The two Seattle moms who succeeded in raising right-wing kids despite living in that deep-blue Washington city understand the principle that made it all possible: They got to them first.
Capturing the fertile territory of a child’s youth triggers what’s called the founder principle. Whoever instills a child’s worldview in them first becomes the expert in their eyes. That standard becomes the truth by which they measure the rest of life.
Parents who hand over that duty of instilling to government schools place their children in imminent danger, the two Seattle moms warn. They recently published the book, “Raising Conservative Kids in a Woke City: Teaching Historical, Economic, and Biological Truth in a World of Lies,” and shared its insights with The Epoch Times.
All the time, she hears of parents saving to send their kids to Catholic schools but, she said, “they’re all staffed by teachers who had been indoctrinated themselves in our universities.” Homeschooling is great, but not all parents have the luxury.
To help more parents, Manning teamed up with author and mother of four Katy Faust, president of Them Before Us. They compiled their practical, on-the-ground parenting tactics for what became their second book. It’s like a “field manual” for instilling conservative values in kids mired in wokeness. The authors unpack timeless principles and philosophies that the moms successfully implemented in real-world situations with their kids. Their right-leaning broods are the proof.
The Three Stages of Inculcating Kids With Conservative Values
In the first stage, parents are the first to introduce knowledge to their kids. For whoever is first “the child will automatically consider the expert on that topic," Ms. Faust said.The second phase is logic, which transpires in middle school. Now the parents must “introduce the crooked stick to their kids so they’re able to identify them on their own,” Ms. Faust said. The world tends to distort those conservative values at this stage. With a proper foundation laid—the straight stick next to which the crooked one would inevitably fall—the woke ideas fomenting chaos will be identified clearly.
Confronting a Woke World
Ms. Manning’s 12-year-old daughter, one of the only conservatives in her school, became a beacon for her classmates. “She is very pro-life and felt so passionate about the right to life that she will tear up discussing the issue,” Ms. Manning said. “She converted six girls in separate incidences on the bus ride home from school.” Already she is having tangible, positive impacts on her peers.
But conservative parents in deep blue cities will need help. Ms. Faust believes only at church will you find like-minded support. Only here will kids run and play free and maskless. Only here will the label anti-vaxxer be worn as a badge of honor. The term “cis-gender” will have no meaning.
“Raising Conservative Kids in a Woke City” spurs parents to seize the reins from the overreach of schools. Or else a world of indoctrination will fill the void and steer kids into woke waters. Parents must remind teachers what their job is, and who the parent is. “The strategies we outline in the book are empowering parents to know and inform the teachers, that [the parents] are actually the educators of their children,” Ms. Manning said. Teachers are “simply contracted individuals that are expected to teach reading writing and arithmetic, period.”
For some kids it may be too late—the damage is done. Ms. Faust laments parents who failed to inculcate them early—who failed to lay the straight stick before the crooked one fell. They missed that crucial window. Yet Ms. Manning conjures hope from that Chinese proverb, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. And the second-best time is today.”
