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Any advice for teaching kids about navigating interactions with people who are different? What have you taught your children about these types of interactions?
I’d like to think that having a mother who has certain limitations has made my children more compassionate. It’s consoling for me to think that there might be a benefit to all this. They are kind kids and I think that it is directly related to my vision loss because one of the things we talk about is giving people the benefit of the doubt. I feel like that’s a good New York lesson in general. I’m a native New Yorker, I’ve lived here all my life and I wish everybody gave each other the benefit of the doubt a lot more! Because of my vision loss, which is not obvious, people make a lot of assumptions about me. I bump into people and on so many occasions I’ve had people tell me, “Hey watch what you’re doing!” And I want to tell them, “You know, there’s stuff going on that might not be obvious to you.” I remind my children of that constantly, that they don’t know what sorts of things people are struggling with, or what their limitations or circumstances might be. You can’t assume. There are lessons like that that I think they probably have learned.
The other things that we talk about too is that everybody has their baggage and their issues and that’s just part of life. It doesn’t have to define us, it’s just part of the whole package.
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Have other parents you know been helpful?
The parents at my kids’ school, who heard about my book, have shown me an outpouring of tremendous support. What is interesting to me is that it hasn’t been just these wonderful messages of support but so many people have been opening up to me about their own lives, which has been this unexpected gift, which I did not anticipate. It’s an interesting phenomenon when you write a memoir, people read all about your secrets and your tribulations and then that intimacy really invites them to disclose their own stuff.
Tell us a bit about your new series, The Fix-It Friends.
I’m writing the first of six books in a new series that I created. It follows an 8-year-old girl and her group of siblings and friends, who help other kids in their urban neighborhood. Most of these problems the kids face are socio-emotional. The first book deals with a girl who has anxiety and the second book is about teasing, and there’s a book about learning disabilities. They are really funny and entertaining. Kind of like if Junie B. Jones was about a girl who had anxiety. My children were the inspiration for this series.
I wrote these books because I see in my children and in my children’s friends that they are grappling with big issues. Not just, “my tooth won’t fall out,” or these little blips that you see represented in kids’ books. I wanted to write a series that is extremely funny and very engaging, but also represented what I see as a reality for kids today. I want kids who are reading these books to be able to relate to these issues and also to have more compassion for the kids that they know who are grappling with them. I’m having so much writing it!
What are you some of your favorite children’s books?
Maurice Sendak and Vera B. Williams are some of our favorites.
My older kids love the Ramona series, and in many ways that also inspired my series.
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