around. Moms for liberty endorses and school board races. What you just talked about is going to make running for School Board Even more important. Doesnt matter if you dont have kids in schools. You need to get involved, if you are going to run for office, run for school board. The change happens in our own backyards. As that money comes down, we are going to need some liberty minded people in Office Spending in a way that respects parents and puts parents in charge. The first line of defense is your school board. Go to your School Board Meeting and see how few parents are there. Thats where all the decisions are made. Those decisions are being made without you. Use the power of your voice to say something. I will tell you when we were looking to do education reform in South Carolina, i met with all the groups, teachers, superintendents, principals, i met with teachers unions, and we met with School Boards, the group that was the hardest, the most stubborn and the most close minded, School Boards. They didnt want anything to change. They thought they knew what was best. If they didnt want you to question the spending. They didnt want you to question their programming. They didnt want you to question anything. Thats why we need real normal people to run. Im a big proponent of normal people running for office. They are going to be so happy you called me normal. [laughter] you are normal. School boards are the first line of defense. You are exactly right. It was actually here in New Hampshire, there was a gentleman who came to one of the events, he was helping us with security, and he said, im running for school board. And i said, you are . I said, good for you. I said, why . He said because they canceled the father daughter dance, and he said, and i had enough and i decided to run. I loved that. Because he was making a point to do something about it, not complain about it. Our state deserves a lot of credit because they got enough money to offer the letters training for all teachers, and parents, grandparents and volunteers to learn the proper way to teach, because we have kids that dont get help until they are behind two years which is a lifetime for a little kid. The other thing i want to ask you is, what are you looking forward to in the next debate . It were stunning when you called out you were stunning when you called that ur a couple of people that screwed up. Well, first, do you want to answer the first question in terms of education . You are right. Training the teachers properly and the science of reading so every child can read. 95 of children have the ability to learn to read but we have in our country right now two thirds of children that are not proficient in reading. There is no greater Security Threat in the u. S. Than a nation of illiterate people. When they maskes up masked up those teachers, peoples have to look at the teachers, the mouth, the phonics, everything about that, we set them back even further with that. Not only reading, our kids need to learn to write. Do you remember how many times we had to do the as and the bs . Now kids it doesnt matter whether they right from top to bottom or bottom to top, all of those things, they dont learn cursive anymore, they changed all of that. So theres a lot just going back to the basics that matters. Debates i hope you got to watch it. I will tell you that [applause] i love debates because it gives you the opportunity to see what your options are. And it lets you see everybody sidebyside. It lets you see our mannerisms, how we communicate, what our ideas are, but as a candidate, you dont know what you are going to get. You dont know how the moderators are going to be or what the topics are going to be and you dont know what the chemistry on the stage is. But what you saw on the debate stage is what ive done my entire life, i speak hard truths. I dont try to do what people think is popular necessarily. I speak my hard truths on what it is i want you to have. Every fact on the table so you can make the decision. Then i let the chips fall where they may. So when i hear or see something wrong, im going to call it out. I did that as governor. I did it as an ambassador. Im going to do it as your president. In the next debate, i think things will shift. We dont know again how the moderators will be and what the topics will be or what the strategies of each candidate may change and shift. But what i can promise you is this is the best debate prep i could ever get. Ive done 80 town halls ive done over 80 town halls. The questions you ask me, the information you give me, its the best information to get your pulse on what real people feel and think. I think, to me, this is debate prep for the. For the next one. We hope we are going to have some questions about education. As much as our kids are suffering, whether its Mental Health issues, on the basics, whether its Going Forward, on the spending in education, we want to see and hear all of that. But i will continue to do as much as i can to get that message out. Thank you very much. Welcome to manchester. I am mark. Im from manchester. Madison keys is up a break, since you are interested in tennis. [laughter] good to know. Im glad you brought up transgenderism. It was an issue here in New Hampshire. It was fought twice. And if im correct, transgender rights are recognized in schools, transgender people can play on whatever sports teams they want. So, are you going to recognize the state decisions when it comes to that, or are you going to dictate it from washington, when you are president . Thats a great question. Because at the end of the day, i think states need to be the ones that decide everything but, the point of an agency, what you always want to do is give them their sole mission of what they are supposed to do. Ad what should be the department of educations mission . To teach our kids the basics, so that they can be successful contributors to society. Thats what we want. Thats the simplified version. Anything outside of that, they are not meant to parent. They are not meant to do anything that doesnt involve those basic Core Concepts of education. I think thats how the department of education has gotten so big. And its not just d. C. It happens in legislatures, too. We have to be really careful. When i was in the legislature, they had everybody was worried about obesity. You remember when obesity was the big Thing Department of education was pushing out . Obesity was an issue. Kids were not getting enough activity. There were not outside enough. So there was legislation passed in the state house that would require kids to have more physical activity. And they were going to get nutritional classes. So everybody there was like, that makes sense. More physical activity during the school year and more nutritional classes . Thats fine. What happened was, what sounded good, three months later, six months later when it was all enacted, i had from around the state contact me and say, can we talk to you about with this is . I said absolutely. I met with another legislator and had a full roundtable listening to teachers. They said, do you know what we are doing . I said, no, tell me. The department of education or the state department of education took that bill and translated it into they would have a video camera sent to every school, and they had to video every single child doing 10 pushups, 10 setups, 10 jumping jacks, all that, then the videotape had to be sent back to the capitol to the state department of education for a department to review that child doing exercises. One look at the waist, look at how complicated they made it. That goes to show, dont assume anything. Thats the biggest lesson out of that. It taught me the biggest lesson, dont leave it on an agency to make these decisions for you. It needs to be very specific. It needs to be very black and white on what you expect. At the end of the day, i think government breaks more than it fixes. They really do. Its better to keep life simple in terms of government. That was the biggest lesson that i had. With transgenderism, lets remember, too, i believe in freedom, i believe in your state motto, live free or die. If an adult decides that they want to transition, they are welcome to do that. What we are talking but we are talking about kids. You cannot even get a tattoo until you are 18. You have to have parental permission for that. So lets be really careful, i think its such a slippery slope, that parents dont want that part talked about at school. They want to talk about it as parents. They want to deal with it in their own way. But i dont want to leave it up to someone else to go and teach my kids about that. I want to be the one that talks to them about that. And thats the part i think is so important. I dont even think that needs to be in k12 at all. I think thats where parents need to be making that decision. 70 of america agrees with you. We just up some National Poll ing. Overwhelmingly, the American People feel it needs to be a clear boundary between the school and home. Thats good to know. I have a question for you. Hi, my name is lis, here from New Hampshire. Pleasure to have you here. You just spoke about the unintended consequences of good intentions. Thats government from top to bottom. So, he gave a great example of how government has failed our kids on so many different levels. Will you abolish the federal department of education and bring it down to the states . They didnt exist until jimmy carter put them in place. Do we really need this bureaucracy between the teachers and the parents, and the teachers and the students . My experience is, teachers love to teach their craft. They have removed the craft of teaching on every single level. So true. And our children are suffering. And ultimately, the u. S. Suffers. So, will you talk about the idea of the federal department of education, does it have value . Do you think this is a time to remove or dissolve or downgrade . Can you tell us how you are going to do that . Ive always again spoken hard truths. I will give you the information as to why i think what i think. First of all, my soninlaw, my daughter just got married, he is a great schoolteacher. To see the pressures put on teachers now, we all should realize teachers unions are one thing. I think they are a middleman, and they are hurting the entire system. I think they are not a real friend to teachers and they are not a friend to parents. The second thing is, we need to remember the sacrifices of teachers before their lives are really hard right now and we are watching a lot of them leave because that is not what they want to school to. When it comes to the department of education, a president cannot abolish the department of education. Who can . Congress. What has Congress Done for you lately . Do i trust congress would do that . No. What would we do instead . Control the agencies . I can move all those programs down to the states. You can do it in block grants, where there is no requirements, you just say youve got this much money for special education and this is how much gets sent to New Hampshire and New Hampshire decides how to do it. Thats the way i think we can deal with it. You pull down those Core Functions and send it to the state. While i cant abolish an agency, i sure can clean it up and get rid of all the guts of it. [indiscernible] the money is shifted directly to the states. Yes, so the block grants would say, ok, this is how much you get for academics, the state can decide what that looks like, this is how much you get for special ed, the states decide how to do that, but we are completely reducing the size of the department of education you dont let all those people stay there, you reduce the size and you say, ok, what should they do . What should they be doing . They should be telling us how our kids can excel past india and china. They should be telling us how we can use new advanced equipment or technologies. They should be telling us what skills our kids need to learn for the jobs in the next decade or couple of decades. I think it should be more that than mandating anything. I dont want the department of education and d. C. To mandate anything down to the states. I think the locals itll be a political battle. Much like what you are seeing at School Boards and everything else. Id rather you have that battle here at home, where you can show up to a meeting, than in d. C. Where you wont ever see any of the people making these decisions. I appreciate the thought concept of what you are saying but im be impractical with you on, what could we do to neuter the department of education . You neuter it by block granting all that and sending it down to the states and let the states take care of it. If the secretary comes in three New Hampshire, i want you all to go and look online, he posted a playlist did you see this . Secretary cardona, the secretary of education posted a playlist called the dope playlist, the defense of Public Education playlist. He has on a bus tour right now. If you look at the songs on that list, its one thing to put music on to go run or workout, if you listen to the words in these songs and the things that people are rapping singing in the songs, what they say about women, the police, the vulgarity this is the secretary of education, nikki. If you put that same energy and figuring out how to get our kids reading again, think about that. But its all about now its just a pr start. And we have seen this. A pr stunt. And we have seen this. Although cabinet agencies with these pr stunts trying to tell you, the economy really is good, your grocery, your gas is not expensive, they think if they say it enough times, you will believe it. But we will believe it when we look at our Grocery Store receipts. We believe it at a gas pump. We believe it when our kids come home and they are talking about something and you are like, where did they get that from . Hi, nancy, from new boston. I have gone up to the state house here in New Hampshire and spoken on many education issues. My question my concern is, ive always asked, wheres the line . I feel like there is no more line in the classroom. As a teacher for 15 years, there were topics you never talked about, we never expressed parents never talked about in front of your kids, im sure your father also said that when parents are talking to kids, they need to leave the room. The social Emotional Learning is being pushed into different School Districts. Our district hired someone specifically to push that into every classroom there they are taking up classroom time for this right now. We are also finding out from other people they are collecting data on our children, and they are sharing it. How are you going to provide privacy for our students . In our day, we always heard about that permanent record. We thought it was going to follow us for life. Now our children could possibly have a permanent record that can follow them for life and affect them if they were to get a job or loan or any manner of being an adult. How are you going to protect our childrens rights . You remember i dont know if they still do this. They did this my son is now a senior in college. That you would have to sign a permission slip just to show a photograph of your child. Do you remember that . Because they would sometimes publish pictures of students. You could sign, no, i dont what my childs picture or yes. How did we get from there to that . Think about that. Now they are going to talk about the Mental Health of your child and you dont even know what they are saying, what they are doing, any of those things. It should be no different than hippa. We should treat it like that. In that scenario, if youre child goes to the hospital your child goes to the hospital, it is theirs, its private, the parents know about it and they discuss it with their doctor. That should be the same thing in schools. Your child should have what is a hippo a hipa for anything related to their education. Thats between the parents, child, and the teacher. Nothing else. Its not that complicated. If you could do that in health care, you could do it to protect our kids. We have too much over sharing now. Social media . I mean, you see it in the fact that when you say one word, all of a sudden you are getting ads about it . Think about it. You see if your kids are on tiktok, the Chinese Communist party is watching everything they do. How they think, what they click on, what they respond to, and they feed what they want our kids to see which is nothing to. So we have to start really taking back control of what happens to our kids and how they are treated. Its a buse its abuse of a sort, the fact that they are being so reckless with our kids. We have to be hard back to make sure we take responsibility back and they cant have permission on anything with our children without our permission. Last question right here. Make it a good one. My name is marcia. Im glad you talked about the limitations to bringing down the federal department of education. We all know education is a states right. You also talked about congress. Within all of that is elementary and secondary education act which pulls together so much of the responsibilities of a state department of ed for federal title programs. Title i, title ii, title iii and the allocations that states get that go to districts, along with those federal title programs. So, in your vision, what happens to those federal title programs and the money thats going to School Districts, and is that, when you talk about a block grant, is that that money or Something Else . So think about, if you looked at the entire funding pool, and you made it all transparent when i say transparent, including the Strings Attached so if a state gets money, you have to do these things to get that money, or you have to do those things. Our goal would be when you reestablish the mission of the department of education and you simplify all of that, then all of a sudden, you are taking away all those strings, you would do topline things. Those title ix, those basic things that require or allow a child to get a good education, those things will always be the criteria. We dont want a state going rogue and doing whatever they want in any way. Theres got to be some accountability there. But it doesnt have to be so granular that it is telling you what textbook to use and how you do it and what books are in your library. What we want is just the basics. I say this for the students as much as for the teachers. We are not getting the recruitment of good, quality teachers in the classroom because of the pressure coming down on them. When we make it transparent, we will be able to see what really educates a child, what keeps a child safe, would allows for transparency in the classroom and what allows parents to have control over all that. And the rest of it doesnt need to be there. There would be countability just like we see accountability with Charter Schools like here or accountability with homeschoolers. We have not, too we have that, too. You would have those top lines. But i dont think we need to have people going so far in saying, include this, include that. Thats what got us into this mess. The more basic, the more simple, the more empowered parents and students will be. Ive got one last question for you. You are a mom. The only mom running for president of the u. S. I think we need a mom in the white house. I will just say [applause] moms get things done. No ones going to fight for anything like a mom. I see it every day. We multitask, over protective, resultsoriented, we get it done. Back to school, as we said, today was the first day here at the academy. Some kids are back to school or already backtoschool all over the u. S. Give us advice. What should moms and dads and parents to be looking for and how should they be engaging the School Districts Going Forward . All i can do is tell you what i did as a mom. Will try to get it right. We dont get it perfect. This is what i did when our kids were young and starting school, we always took them the day before to meet their teacher and kind of get calm your nerves, make sure they knew, i wanted the teacher to see my face, too, and i wanted our kids to see who their teacher was, so that we could talk to them about that. And then in elementary school, its all about getting theirconfidence up , strengthening them, letting them know youve got them, but to go push forward. You really do let them become their own little person. By the time you get to middle school, same thing, we would still go the day before that was always kind of my virtual. We would go the day before and get ice cream after. It was something that we did. Middle school was the time where my kids would always come sit on my bed in elementary school, in middle school, they stopped coming sitting on mine and i started sitting on theirs. Because the key is to keep them talking. Boys dont want to talk as much as girls. Girls will just go at it. But at the end of the day, if you are there, when something happens, they are going to tell you. If you are not there, they are going to internalize it and deal with it on their own. As they got into high school, and they started really encountering depressors, when my kids would come to me and say, what do i do . I would always say, how do you think you should handle that . Rather than being i always would hold back. Even though we want to do that. We want to tell them, save them. I would say, how would you handle it . One, it allows us to understand what level of thinking they are at. It creates a bigger discussion, rather than just saying, you should do this. You suddenly have that conversation and they start to trust themselves more. And they believe in coming back and talking to you because they dont believe they are going to get in trouble, you are going to yell at them they think you are going to have a conversation. That served us well. Michael and i always did that. We give our kids options when they were younger and said, ok, somebody told me they were like, my child, everything is an issue, just figuring out the outfits for school, i said, you know what we did . We put two outfits in front of the men said, which one are you wearing tomorrow . And it in their own way empowered them and kept us from having to fight over what the wore. So i think trusting your kids, you raise them well, trust their gut, but be there guardrails. And its such a blessing to be apparent. Be a parent. That is why all of us here, we care about what happens, not just to our kids, but everybodys kids. Once you have raised children, you feel for every parent out there. It is not easy. Now with the social cspan, campaign 2024 is your friend row seat to the president ial election. Watch our coverage of the campaign trail. To make up your own mind, campaign 2024 on cspan networks, cspan now or anytime online at cspan. Org. Cspan, your unfiltered view of politics. Monday u. S. Defense secretary general lloyd austin and other officials mark the 22nd anniversary of the september 11 attacks. Live coverage begins at 9 00 at the pentagon memorial in arlington, virginia. Theyd are the afternoon the president later in the afternoon the president will speak starting at 4 15 p. M. On cspan2 on monday the 911 memorial and museum will remember the 22nd attack commemorating the attack. All the events are available to view on cspan now or online at cspan. Org. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. Funded by these Television Companies and more including cox. The syndrome is rare. Friends dont have to be. When you are connected, you are not alone. Cox supports cspan as a Public Service along with these other Television Companies giving you a frontrow seat to democracy. Up next 2024 republican president ial candidates, the north dakota Governor Meets with