Marjie Hadad

I’ve been a global public relations pro for 30 years now, 24 years with a specialty in medical public relations. I like this field because it enables me to contribute to the advancement of healthcare for all people worldwide.

A few years ago, I had this feeling that there was something more I could be doing to contribute to society.

One day around this time, I was sitting in the living room with my older daughter. I have three grown kids − boy, girl, girl. My older daughter, who was serving in the military at the time, was telling me about a fellow soldier who had recently gotten married and was concerned that she wouldn’t be able to balance raising kids with her professional pursuits.

My daughter looked at her and said, “Of course you can! My mother has been doing this for 25 years.”

Then she said to me, “Mom, you’ve made mistakes, but overall, I think you got it right. I think you should write a book that will help the next generation of working moms with the work-family balance based on your experience and expertise.”

After I got over the shock of my daughter’s unexpected endorsement, I thought to myself: What exactly is “IT” that I had gotten right.

When I looked back, I understood that I had used my professional skills as a public relations executive to raise my kids and it had worked. And if it worked doing this unintentionally, imagine how much more success today’s moms and mentors would have if they exercised the same strategies intentionally.

So I followed my daughter’s advice and wrote The Power of PR Parenting, which I envision becoming a go to source, and am now speaking worldwide on how to use public relations strategies to help improve all aspects of life for parents, mentors and entrepreneurs.

Here are two examples.

In public relations, strong writing skills are essential. In fact, they are essential in many professions. That said, once a document is drafted, it always goes through a review and editing process and there are ALWAYS corrections and changes. This concept applies at home too. The lesson: there is no such thing as the perfect first draft or first try for ANYONE, no matter how experienced they are (let’s put beginner’s luck to the side). There’s always room for improvement and that’s ok. As the parent, however, we need to do our best to give feedback and guidance rather than criticism when helping the kids with homework, a school project or practice for an extracurricular activity. Focus on what they’ve done correctly and show them another way to do something you’d like them to change. Feedback and guidance inspire resilience and self-confidence.

Good customer service is also a key component of public relations as it is with many professions. And when we are on the customer side, we all know how frustrating it is when the customer service people we ask for help, nicely tell us they won’t help us, especially when we know that they could…they just have to want to.

Let’s bring this mindset home and help rather than handle the kids when they ask for our attention. In this scenario, WE are customer service and the KIDS are the customers. If we take the couple of minutes, or maybe even seconds, to successfully problem solve, we may just find ourselves with the problem quickly solved and a satisfied customer rather than a frustrated, disgruntled one continuing to throw a temper tantrum.

Rather than separate work from home, bring your professional superpowers with you wherever you go to benefit those around you, especially your family. Also give the same respect to your family that you give to your work. If you pick up an emergency call from work when at home, excuse yourself and pick up the call from your family when at work, or stop what you are doing for a moment if interrupted when working from home. We stop what we are doing when a colleague interrupts us. In my opinion, we should do the same for our kids.

Scheduling and prioritizing can be challenging, especially when a work commitment conflicts with a family commitment. Do your best to prioritize and schedule as you deem fit. Use your team at the office to back you up as needed. Also, use your home team to back you up as needed. There’s nothing worse than being the kid without a parent or loved one with them on a special school day.

In public relations we tailor each program to the specific goals and needs of each client. I do the same for my PR Parenting clients, whether their focus is on parenting, career or something in life. Over time, we all face the same challenges, more or less, in various degrees, and on various levels. What differs is how we handle these challenges. PR Parenting is a new approach with a new set of tools intended to help people achieve their goals. Note: I’m neither a psychologist nor a parenting expert. I’m a PR pro. Using public relations strategies to raise my kids worked for me. It has also helped many others and I hope it continues to do so, for millions worldwide and for future generations.

Clearly define your target market and your key messages for your target market, keeping in mind that it’s not about you, but about how you can help your target market achieve their goals with your deliverable. Then, raise and increase awareness with all available opportunities.

As noted in question 1, when I had looked back at 25 years of parenting, I understood that I had unknowingly relied on my professional skills as a public relations executive to raise my kids. My children encouraged me to share this approach to help others. The book is laced with professional and family stories, the latter, approved by my husband and children. There are also step-by-step exercises for the reader to apply the same lessons to their own special circumstances. I hope readers will benefit from my hindsight and mirror the successes and skip the hiccups.

From the beginning, and every day thereafter, help your child to build a strong sense of self-esteem and self-love, with the knowledge that you, as their parent, are ALWAYS in their corner and safe place to go for support. This will help them to weather the storms and have the resilience to carry on. “We are not going to give another person the power to determine if we are going to have a good day, or not, or determine our worth. Both remain in our total control. We decide.”

Ahh, success in parenting is personal to each of us. For me, it’s raising confident, resilient, self-loving and reasonably happy children, who contribute in some positive way to society.

And how does PR Parenting differ from other parenting advice? Well, this is the first time that public relations and parenting are being linked together. Also, the PR Parenting approach looks at everything through a public relations lens. I unintentionally used this approach to successfully raise my own kids, all kind people, positively contributing to society.

If PR Parenting worked for me doing it unknowingly, imagine how much better today’s parents and mentors would do if they exercised the same intentionally. In fact, we might be surprised to learn that many people are already PR Parenting, they just didn’t have a name for it, and now they do!

Patience. The ability to see potential and to listen. Positivity. Unconditional love, especially during the rough times. Endurance (parenthood is a marathon not a sprint).

In PR, we try to infuse our clients with confidence before an interview or presentation. The same is even more important at home. Every day, take the couple of seconds to give your children a kiss, smile at them, tell them well done or that you are proud of them, and if you have an extra 20 seconds, give them a hug – 20 seconds or longer. We believe it when we repeatedly hear bad things. If we hear good things regularly enough, eventually we will believe the good stuff too. Plus, hearing the good stuff, never gets old.

Remember to give feedback not criticism. Choose your words, tone and delivery of your feedback with thought. Rather than dwell on the negative or mistakes, focus on the positives and guide them to improve by showing them “another way” something can be done. Perhaps say: “This is one way to do it. May I show you another way?” This approach inspires the desire to try again and builds resilience. And with practice comes some level of success (doesn’t have to be perfect) and with that, increased confidence. Celebrate every success with your child, no matter how small. The small successes may graduate to big successes along the way. And if they don’t, nothing happened. The increased confidence will sustain, as long as we remain supportive.

Every chapter of the book includes personal and professional stories to show how I applied public relations practices at home from the time my kids arrived until their early 20s. Now that my children are grown, I still use the same PR strategies, practices and tactics to navigate this next chapter of parenthood, only now I am doing so intentionally.

The audio book as well as the Spanish and Hebrew translations of The Power of PR Parenting are in the works. My team is currently booking the 2024/2025 speaking tour – various size stages, panels and workshops. I am looking forward to connecting with parents, mentors and entrepreneurs worldwide and helping as many people as possible. Whoever is reading this, I hope to visit your city soon, and meet you in person or virtually. Come say hello!

AllAuthor has been very professional and supportive in raising awareness of The Power of PR Parenting. Thank you for all that you do!