Nine children, 17 grandchildren, and 40 years of marriage later, administrative assistant Luisana Bethencourt has learned a thing or two about raising a family. Now, she passes along her wisdom to St. Rita School families from a podcast microphone.
Earlier this month, Bethencourt, 64, launched a podcast in collaboration with St. Rita School in Alexandria, “Let Me Tell You How It Happened.” The podcast is available in both English and Spanish for a one-time payment of $20. In each of the 10 episodes, she interviews one of her nine adult children and her husband, Ricardo, and discusses an aspect of their unique “family culture.” Topics include creating a “family mission statement,” entrusting children with responsibilities, handing on consequences and setting family boundaries.
The podcast paints a picture of a joyful, ordered yet “open” family culture. “Family culture,” according to Bethencourt, is a sum of shared beliefs, traditions, and values that unite a family with a “sense of belonging.”
All too often, parents are so consumed by the busyness of family life that they default into “trial and error” methods of raising a family, Bethencourt said. She said she encourages parents instead to sit down together and write a family mission statement, outlining the values and habits they want to instill in their children. When it comes to making parenting decisions, always go back to that family mission statement and ask, “Does this align?” she said.
“Even if they are little, then you are training them for the future,” she added. “You are training them to make their own decisions, to use their freedom right.”
Bethencourt’s ministry to families goes back to her early days as a mother in Venezuela, where all nine of her children were born. Over the decades she served as a family counselor and even cofounded the Panamerican Institute for Family Studies in 1994. In 2006, the family moved from their native country to North Carolina.
Bethencourt said that she and Ricardo set certain boundaries within their family culture but always explained the “why” when the kids questioned them. On the podcast, their son Juan Antonio gave the example that growing up, the kids never attended sleepovers at friends’ houses, but friends were always welcomed in the home. And the friends came over in droves.
In episode six, their daughter Ruth shared that each child was responsible for certain chores to keep the house clean. “We always had fun with it,” she said. “When one person was (cleaning) the counter and one person was doing dishes, we had music playing in the background, and then we would start dancing and singing to it, and then it turned into choreography. And then the chores were a part of family life.” Watching TV was a rarity in the household, but the child responsible for “laundry day” got to pick out a movie for family movie night.
In short, Bethencourt said it all comes down to forming children’s habits. And the Bethencourts’ formation paid off in adulthood. Today, many of their children are married and raising large families of their own. Six of them live in the Washington area. “They keep the family culture. They want to replicate it. But most importantly, they keep their faith,” Bethencourt said.
Today, Bethencourt supports school families as both the family formation coordinator and the Hispanic families liaison. As liaison, she walks Spanish-speaking families through school resources and provides interpreter services and translation materials. In the family formation role, she leads the “Partnering with Parents” initiative, which works with school parents, “the primary educators,” to ensure “mission alignment” so parents and the school are on the same page.
“You wear many hats,” she said.
In dedicating her life and career to accompanying families, Bethencourt said it comes down to one important lesson her parents gave her. “The main important goal in my life is to go to heaven,” she said. “But you don’t go to heaven alone. Nobody goes to heaven alone. So, you have the responsibility to bring others.”
Find out more
To purchase the podcast for a one-time payment of $20, go to family-culture.org.
