DEEP DIVE: Meg Zucker on Empowering Kids with Differences and Disabilities

15:02Meg Zucker:Yeah. Well, first of all, I think that those of us that are parents can relate to the fact that as hard as it is to experience something, when we see a pain that our child is experiencing, it's like everything we thought we experienced is on steroids and dealing with that emotional scene and all that kind of stuff. And I think that whether you're a parent of a child that's different or not, or disabled or not, we all understand and relate to that. With respect to my own personal experience, you would have thought that to your point, not only do I have a genetic condition, I literally gave birth to it.

15:40Meg Zucker:And so I should have had the sort of perfect, just insightful ability to handle everything for them in the way that my parents empowered me. But as I wrote in the book, I made some mistakes and I fessed up with those mistakes. Quite frankly, I think I point to a few things, but certainly fear. I talk about how I think that the root of all missteps I've made as a parent was based on fear. Fear of, quite frankly, maybe even not fear that my parents did something so right. And now I'm in this spot and can I live up to how they parented me in the same way. And there's, there is that element to it.

16:20Meg Zucker:The other thing is at the end of the day, one of the things that I learned too, and the reason I had to rethink this is I interestingly, I have not just one, but two children who have my physical condition and neither of them are the same in personality. And so one more outgoing, one a little shyer, not so shy, but when he was younger. And that in and of itself, a child's personality can actually impact the way that you want to figure out how to empower your children and drive in terms of the same way that help them and support them. And it's not identical. I even have this chapter in the book that's called Taking the Bully by the Horns.

16:59Meg Zucker:Ethan was bullied. Charlie was not for being physically different. And Ethan was shyer, right? And so sometimes I do think about the fact that a lot of the approaches that I've took in the way that I had to sort of come to the right place was not even the same within my own family.

17:17Annie D. Wright:That's really interesting. And kids who are in this position of sometimes having to be the sort of shiri ambassadors for kids are different. Lots of people have lots of things. I think that work is probably harder for some people than for others and harder on a Wednesday than on a Tuesday. It must get difficult sometimes.

17:33Meg Zucker:There's a lot of efforts that have been made to make certain that kids are kind. Choose kindness, be kind. And the last thing I want is everyone to say, did you hear Meg Zucker? She said kindness is bad. So that's not the case. Kindness is a good thing. However, when you're talking about not only just raising, but also So supporting your child to interact with children that they encounter that are different and so forth. It's such an easy thing, in my opinion, to say, be kind to Billy, be kind. And being kind to Billy means definitely don't be mean. And it could mean say hi or even don't say hi.

18:12Meg Zucker:Just don't do anything that's bad and make them feel badly. Meanwhile, I think the right slogan should be choose friendship. and focusing on making certain that your son or daughter that interacts with Billy can start to connect with them in a way that they leap beyond the kindness, which I think is just surface and really be willing. And I say willing, because it is a willing step to befriend somebody who's different, but helping them through that. That to me is so much more important than being an ambassador of slogans or anything like that.

18:47Annie D. Wright:Coming to this as a parent that wants my kids to not say the wrong thing, and as a parent of a kid who has sometimes not been perfect and has sometimes said the wrong thing, born out of curiosity, you make some really interesting points in this book about what all of us should expect of children. And you talk about how curiosity is normal. That's not something we need to correct or change. Tell us how you came to that and how we approach that with our kids.

19:14Meg Zucker:Yeah. I even wrote an article years ago in Parents Magazine, which is the subject of, you know, sort of experiences with my children where someone, you know, will be with a child and they'll be whisking them away because they're so afraid of their child embarrassing them or learning out something or asking questions. And to me, someone that provides or asks us a question, that's an opportunity for us to give an answer. And as I even wrote in that piece, it gives us the opportunity to become a someone from something in that experience. And so, you know, I know as parents, you know, I go back to that word fear.

19:50Meg Zucker:Any of us that is telling our child, oh, please don't ask that question. It's a little awkward. Let things be awkward then in my mind, because only then can we move past that and just get into sort of a natural rapport. And sometimes it's not going to be more than a one-off. And sometimes it's going to be in school where they're going to see that kid again and again. But I will also say, speaking of fear, when we tell our children and we try to thwart their natural curiosity, that creates fear in them. They don't understand why. And that gives them more anxiety about, wait a minute, mom and dad don't think they're signaling to me that natural interaction is not a good thing in this space.

20:32Meg Zucker:And so what have we done by our own fears? we've created fear in our own children in that regard. So that's a lose-lose.

20:40Annie D. Wright:You give another example of preparing a child ahead of time, again, with the best of intentions that we're going to see somebody today who might be in a wheelchair, whatever, I'm making that up. But that sort of overly preparing it can also backfire. And why is that?

20:55Meg Zucker:Yeah, I think I give the story in the book of a situation when I was younger and I had a cousin. We were at a birthday party. And in fact, he's much older than I am. And with the best of intentions, he said to his child, listen, my cousin's coming. You're going to love her. She's wonderful. But FYI, she has one finger on each hand and she looks really different. And when he did that by calling it out, he was doing it to try and save me some embarrassment if he was going to react or overreact. But instead, the child actually screamed when he saw me and thought I was like the equivalent of the Loch Ness monster.

21:32Meg Zucker:And it's because rather than just letting, you know, natural curiosity govern by pre-warning, it just didn't allow that sort of to happen. And look, kids can have a lot of wild imaginations, right? And it's understandable. But when we as parents are trying to tell them one thing, their imagination can go way beyond even what we thought versus just saying, hey, Tyler, this is your cousin Meg and Tyler's going to see me and he's going to react or he's going to whatever, but hey, I know I have one finger. So however he reacts or my boys, that's fine. We can deal with it. But as I say in the book, if I'm going to tell people not to pre-warn their children, then I have a duty to my own children to help them.

22:19Meg Zucker:And I have that chapter in the book called build their dignity. And so I need to make certain to strengthen those, if you will, emotional muscles so that they can in turn be able to be prepared to react to that.

22:32Annie D. Wright:Let's talk more about the dignity part after this. We're talking to Meg Zucker, the author of Born Extraordinary, Empowering Children with Differences and Disabilities. And we'll be right back.

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23:27Annie D. Wright:So Meg, you talk about dignity in this book. You talk about the dignity ladder and how we can create that for really all of our kids. Tell us about that.

23:35Meg Zucker:Yeah. So I have like tools that I use, some visual tools even that I created for my kids. And the dignity ladder was one of them. And the reason I wanted to do that is this recognition that any one of us can, you know, that whole expression, wrong side of the bed type of deal. Sometimes we get out of the bed and we're like, woohoo, today's the day, seize the day. And sometimes we just wake up not feeling great inside. And our kids are no different. Sometimes they're feeling good and sometimes they're feeling a little bit more insecure. And so to me, the dignity ladder is to be really in check with yourself.

24:12Meg Zucker:And this doesn't just go for kids. This is for any one of us. How have we started our day? Are we at the top of our dignity ladder or are we at the bottom? And if we're at the top, it's good to recognize that because the same, I'll just take myself for my kids. We talked about people trying to help or whatever. You know, when the external world reminds us we're different because otherwise we forget, but we go with the flow. It doesn't matter. It kind of reminds me of things that just fall off our emotional shield. We just don't mind. But if we're at the bottom of our ladder, if we're feeling more insecure or unhappy for whatever reason, then we get impacted by that.

24:46Meg Zucker:And in fact, all the external noise penetrates. And so the dignity ladder is just that visualization so that it's almost like you're giving your kids some grace. Some days you're going to feel okay. And sometimes you're not, you're going to be at the top or the bottom of your dignity ladder. And just know that the very same kid that says the very same thing, one day is going to affect you and one day won't. and let them understand that and appreciate that. And then the dignity chapter is a lot about how to help them achieve, even if they're at the bottom of their dignity ladder, how to build that strength up so that they can withstand anything that comes.

25:22Annie D. Wright:You make the point in the book, I circled it because it was so true that self-love is not automatically transferred from any of us to our children. And so as painful as it is to watch our children struggle and go through hard things, they do need to do that work for themselves, right? We can't just hand them the self-love and perspective that will make every day a great day. Yeah.

25:44Meg Zucker:My first chapter is called Embracing the New Normal. And one of the things I say is, how can we expect self-love and unconditional self-love to be achieved if we haven't actually achieved it ourselves? And so that particular chapter is really about people's sort of recognition, like where are you in your own ability here? And then to your point, once you've achieved it, it doesn't naturally transfer. But if you really are not consumed by other people's judgment, what people are thinking and so forth, your children have a better way of using the foundation of strength that you have to just blossom in the way that you want them to do and that you can help them to do.

26:22Annie D. Wright:What about the siblings of kids with differences? What are the best ways to support them? Because they'll be carrying some of this water also along the way.

26:31Meg Zucker:Yeah. So, you know, it's funny that there's a chapter called, What About the Families?, which used to be called What About the Siblings? And then I was talking to my editor and we're like, oops, not everyone has a sibling. That's for sure. And quite frankly, the siblings, because not everyone has a brother or sister, it's really whether it's a brother or sister or it could be a cousin the same age or close family friends that have kids the same age. The point is that I wanted to write a dedicated chapter in terms of the dynamic of these types of kids, It's peers, really safe peers that have their own instrumental impact on our children that are different and disabled.

27:06Meg Zucker:And one of the examples I give is for the younger sibling in that role. I use my brother, Ted. You know, he would say we'd be in the car and all of a sudden he'd blurt out, mommy, why does Maggie have one finger? And I'm like, what? Not you, too. What are you talking about? You live with me. What? What? What do you mean? But here's the point. Two things happen. He is essentially preparing me for what's going to happen outside the home. And secondly, I'm going to see and he's going to know, or I'm going to observe that he can move on, that the discussion and interaction doesn't have to start there and end there as part of the entire relationship I have with him.

27:48Meg Zucker:And so the importance of that, I can't underscore enough. On the older sibling side of things or the equivalent, I write about that too, because just like my older brother, Peter, they're not caught up in all the things that we are in our own heads as parents caught up with. And they're the ones that are just going to introduce things or not be so overthinking things and really allow us to sort of have a runway of our own experiences without a parent overthinking things, as I just mentioned. So I really, I love that chapter so much because there's also other elements of paying attention to that sibling in the household.

28:25Meg Zucker:They deserve their own, you know, attention, separate attention from your child, of course, but it's on steroids in this space. And then finally, look at the end of the day, children that are the siblings of a child that's disabled are different. No one has to teach them empathy. They are empathetic from the start. And that is a very beautiful thing.

28:45Annie D. Wright:You say something in the book that really stuck with me, one of many things, that we can't program kids to fall in line with the desired reaction we have for them to have. We can't do that ahead of time. There's not a magic way. Every time that we meet somebody who's different from us, we will behave this way and we will do X because it's people and you can't meet every person the same way, let alone every person with differences. And yet so many of us are so afraid our kid is going to say something insensitive or even just curious and embarrass the other child, embarrass us. How do you suggest that parents approach this sort of openly without fear, but with compassion?

29:23Meg Zucker:Look, at the end of the day, and it goes back to what we were talking about before in terms of pre-warning versus not and so forth. The reality is a lot of times it's so much about the other kid and, okay, let's talk about if you meet someone else, you know, it's all external. Yeah. My view always is, and I speak in corporate settings as well through my work, my nonprofit, but ask them about themselves. You know, I have a theme in my, in our work for Don't How to Flaunt It. The things that make me different make me. So have them choose something unique about themselves and ask them, you know, let's talk about it.

29:59Meg Zucker:Something that maybe there is invisible, something that they're, maybe people don't see so readily, but if they knew about it, how would they feel if someone called it out? And I would just say, provide those experiences that help them internalize the experience versus making it external. I think that's just truly the key in terms of supporting them and having them gain a better sense of their own self and their own experience. And then just thinking in terms of, OK, now, how do I interact with others? Let me not just make it about them. Let me think in terms of how I feel. Tell us about Don't Hide It, Flaunt It and the work that you do.

30:37Meg Zucker:So I started Don't Hide It, Flaunt It really officially after Ethan was bullied on the playground for being different. And the principal asked me to speak to all her faculty about how can we help a kid like your son who's different. And so it was an interesting because I have I'm a corporate lawyer as well. I mean, I run an anti money laundering program for a big bank. So I also have a day job. So to me, I'm like, what? I'm going to speak about my hands. OK. And so I did. But I definitely wanted to help the teachers just, quite frankly, just help them learn to just treat them like everybody else on so many levels.

31:16Meg Zucker:But I couldn't stop at thinking, what about the kids that were willing to taunt him? And so I piloted a program that became a national program where Don't Hide It, Flaunt It offers and still offers social, emotional learning and empathy program to students across the country. It's called Kids Flaunt. And it was our flagship program 10 years ago. But now, oh gosh, I mean, we do programming for boys and girls clubs and certainly that expanded to middle schools and high school programs, partner with universities and a lot of other things. We realized our mission can really help not unite people despite their differences, but even because of their differences.

31:57Annie D. Wright:I've been talking to Meg Zucker. She is the author of the new book, Born Extraordinary, Empowering Children with Differences and Disabilities. Meg, tell us where we can find Don't Hide It Flaunted and your book and everything that you do.

32:08Meg Zucker:Oh, thanks, Amy. So I think the easiest thing is just to type in megzucker.com in the internet. And that's my author website. It includes all the things about the book, but it also has an entire section on Don't Hide It Flaunted, which can lead anyone to the Don't Hide It Flaunted website as well. So I'd love people to check it out.

32:28Annie D. Wright:I'll put the link to megzucker.com and the book in the show notes. Meg, thank you so much for talking to me today.

32:34Meg Zucker:Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.