EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Have you ever stopped to think about yourself and your story? If someone were to write your memoir what would it say? We all seek some level of authenticity but have trouble removing the labels and finding our whole story. Welcome to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. In this program we’ll explore diverse stories on identity to help determine what is truly yours. Now here is your host Diane Dewey.

Diane: Welcome to the show everyone. We’re here to drop in with our guest Katie Burke to talk about seeing the world through the eyes of children specifically the world of San Francisco. It’s the subject of her new book entitled Urban Playground: What Kids Say about Living in San Francisco. It’s to be published next month by Spark Press. So exciting. It’s like remembering what it’s like to swim in a public swimming pool all over again. The book is available on the Spark Press website and you can visit Katie on her website KatieBurkeAuthor.com. Welcome Katie Burke. Welcome to Dropping In.

Katie: Thank you Diane. Thank you for having me.

Diane: It’s lovely to be with you and I’m going to give people a little flavor of your book and then introduce you. Then we’ll get do a deep dive right into our conversation. You write about the book children want to be seen and heard. When we listen kids in urban centers tell us a lot like what is fun, boring, meaningful and scary about the cities they live in. Jump into the urban playground to find out what kids think about their cities. I just thought a lot has changed since the days of children should be seen and not heard that they were at one point considered kind of performance accessories but not developing their own views and opinions necessarily. You’ve shined a light on that individuality and the importance of validating kids’ opinions by quoting them directly in your book.

When I was reading the book which I took great pleasure in I noticed that the vision of a child it’s fundamentally different and much more immediate than that of an adult. If this were an adult guide to living in San Francisco all we’d hear about is where to eat and drink, maybe where to get a good book but through kids’ eyes we get to learn about where to play. It’s an urban playground literally the land on which to play. Play is engagement. It’s interactive and physical and it brings us outside, outside of ourselves and outside into the outdoors. It’s a connection.

What it’s not is sitting in a restaurant while four family members at a table focus on their personal devices. I was struck by the amount of value on family contact that the children gave in their answers as well as always primarily focusing on where to play. Play is essential for us as sleep says Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play and that’s a place I want to go. Play engages us at a deeply personal level whatever we’re involved in and the engagement itself is pleasurable and fun. More important than the outcome so one has a sense of being lost outside of time, not fully involved with the anxiety or self-concerns while being actively involved in play.

He says this broad definition applies to both kids and adults so it’s worthwhile for adults, parents and kids to read Urban Playground. He goes on to say that playfulness keeps us nimble. We make better decisions. We’re more flexible. We take more risks because there’s less to lose. There’s nothing to lose really. Play becomes a competitive advantage. The benefits include self-mastery, a boost to our immune system, empathy and a sense of belonging.

It also helps with our physiology even being outdoors for 10 minutes can help set our circadian rhythms as we know. We need sunlight. We need nature and emotionally we need novelty and a sense of wonder so seeing through the eyes of a child in this book is so healthy whether we’re a kid, a parent or an adult without kids it’s worth it to get motivated from the perspectives in Katie Burke’s book Urban Playground.

I called this episode I Already Am because that was the response to the question that is always posed to kids who or what do you want to be when you grow up. When I arrived in America at age one and a half I had a full-blown personality. You see that in the youngest infants. Mona Baker, a San Francisco science editor says that Urban Playground shows that one does not need to come of age to have a strong personality. Most of the children interviewed for Urban Playground had emerged from their preschool years what Erickson called the initiative phase where the most important need is exploration.

That fully explains why children need to assert themselves and control and power over their environment to develop a sense of purpose. This initiative is what goes on when kids go out and play. They’re exploring. They’re getting out and about. They’re becoming viable. There may be more mobility and diversity for urban kids and certainly the ones in San Francisco that Katie Burke interviewed are quite sophisticated. Like my godson in Zurich, he and his brother they take public transportation all throughout the city. They hop a bus to go to the skate park and then they go home. They visit their friends. Now they’re aged 10 and 13. Their skate park is where they see everyone play, plays with soccer, skateboard and then moms can join in whenever they can visit with them on from the bus or the tram. This part of interconnection will always be a part of these kids’ memories. I must note that Zurich is notoriously safe for kids. Sometimes we don’t share that level of safety in America.

In an interesting book called The Emotional Infrastructure of Places Peter Kageyama, the city love guy talks about the foundation that supports our sentimental, psychological and spiritual life. Kids are very open about this. Their experience is based on fun as Katie Burke said. It’s their likes, their dislikes, their connections to places. They’re less concerned with the rational convenience of the nearest grocery store. This book explores how we create emotional attachments and connections to the places we live and as a result to each other.

What causes us to love where we live? It doesn’t have to do with survival but with quality of life issues. Where’s the place that has the most interesting mural, the shop that has a garden like Tombolo, the independently owned bookstore here in Saint Petersburg or where are the places that have the most charm and novelty or even the negative quality of life issues that we’d rather forget, the background music that dogs is wherever we go, the mysterious sensor devices in public bathroom sinks.

I’ll give you just one excerpt from Urban Playground and then we’ll get to talk with the author Katie Burke. This is Leah, age nine. What was her favorite place to go? She said to swim in the newly renovated pool at Balboa Park. Her dog Marlo loves to run and fetch at the beach. It’s these simple pleasures that children talk about unabashedly. Well we adults might think of something that’s supposedly more sophisticated like a neighborhood wine bar or the farmer’s market but if you think about the, if we don’t discount the emotional content of play in favor of more serious issues we come back to ourselves, our own emotional memories.

I remember swimming in a beautiful public swimming pool when we were transferred for a year to Basel, Switzerland and someone asked me later what I loved most about the city. I found myself talking about the museums. There are 30 of them so maybe that’s natural. The Beyeler Foundation is a favorite but I neglected to even really think about that beautiful public swimming pool that Leah talked about and really that was the thing that broke brought my senses most alive in a physical way and in a play way. I think that Urban Playground is a great restorative for us to go back to thinking about the great things that kids connect with and that we’ve maybe forgotten to connect with.

Sarah talks about, age nine, talks about going out to the park or watching a family movie on Friday and having a dinner in chat. I mean I’m not sure that families, parents really recognize the significance of communication within the family. Sarah said that they probably don’t know that the loss of their old dog hurts me way more than it hurts them. I love this that she revealed her pain to Katie Burke even though you know she didn’t necessarily think that her parents really understood this. Katie comes back at the end of each one of these chapter interviews and points out things like for Sarah and her little brother. In San Francisco, she says siblings do sleep sometimes in the same room. San Francisco is only seven miles square and holds more than 884 thousand people. Many people share bedrooms. Many kids share bedrooms. San Franciscans don’t always know their neighbor. Somebody can think they’re being nice by feeding your lost pet like sadly they did with the family dog Shadow but they can’t ask you whether the food they’re giving them is safe.

I feel like this is a real contribution to empathy. Katie Burke talks about being childless herself by choice, a topic we’ve talked about on Dropping In. She points out that she’s not judgmental about parents because it’s an impossible job. The author says that I do think that as a doting aunt to eight children and a writer who regularly interviews children I can say that adults would do best by their children in their lives if they listened more and considered their children wise. Like all of us children just want to love and be loved and they’re better at showing this than adults.

I think this was a quote that came from our wonderful publicist Book Forward. It’s such a great answer I think from the author Katie Burke that children should be considered wise. I think a lot about the inner place and the outer place in in her book San Francisco that Katie addresses to. To give you a kind of a bio of Katie she’s practiced family law in San Francisco for 14 years. That’s her day job. She’s a compassionate and zealous advocate operating at a high level to preserve her clients’ dignities and she’s a champion for children and families. Katie has practiced in large and small family law firms as well as in solo practice. Her work as a writer and interest in children’s development took her to Africa to teach creative non-fiction writing to children in Kenya and teens in South Africa.

After writing and teaching full-time for two years she returned to the San Francisco Bay Area to continue practicing family law. She holds a degree in psychology from Fairfield University in Connecticut. Her master of counseling degree is from Arizona State University. She’s been moved to support families in an advocacy role when she attended University of San Francisco School of Law. After graduate school she’s a member of the bar and other bay area professional organizations. Regularly contributing to the San Francisco Bar Association’s Quarterly Journal. The super cute and fun sounding article she writes Noe Kids, a monthly column for the Noe Valley Voice in which she features Noe Valley children. From 2015 to 2017 Katie Burke traveled to New Orleans to volunteer with Louisiana Civil Justice assisting self-represented families to family law cases.

Katie Burke, I’ve tried to paint a broad brush here but I think one of the really amazing things that you’ve accomplished with this book is that you validated children’s voices. Far from being dismissive which is a really horrible thing to do when you’re trying to create strong individuals. Kids often feel patronized and how often do we take their thoughts and feelings seriously. You are publishing their answers. You’ve empowered children. That’s too rarely done.

In one month when the book comes out children will see other children being quoted in your book and telling their stories. I wanted to hear from you what you think is so important, why it’s important for children to develop their stories and how to go about accessing children’s stories. You’ve become something of an expert in this.

Katie: Thank you. I think I’d start by saying just sharing my experience of interviewing kids. Before this was a book about kids in San Francisco the original idea was that it would be kids and cities around the US. I had spoken to 60-something kids in cities around the US mostly by facetime before my publisher reached out to me and said we really should start in San Francisco because you’ve been here over 20 years and all that. Then I added on 50 more interviews.

Almost every single child I interviewed got very wide-eyed when I talked to them about what this project was. They said, I’m going to be in a book. They’re just so excited about that idea that some of them say, I’m going to be famous and that someone’s listening to them and wants to read what they say. I think just thinking back to when I was a kid it’s like books are everything. The idea that they might be in a book, it’s like they’re a rock star or something. Because of that I’ve been really devoted to making sure I published every child’s story. Even the ones who aren’t in San Francisco are up on my website because I don’t want any child to feel like that writer came and talked to me. I never got to see my interview. She didn’t pick me or whatever because they just get so excited about it.

Diane: It’s like a world. You’ve opened a gate. You’ve opened a door into a world that they don’t have access to or that you don’t get access to until you’re an adult. I think this is, it’s going to be so exciting to see the reaction of kids and their peers when they see themselves in print. This is something you’ve facilitated. I think it’s so great that you’ve been inclusive of all the kids that you interviewed. How do parents’ access better their kids’ stories? We have a few minutes left before the break but what do you tell parents about how to get to the heart of what’s going on with their kids?

Katie: I think it’s really about tuning in. The title of your podcast Dropping In. it’s really about getting present, getting wide-eyed with them and getting into their world. I mean what I found most fascinating is that I had ten different themes and kids could be questioned on any one of these ten themes. I asked them questions about San Francisco through the lens of their given theme. Often parents would ask me in advance which topic are they going to get and the topics are family, favorite foods, heroes, favorite holiday, pets, school, sports, talents, vacation or work.

I never would tell the parents because I wanted to have just off the cuff, unprepared, unrehearsed kids. What was amazing to me is that no matter what the topic that these kids were surprised with it’s as though they had been thinking about it for years. They have a million things to say on every topic and usually it was not even a beat before between my asking the question and they’re coming out with this monologue of all the things they’ve wanted to say. For parents I would just say and I am very careful because I am childless by choice.

I think parents by and large do a wonderful job but I think in the day-to-day some of the really intimate moments of dropping in with kids can get can get dropped. One experience I had repeatedly…

Diane: Oh wait Katie. We’ve got to stop for a break here to enable the show to go on but I want to come back with the idea of being wide-eyed and present with kids, hearing stories they’ve had inside themselves for years. You won’t want to miss this with Katie Burke. We’ll take a short break now.

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Has your manuscript languished because you can’t find the direction it wants to take or have you lost the motivation to finish and polish it for publication because it can be such a big formidable task? Let Diane Dewey help you resolve your writing issues. Diane’s manuscript coaching offers help with sticking points like the arc of your story and how to flesh it out, finding the inner story and what you want to say, developing your message revelations that become your reader’s takeaways, helping to rally the motivation to finish your project and what to do next. We can analyze, edit and advise you on publishing. Who are the next collaborators on your writing path? If you seek resolution to these and other questions please contact Diane Dewey author of the award-winning memoir Fixing the Fates. Find her at trunordmedia.com. That’s T-R-U-N-O-R-D.com or on her author’s page dianedewey.com. Diane can also be found through social media. Connect with her through the links on the show page.

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You are listening to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. We’d love to hear from you if you have a question or comment about the show. Send us an email to ddewey@trunordmedia.com. That’s the letter ddewey@trunordmedia.com. Now back to Dropping In.

Diane: Welcome back everyone. We’re dropping in today with Katie Burke, author of the Urban Playground and we’ve been talking about um accessing children’s stories, their innermost thoughts and sometimes it’s easier to do that somehow as a stranger, a person who Katie developed a set of topics that she would ask the kids who’s in your family, what are your favorite foods, who’s your hero. I think that’s a very revealing one. What’s your favorite holiday?

One of the kids in in the book Urban Playground went on to develop his own holiday which I just thought was so imaginative. It was called Skillzot. It’s a two night holiday where people do not have school the day between the two nights. They can do whatever they want and then on the two nights of Skillzot family members and friends gather around a fire in the middle of the street. Then the child whose name was Courage. Courage’s group would meet outside his grandparents’ house. Everyone would celebrate Skillzot and everyone goes around the circle one by one and each person shows off one special skill over the fire but for example Courage says they would do a cartwheel in the air over the fire or a backflip. They repeat this ten times but if they didn’t have ten skills or even one that’s no problem. It’s skippable as Courage says because even those who feel short on talent can skip school for Skillzot.

I mean I think this is a great holiday. He said there’d be really crazy music and everybody would have dinner at 9:00 PM. That’s wildly I’m sure exotic for a kid. There’d be no clapping, no competition but lots of foam pads to protect people who fall and a bridge over the fire so no one would get burned. I think this is so telling like the idea of removing competition but showing talent. I mean I think this sounds like heaven. Katie Burke, you’ve used the lever, the idea of these topics and organized your book, your interviews around these topics. Were you surprised by some of the answers you got and how so? What was your response to the answers you got from these wonderful kids?

Katie: Well it was just delightful the way, I mean that excerpt you read is a perfect example of a child never running short on ideas. He required no encouragement. I mean he just went and went. That was such a detailed holiday that he invented. That’s exactly what I’m talking about where it’s like you would think he’d been thinking about it for years and maybe he has but every kid had something like that or many somethings like that where I was just sitting there listening and thinking how did you know I was going to ask you this question because they just, for the most part there was no reservation. They just had so much to say.

I would say to the extent that anything surprised me, I mean I have many kids in my life so I can’t exactly say it’s a surprise but because I was asking such targeted questions whereas usually if I’m with my nieces and nephews or a mentee or some kids of my friends or whoever it’s not like I’m coming over with prepared questions. It was sort of surprising that no matter what I asked they just it’s like these words just tumbled out of their mouths as if they’d been waiting to say it.

Diane: Exactly and those of us that are close to kids we feel like we’re supposed to know these answers. We’re supposed to know what their favorite foods are but maybe we don’t check in often enough to kind of find out. I mean things evolve. People change. Kids change too. Their ideas are constantly changing. They’re playing for heaven’s sake. They’re getting a lot of creative juices going all the time. They’re connected with other kids that way too.

I wondered San Francisco has such a smorgasbord of offerings in terms of physical geographic beauty and ethnic diversity. These kids are also they’re getting into parks, the Bay itself, the Golden Gate Bridge. Many of them talked about walking across the bridge with their families and this incredibly diverse food and language accessibility. Being able to learn Mandarin is not common. I wondered if you felt as though San Francisco was just more wealthy in that way. I mean you did allude to the fact that also it costs an enormous amount of money to live in San Francisco.

One of your interviewees talked casually about his weekend place where he’d go with his dad or took the family dog up to Sonoma. Your analysis at the end of that chapter you said many people in San Francisco have second homes in Sonoma. It’s a real eye-opener to those of us that live in I guess more limited kinds of spaces. Do you think that kids in San Francisco are aware of the wealth that’s around them and are they aware that this is kind of a special place or how did you read that?

Katie: I think it varies. I mean in the age range that I interviewed which was five to nine. For the most part I didn’t really sense that if the kids did have privilege that they thought it was anything unusual. Even I spoke to some kids who don’t have privilege and I didn’t necessarily get from them that they were aware whether they were or not it didn’t necessarily come through in my conversations with them but I think there are a couple different types of wealth that you referred to. One is just the cultural wealth and riches and the no end of exciting things to do. That was really true across the board in my interviews whether the child was from privilege or not.

That was really the main point of interviewing kids in urban centers was because there is so much of that sort of wealth of the rich cultural experience but the other type of material wealth I don’t think that kids were by and large super aware that there was another way because of course if they’re privileged they’re going to other places where they are enjoying the privilege of those places. If they’re not then they’re just not and this is the experience they know but it was interesting as I talked to people about my book. A lot of people joked with me are there even 50 kids in San Francisco because that’s as you know the number of kids featured in the book because there there’s this quote that goes around San Francisco all the time there are more dogs than kids in San Francisco.

I think it might actually be true because it’s just an expensive place to live. It can be a really challenging place to live for reasons aside from cost. I don’t know. I mean I think for the kids it just is their experience. I mean that’s in the age range I was talking to I think if I probably went up even a couple years I’d see a very different level of insight about if they had privilege or not and their level of awareness of that.

Diane: I mean I have a wonderful sister-in-law who lives in Washington DC. That’s also an intellectually wealthy and culturally wealthy, culturally rich area. When she was raising her kids they volunteered at soup kitchens. They did things at holidays to kind of bring in awareness that like not everybody’s living in a big Victorian home with a wraparound porch and a nice yard for two dogs. We’ve got to kind of give back. She herself goes to Haiti and volunteers medically there.

You also have done I think some really, really interesting work in Kenya teaching non-fiction creative writing and in South Africa. I think you have extended beyond this boundary and I wondered if you could talk about that experience and how it may be informed this experience of wanting to reach out to children because children after all are another unheard voice and a population that is maybe underserved in certain ways. There’s this diversity but you’ve brought a microphone to their voice and a book to their voice which is just going to be the most exciting thing when it comes out. Do you feel that this is a connection for you as well?

Katie: Yes. I mean when I grew up, I grew up in phoenix. It really comes from my dad, this service mentality. We used to buy Christmas presents for kids in need in phoenix and I remember driving around with my dad just before Christmas in the years that we did it, driving to drop off at the family’s homes that we had selected to buy gifts for. My dad is always doing missions of service, trips of service, donating money and resources and all kinds of things.

I really just grew up with that being natural and it’s always been important to me. When I started going to Kenya it was through Glide Memorial which is a huge institution in San Francisco. That was my first experience going to Kenya and then later went to South Africa with a program called Teach with Africa that’s also based in San Francisco. I knew right away I wanted to work with kids. That’s something that always been important to me. Even when I was a child I just knew that somehow I’d want to work with kids. It is interesting. It is going to Kenya for example. I mean we were working in the slums and seeing kids there. It’s the same. It is the same around the world regardless of level of privilege kids just want to be seen and heard.

If you really tune in, that’s what I always just think of. If you tune in, you get wide-eyed and you listen to what they have to say they will tell you what they’re thinking about. They’ll just be loyal to you for life. I mean they just want to be seen and heard as I say. It’s all informative. I mean I always want to connect with kids. I had a pen pal writing program for a while between Kenyan kids and US kids because that’s really my message in this world is just getting kids’ voices out.

Diane: Maybe it’s a great idea as a connector with some San Francisco kids too. Maybe that’s something that will come out of this. I really get almost misty-eyed when you talk about being present and being receptive to kids. I mean I think what’s happening with you you’re becoming wholly present with kids and you are being receptive to them in a way that sometimes busy people and we’re all can be accused of that. Just sort of project a kind of a more shut down kind of sensory system and you’re tuning in which is just a gift. It’s a really amazing thing.

I think that one of the other things that you point out in the book which I loved. Very happy to hear about the role of Glide Memorial too because that’s such a cool, community-minded church but you also talk about Pride weekend in San Francisco which I also think wow, that’s a great, unique trait of San Francisco. Does this create more acceptance around attitudes towards same-sex partners? Do kids then understand that they can have an influence in terms of rights for same-sex partners? I think in addition you went from, you co-founded and volunteered with Youth Rising, a few years back, an organization that encourages high school students to leave their peers in local political engagement preparing them as they become eligible to vote. Are you aware of this role of cultivating this role as allowing kids to understand that they can become influencers for causes that are important to them?

Katie: That’s an interesting question. I think so. I mean that’s the thing about kids in urban centers generally is that there is so much cultural opportunity and opportunities for engagement. I think yes, it’s certainly part of my role with when I was with Youth Rising and anything I’ve undertaken and all the work I did with Glide but I also think it’s almost like I mean kids are going to catch it. If they live in the city it’s just part of their experience to be civically engaged and politically engaged and just in all those day-to-day interactions they have with people and experiences that you just don’t get if you’re in a small town or a suburb. In the same way I just think they can’t help but they may choose to get involved or not get involved but they will certainly be exposed.

Diane: I wonder too about the isolation relatively in the suburbs. I mean in cities people, there have been studies. It’s great for kids and great for older people because everything’s right there. You have much more accessibility and immediacy in cities. I think I was wondering from reading the book too there were so many great ideas from kids. I wondered if it would be here’s a fantasy for me. I wondered if it would be possible for kids to sit down when people, urban planners are thinking about the next area of development to have actual input into that, what matters to kids because certainly with the question of well if money weren’t an issue for kids they’re able to satisfy that because they’re not really having such a comprehension if money wasn’t an issue.

Maybe setting aside a park, a dog park, a kids’ park some of these things could be really useful for us in terms of planning but I think the important thing also you mentioned you’re growing up is there a sort of dichotomy in America between the isolation of the suburbs and the connectivity of the city. Do you find that kids are more connected somehow to one another, to culture? What’s your feeling about that? We’ll wrap up this segment with those thoughts.

Katie: I think so and what you said about maybe kids should be sitting in on these planning meetings. It’s so interesting because I did repeatedly have the experience that kids had amazing ideas and one friend who was listening to some of the stories when I was reading them on a writing retreat said. You should send this book to the mayor. I mean because they just had so many good ideas.

Also just to hear from the ground level, these kids who couldn’t be closer to the ground talking about some of the negatives of the city. How many kids are scared by homelessness and many kids find it really dirty and really noisy. It’s just really interesting to hear their unfiltered view because it is so unstrategic. They’re just talking and they’re just giving you real honest perspectives. I mean every time someone talked about something they love about the city or something that’s challenging for them it was a view I shared but it was revealed through them in such a pure, unfiltered way. I mean that I think is really the genius of kids is that they just don’t know any better. As you said they don’t have sophistication about money. They just think well, why can’t it be like this. I often feel especially talking with my nieces and nephews as often as I do, it’s like their ideas and solutions are so simple. It’s like oh yes. That’s right. That’s a great idea.

Diane: You may think adults, we bury our emotional reactions in cities. There’s always that that tension that you feel and the upsetting that you feel when you see homeless persons. You wonder why does this have to be. What’s being done but we lose it. Kids kind of retrieve a thread, an emotional thread for us that I think it’s so valuable and so valuable in your book. I’m going to say we’ve got a minute left. I wanted to ask you are there going to be other urban playgrounds. You’re interviewing other kids. What’s next for you Katie Burke?

Katie: Yes, that is the plan. I’m sort of going to see how the publicity goes around this book and in what direction it takes me but the idea is that I will focus on one urban center at a time and go someplace else next. One idea I have in new York for the next book but it could be anywhere depending on how and where the book is received but it is the idea and the plan that there will be Urban Playground: What Kids Say about Living in Boston, what kids say about living in Seattle or what kids say about living in Los Angeles so that is the plan.

Diane: When we come back we’re going to hear some thoughts from Katie Burke on I think being present and understanding kid’s point of view. Her book is called Urban Playground. They’re close to the ground. They’re playing and they have so much off to offer us. Don’t go away. We’ll be back in a minute on Dropping In.

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Has your manuscript languished because you can’t find the direction it wants to take or have you lost the motivation to finish and polish it for publication because it can be such a big formidable task? Let Diane Dewey help you resolve your writing issues. Diane’s manuscript coaching offers help with sticking points like the arc of your story and how to flesh it out, finding the inner story and what you want to say, developing your message revelations that become your reader’s takeaways, helping to rally the motivation to finish your project and what to do next. We can analyze, edit and advise you on publishing. Who are the next collaborators on your writing path? If you seek resolution to these and other questions please contact Diane Dewey author of the award-winning memoir Fixing the Fates. Find her at trunordmedia.com. That’s T-R-U-N-O-R-D.com or on her author’s page dianedewey.com. Diane can also be found through social media. Connect with her through the links on the show page.

Are you or someone you know interested in attending college? With both college tuition and college enrollment up 60% since 2002. There is a lot of competition and careful planning needs to be a part of the process. Tune in to Getting In: A College Coach Conversation hosted by Elizabeth Heaton and featuring a team of college coach experts. We’ll bring you the tips, techniques and know-how to navigate the road to college and do so the smart way. Listen live every Thursday at 4 PM Eastern Time 1 PM Pacific Time on the Voice America Variety Channel.

You are listening to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. We’d love to hear from you if you have a question or comment about the show. Send us an email to ddewey@trunordmedia.com. That’s the letter ddewey@trunordmedia.com. Now back to Dropping In.

Diane: Welcome back everyone. We’re Dropping In with Katie Burke. She’s the author of a book called Urban Playground: What Kids Say about Living in San Francisco. It’s just about to hit the market in April 2020. It’s available through the Spark Press publishing website. We are just in the midst of understanding from Katie this very candid interview process that you went through with 50 kids in San Francisco. The results were very candid, very enchanting. They make for incredibly touching reading. There’s such a rich imagination and I’ll give you an example.

Lily, age five from the book said she was asked by Katie what she wishes her parents knew about her. She said that I have another world that is magical. She has a rich imagination Katie observed where many characters lived. She plays with him and is good friends with them. Her parents may have some idea about her inner world Lily says but they don’t know the half of it. I think to myself well privacy is something that gives kids a sense of autonomy but also the sense of being accessible and connected with your parent. How do parents create a safe place for kids to express themselves? Katie, you’ve done such a magnificent job with this. What would you say to parents in terms of how to talk to your kids? How do I find out about them and their world?

Katie: I would say always try different kinds of questions. I think one thing that happens with parents that is very different from my experience with kids because I’m consciously thinking of the questions is that parents get into routines. It becomes a little bit recognized what the questions are, how was school today, that sort of thing. One experience I had almost invariably if a parent did listen in on the interview I always left it to the child and parent or parents whether they wanted the parent or parents to listen in. Almost invariably if the if the parent did listen at the end of the interview they would say I have no idea. I didn’t know that my kid even thought that or they had said something like that to me but I didn’t know they were still thinking about it.

In a couple instances that were just really cute I would see a parent kind of in the other room trying to make themselves inconspicuous doubled over laughing because their kids are so adorable and they’d say something so funny that was really surprising to the parents. I would just say switching up the questions and even taking time to be thoughtful and intentional about the questions they want to ask their kids.

Diane: Something that’s provoking would be something that’s novel. Oh my God, I never heard that question before. I think this quality of like who knew. That’s such an invaluable gift that comes from spontaneously talking to your kid maybe just about things that don’t even like really “make sense” because one of the kids responded. It was almost like this topic of emotional infrastructure, things that he related to in the city was the color orange. The Golden Gate Bridge, his orange ice, the place where he got the orange ice. That was an orange store. The color that was reverberating for him and those are things, that’s such a quick fix if a parent knew that. You could paint the kids’ room orange. You could have an orange day. You could find out this is the happy place, the happy color.

I just think wow, some of these steps are so easily done. As you say if you just take a little bit of a step outside the box and don’t ask well, how was school? Boring. I really think wow, you’ve really lit on to something that helps kids access themselves and also feel their voices are going to be heard and also that they’re valued. This like sense that their parents are really, really interested in them not in a perfunctory way, not in a performance way but interested in them as a person. I think that’s something where you’ve really touched on something here that by listening to kids’ voices talking about themselves. We go back. We remember what’s important. Parents can address kids in a different way. Maybe urban centers can value kids in a different way.

I just think the whole, you’re at the tip of the iceberg here Katie. I think you’re really on to something with this book. I couldn’t be more excited about it coming out next month. I just wanted to offer you a chance what has happened to Katie Burke as a result of writing this book and gathering this information. How has it affected you? You came to San Francisco on a dream. Has it fulfilled that? What are you finding out about yourself through this interview process that you’re engaged with Urban Playground?

Katie: It has. I moved to San Francisco in 1999 on the dream of Katie Burke as a ten-year-old child. I had no idea why I wanted to live in San Francisco but I just knew that I did. It has really shaped me a lot. I mean one thing in response to what you just said that also leads into this question is we don’t have to entirely create the world for our own kids, for the kids in our lives. We can let them shape it for us too.

In talking to kids from neighborhoods across San Francisco for this book. It just was so apparent to me that every child has such a unique experience and I learned about so many places and just as you said with perfect example with the kid who loves orange. It’s like all these different lenses through which we can look at our city. We so often we just know who we know. If we’re with our colleagues, colleagues tend to all look at it through the same lens. Our friends look at it through this other same lens, whatever but talking to all these different kids from so many different experiences did make me see my city differently and just see different parts of the city because I did try to go to them as much as I could to do the interviews.

Diane: I think it’s so cool to have like a new way of seeing almost because of looking through the eyes of kids. I also think what you’ve just touched on is so fascinating. The kids that you interviewed they’re so used to having the adult gaze. They’re being perceived through an adult lens. Rather than kind of like getting down not pejoratively but getting on to the level being present with kids what that does in terms of exploration of an inner world, removing the lens of being an adult and just being open to whatever a kid says. I wonder if that’s happened to you as a result of this experience.

Katie: I mean I’ve always done it and because I’m not a parent. I’m not susceptible to the trappings of all the competition in this world and in this city in particular where there is a reason to have structure and it makes sense to be thinking years ahead of time about where your kid’s going to go to kindergarten and those kinds of things. I certainly understand living in the city as long as I have and knowing as many parents as I have why people need the structure that they need to impose on their kids. What I would say to that is just to be able to leave a little bit of room. I mean it can’t be a totally unstructured, it can’t literally be an urban playground but just find a little bit of balance and open those opportunities for kids to say here’s what I want to do today.

If it’s something like if they want to go to Target. If they want to do whatever it’s like sure. Let them leave the activity because I think we can trust that if we value them and we show them that we honor their choices they are going to land in the place that we’re hoping they’ll land with the structure that we’re also simultaneously providing.

Diane: I think that cultivating individuality then kind of that voice that empowerment it refutes the herd mentality, it refutes so many of the given mentalities in our culture of celebrity culture and ways of being able to look at yourself as a unique entity. I think wow, it’s something you can’t teach in school. That’s something that comes experientially from treating a child a certain way. It’s something we very much need. I also was fascinated by the answers in this book Urban Playground that so little of it had to do with I want to sit with my device, my personal device and be in front of a computer screen. All of the answers related to being with family, being outdoors playing, being interactive. I thought that was so heartening as a kind of thrust of why kids are still interested in very basic connectivity. I was really heartened by that. Maybe you felt the same way?

Katie: I did and I think for the most part if kids said if I asked them you know do you want to be in San Francisco when you grow up or do you want to live elsewhere? I think for the most part they answered that if they wanted to stay here it was because they wanted to continue living where their families lived. In some cases in the same house with their parents forever and ever.

Diane: I thought that was great. I mean again who knew? I mean I think you make, there’s certain presumptions that we make. Kids, maybe we’re coping with a lot these days. I feel like that family embrace. It was obviously very, very meaningful to these kids. I think you had a great cross-section. There was a lot of connectivity even in families that were now had split apart and were woven back together on weekends. I think that that sense of needing to be loved. Loving, needing to be loved, needing to be heard, those are things that I think we lose sight of in all of this idea of screen time, Playstations, as you mentioned competition.

There’s a lot of good reason for all of it but I think that you’ve created a shape-shifting kind of concept of kids that I think really going forward will really be helpful to all of us. How does it inform your day-to-day life as a family counselor I mean in law, practicing in family law? We have just a couple minutes left but I’d love to hear about what people do in their day jobs and you’ve gone off in this fascinating tangent. Does it you know inform your work?

Katie: I think so. I mean I’ve always had a very child-centered practice and for the most part in my practice I’m only talking to one parent or another in a divorce but I am known I think for refusing to take a stance that is anything other than child-centered. The court requires that anyway but I take it very seriously. Today, for example I’m doing the second part of a two-part training in Marin at the courthouse to be on their Minors Council Panel actually representing kids in their parents’ divorces which I had done years and years ago in San Francisco when the San Francisco city and county had a budget for the family law court to appoint minors’ council attorneys. They don’t have that budget anymore but apparently Marin does so I’m really looking forward to getting back into that work because I’ll be interviewing kids in a different way and for a different reason of course.

Diane: Good and in the meantime they have the platform of Urban Playground. We’ve got to go now but it’s been delightful talking with you. I feel as though this is an author we really want to hear more from. She believes in letting children’s voices be heard and hearing their messages. Thanks so much for dropping in with us today with Katie Burke.

Katie: Thank you Diane.

Diane: It’s been a pleasure.

Thank you so much for dropping in. please join Diane Dewey again next Friday at 8 AM Pacific Time and 11 AM Eastern Time on the Voice America Variety Channel. We’ll see you then.