Empowering Our Kids to Thrive

We know that one of the most powerful things we can do as parents is raise kids who know who they are, who treat others with dignity, and who have the courage to live out loud. Today In the Den, Sara is joined by author, educator, and speaker Kevin Cripe, who spent 27 years as an elementary school teacher helping young people—many of whom felt overlooked or underestimated—discover confidence, identity, and a sense of possibility. Through his work in the classroom, his nationally recognized chess program, and his children’s books—including stories like Princess Max, which gently but powerfully explores gender expression and self-acceptance—Kevin invites us to rethink the messages kids receive about who they’re allowed to be. In today’s episode, Sara and Kevin discuss how the environments we create at home, in schools, and in our communities can either silence kids or help them shine, and they explore what it looks like to raise children who not only embrace their own identities, but make space for others to do the same.

Guest Speaker: Kevin Cripe

Kevin Cripe is a motivational speaker, author, and educator with over 27 years of experience inspiring students, teachers, and communities. Today, Kevin shares his passion for empowerment and empathy through keynote presentations for schools, parent organizations, churches, and community groups. 

Links from the Show:

• Kevin’s website
• Article about Princess Max
• Find Princess Max here 
• Join Mama Dragons today

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org. 

Transcript

SARA: Hi everyone. Welcome to In the Den with Mama Dragons, a podcast and community to support, educate, and empower parents on the journey of raising happy and healthy LGBTQ+ humans. I’m your host, Sara LaWall. I’m a Mama Dragon myself and an advocate for our queer community. And I’m so glad to be part of this wild and wonderful parenting journey with all of you. Thanks for joining us. We’re so glad you’re here.

What does it take for a child to feel safe enough to fully be themselves, to not shrink, or edit who they are, or wonder if they’ll still be loved if they tell the truth about who they are? In this current political climate with all of the heightened fear and division and policies targeting LGBTQ+ people and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, raising our kids to be good humans, to believe in themselves can sometimes feel impossible. Because for so many of our LGBTQ+ kids as we know, finding a sense of safety and belonging isn’t always a given. It’s something that has to be intentionally created by the adults in their lives. We know that one of the most powerful things we can do, as parents and grandparents and family members, anyone who is around kids, is to help raise kids who know who they are, who treat others with dignity, and who have the courage to live out loud. Today, we’re joined by author, educator, and speaker Kevin Cripe, who spent 27 years as an elementary school teacher helping young people, many of whom felt overlooked or underestimated. And Kevin helped them discover confidence, identity, and a sense of possibility. Through his work in the classroom, his nationally recognized chess program, and his beautiful children’s books—including stories like one of my favorites, Princess Max, which gently but powerfully explores gender expression and self-acceptance—Kevin invites all of us to rethink the messages kids receive about who they’re allowed to be. Kevin, welcome to In the Den. We’re so happy to have you with us.

KEVIN: Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here and I look forward to sharing, hopefully, some positives and some information to help people who are listening to this.

SARA: Me too. You spent nearly three decades as an elementary school teacher, an extraordinary accomplishment, especially in the last several years as things have gotten more difficult for public school teachers, and working with kids at such formative ages. What first drew you to that work, and what kept you there for so long?

KEVIN: Well, I sort of was genetically forced into it. My dad was a teacher. My mom was a teacher. My brother was a teacher. My sister is a teacher. My ex-wife was a teacher. My grandmother was a teacher.

SARA: Oh, my.

KEVIN: So, it’s funny, both my sister and I, we used to get dragged – a week before school started we would get dragged into my mom’s classroom and we’d have to prepare her classroom. Six hours a day of sharpening pencils and getting everything ready. And we looked at each other and we just said, “We will never do this. We will never become teachers. This is just ridiculous. All of our friends are out there playing right now and we’re stuck in this classroom getting our mom’s classroom ready.” And then, eventually, after college – which I was not an education major – I tried some things. And I went, “Oh well, I’ll try teaching.” I substituted. I got my teaching credential. And I was told later, I interviewed for a job in South Modesto at a school. And there were four people and they needed two teachers. And so four interviewed. And the top two didn’t want the job because it was in a high-crime area. So I ended up with the job just by default. So I don’t want to say I did some great thing that launched me into forming young minds. I got it by default. The area I was in was surrounded by all the major Mexican gangs. And so it was a unique thing for me because I had grown up white, middle class. I hadn’t met a Hispanic person, really, until I was 16 years old. You can really be isolated without knowing it. And so when I looked out my first day of teaching, I ended up with 42 students. I think there were 40 Hispanic students. And we didn’t have enough desks. And I go back to the students–because I see and I hear from them back and forth now that they’re adults–they’re in their 40’s now; that’s depressing–and I go, “I was scared because I’d never been around that many Hispanic students in my life.” And I learned that I completely missed all that was going on and I learned to love that area and those kids. So that’s sort of how I got into teaching just by default and then I really grew to like being in that area and helping students.

SARA: And what kept you there for 27 years?

KEVIN: The first year – First-year teachers are always going to hear from teachers in the staff room, “Who’s the smart ones in your class?” And I would go, “Well this one’s smart.” And they’d go, “No. That one’s dumb because they’ve been retained.” And the thing about English language learners in California 35 years ago, is if you spoke Spanish and the tests were in English, then you were going to be retained. So I had a bunch of students who were retained who most of the other teachers didn’t think were very smart. And so I started a chess club the second year because I played chess – my brother’s a pretty good player – and we went to tournaments. We went to Nationals. And I’ll never forget the first time we were going to Nationals, we had a staff meeting to talk about should we fund these students going to North Carolina, students who had never been on airplanes? And a Hispanic teacher, a female teacher, came to me after the meeting and said, “I don’t think you should take these students to Nationals. They will only embarrass themselves.”

SARA: Wow.

KEVIN: And so we went there and – over the years, I think there was 20+ years, 200 tournaments, 14 National Chess Championships – and a lot of those students were able to use chess as a gateway to become first-generation college graduates. So the teaching part of teaching got to be heavily bureaucratic and while I have a very strong political view about a lot of things, I could say both sides were equally doing some crazy stuff that just made the classroom experience not a fun experience. But the after-school part, where I’m teaching – one of my last years I had 72 chess students in a room of 24 desks for 2nd graders and I had to figure out what do you do with 72 students who want to learn chess – that was always fun and a joy for me. But at some point, the teaching part of things got to be, “Ay, I don’t like this anymore.” And so I retired and I went to Central America. I still do chess. I teach chess online tonight and have students around. So that’s always fun for me. I have a published chess book, too. And so that kept me in it. But the stuff public school teachers go through, the bureaucracy, it’s different in different states but you get so many people coming into your classroom and telling you, “Do it this way. You’re not on script. This is what it said. Blah, Blah.” And you’re just like, I don’t need that. Where can I live cheap when I retire and Panama was the cheapest place.

SARA: I know that probably every single one of us has a memory or a story about a beloved teacher who we felt like really got us, and probably had little to do with the class that they taught or the content that they were delivering, or maybe it was content that was offered in a really exciting way. And so I’m just really grateful to hear stories like that to remind me of all the teachers in my life who I loved so dearly because they were invested in me. And when you think about all of those years in the classroom and in the after-school chess club work that you were doing – it’s very much an extension inter-related there – I’m curious, what did you learn about kids, especially the ones who felt overlooked like you’re describing, by other teachers in the whole system?

KEVIN: I learned in the simplest essence is that there’s a lot more smart ones out there than you give them credit for. Okay. Especially in high-poverty areas, there’s a bunch of bright kids. And poverty itself strikes me as a sort of a prison, that if kids grow up and they don’t get outside of those walls, they stay in them because there’s generational incarceration. They have grandparents or sometimes parents who have been in jail. And as smart as they are, and as good as they are, and as much as they aspire to do good things, that traps them. It’s like a trap. And they don’t get out of it. And you see all of that intelligence, all that potential, end up in jail. And that’s a sad thing. And so the joy I had was to see students – I remember going to a chess tournament with a group of students going to Fresno, California, and I asked one of my students, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” And he looked at me. And from the back of the car, and he goes, “I’m going to be a pimp.” Alright, interesting profession there. So what has he become? He’s become a sheriff. And so to see him – to see those kids who were going to go in one direction and turn it around and do something else is just an enormously satisfying thing. And it doesn’t happen with all of them so there’s sadness. You can see some of them who have just gone that direction. But you can see that some of them have really gone and done some extraordinary things. And I’m in contact with enough of them, now, that it’s kind of fun to watch. And so you get a kick out of that. And the other thing is, I’d run into people because my entire family is teachers. I remember when I switched schools one year and I showed up and this lady there, Sherry, says, “Are you Marjorie Cripe’s son?” because she saw my name. I go, “Yeah, I am Marjorie Cripe’s son.” She goes, “She was my teacher in first grade and she was the best teacher I ever had.” And if you’ve read Princess Max, which I think you have, there’s a part in there where Miss Margie – my mom’s name is Margie because the teachers patterned after Miss Margie – where Miss Margie takes all of her students to her house at the end of the year. Well, my mom did that every year that she was teaching. She did two things that I thought were extraordinary as I look back. One, she was the best teacher I ever saw. She would go from, literally, desk to desk every morning and pray for each child. And that was what she did. And she loved all – she loved every student. And then she would take all the students at the end of the year to her house. And so Sherry was telling me, “I remember going to her house.” We remembered all the work we had to do to clean our house to get it ready for all the students. But that was just who she was. She loved all of her students, all of them. And she would take them, she would take care of them. If she saw a need, she would help out. And so that, in my brain – my brother and sister and I, particularly my brother because we taught in the same school district – We’d always hear, “Oh, you’re Marjorie Cripe’s son. Oh, she was my favorite teacher.” And then all of those stories about what Marjorie Cripe did, and they’re all true. And so it’s an interesting thing. Teaching is a kind of, you make of it what you want.

SARA: Well, it sounds like you had a beautiful role model for you as you were moving into teaching . . .

KEVIN: Yes.

SARA: . . . all of you and your siblings. And so with the legacy of your mom, and your long-time experience, what does it take to create an environment where kids feel safe enough to be fully themselves?

KEVIN: I think education, if I have a fault with public education, it is so test-oriented and success-on-test oriented, that what you over-value are kids who are good at taking tests. That is what is perceived intelligence. “Test-taking equals intelligence.” And so if you create a classroom or if you create a school around the idea that we have to succeed on tests, you get about 15 to 20% of the students who are going to be engaged because, “Oh, yeah. I can do that. I’m a good test taker.” And the rest, not so much. So I don’t know that it’s an LGBTQ+ thing, it’s that a lot of the other students feel like, “I have nothing to contribute because I can’t be at that level.” And so in my classroom when we were working towards goals as a class, the one thing that I felt strongly about is that I will reward success, effort, and improvement equally. So if you show up and you’re just trying that day – because who knows what’s gone on in your house the night before – I’m going to praise you the same I would praise someone who got 100%. We have to acknowledge that there are kids who do really well, and I think it’s important that they hear that praise. But that kid that went from 1 to 2, “You did better. You improved yourself. And just keep doing that.” And the moment that you are telling a group of students, “If you try hard and if you improve a little and you succeed, you’re all my favorites. I’m going to treat you all the same.” And that is an acceptance of all students no matter where they come from, what they are. And that, mentally, does something so you engage 95% of your class automatically. And that’s just a big thing.

SARA: Yes. I love that. And that’s just a really important reminder, I think, for all of us who are around kids, of how noticing and praising who they are and how they are showing up goes such a long way.

KEVIN: Right, because you don’t know – sometimes if you’ve taught long enough, you kind of know – but you don’t know what happened in their house the night before. So sometimes if they just made it to school, that is an accomplishment. And my job, I always felt, if I see a kid smiling, they’re learning.

SARA: Wow.

KEVIN: So where I taught, there was a very high turnover, mobility. Like one year I had eight students who started with me and ended with me, 55 came through the class. That was enormous turnover. So I’m getting new students. And one of the new things when a new student came in, and they’d typically come in with a parent or whatever, I’d just look at them and go, “I’ve got a very important question, most important question.” And I’d look at them and go, “Do you beat up bald teachers?” because I happen to be bald. You can’t see that right now. And they’d laugh and everybody in class would laugh. They knew it was coming because obviously we had a bunch of new students. And they would go, “No.” I’d go, “Okay. You’re my favorite. Come on in. You’re going to do a great job.” And so then, if they didn’t beat up bald teachers – and only one student went, “Well, I might have.” And I was like, “Okay. But not today.” -- So you have to have a sense of humor that they understand. They have to understand that you’re in control, that it’s your ship, right, if the ship sinks, it’s your fault, right? But you have to engage them in a way that allows them to not think about all the stuff that’s going on in their life and make learning a positive experience. And if you can do that, really good things happen.

SARA: That’s beautiful. I love that story. At what point did you start writing children’s books?

KEVIN: I was in Boquete, Panama. And I’d been teaching chess. And COVID hit. And in Panama, I was in Boquete, Panama. And we all stayed indoors – and by the way, nobody complained – I had a backyard that extended into a rainforest, basically. And I could go walking and do anything I wanted in the backyard and order food and they’d bring it to me. But I had time. And I’m watching, at that point I was still watching news from the US around election times and trying to think about, “OK, How would I explain Trump to children in a children’s book?” which is a complex thing. So I ended up writing – early on, I wrote The Little Boy Who Cried Hoax – It’s originally called The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf but I changed the title – The Little Boy who Cried Hoax, and I got it illustrated and I really liked it. But then later, a couple of years later, as I’m sitting there in Boquete, Panama, two ideas came to me. And one was Princess Max and one was The Good War. And I more or less wrote them within a week of each other. And I had had two things that influenced my writing of Princess Max. One, my own daughter – I have three adopted children from Guatemala – I was mostly a single parent most of my life. So my daughter, when she was 13, came out as Bi. And so all of the things that went on and going on with that, and what the kind of person she was. And then I had a boy in the chess club in Boquete, Panama – I had like nine Panamanian students – and Alex was 8 or 9 years old, the lone American student, he walked in one day and he’s wearing a floor-length, blue dress. And he just looked and he went, “This is my favorite Cinderella Dress.” And I, to that point in time had never seen a boy in a dress before. And so I just, I looked and like, “That’s lovely. Alright, come on in, sit down, let’s get going.” And all the students who were there – I mean these were all Panamanian students, pretty sure they’d never seen a boy in a dress before – but because I reacted, I just said, “You’re welcome. Come on in. That’s fine. That’s lovely.” We didn’t celebrate it necessarily. We didn’t call the news stations and panic or anything. I just said, “You are who you are. Come on in and be part of what I’m doing.” But then he could be whatever he wanted to be. And some days he did and some days he didn’t wear dresses and it didn’t matter to me. If he showed up to learn, I was going to teach him. And they all saw, “We can be whoever we want to be,” with respect and there were some rules and stuff, of course, that go along with teaching children. But they understood, “He’s going to care about everybody that comes into this room.” And so the idea of some things that my daughter had done and then seeing Alex I went, “Okay. I can take this. I have an idea for a book.” And I just kind of put it together.

SARA: That’s beautiful. I love that story because it also makes me think about so often in our work with queer kids, a number of them, especially teenagers, they just want to be kids. They just want to be seen as just like anybody else, and don’t want to be called out for what is perceived to be different about them. And certainly a lot of our trans youth, I hear this all the time, don’t want to be seen as trans and only trans. They just want to be seen as who they are.

KEVIN: Right. And to me, my experience of going into a school where almost all the students were Hispanic and having not been around Hispanic students, I had kind of a pre-conceived notion and fear like, “Oh. I’ve got to watch this on TV. I’m going to die.” It’s just not that way. And if you’re around kids enough and care about kids, you just realize there’s a whole bunch of stuff they can change. They can do this or that. Whatever they are in kindergarten, probably not how they’re going to turn out in twelfth grade. There’s a lot of changes, a lot of things they go through. And all you want to do is be there and care about them. Obviously, as a parent you have to have structure and some rules for children because they need that. But in terms of who they are and who they want to be, you’re given stewardship and you’re kind of guiding them. And you have to listen to what’s out there. And you just can’t panic all the time. I learned a lot from raising my daughter, and my two sons.

SARA: Yeah. You know, Princess Max, It’s a joyful story.

KEVIN: Right.

SARA: And it’s really affirming. And it doesn’t really center shame or conflict the way that some stories do. In fact, it centers Max’s skill, basketball, over the fact that Max wears dresses.

KEVIN: Right.

SARA: Which I really love and I assume that was a deliberate choice. As you were writing it, what were you hoping kids would feel when they read it?

KEVIN: There is, I’ve got to tell you, a central story that is in my mind and is what I tell to almost everyone about my daughter. When she was 12, 13 years old, she was going to junior high school. And she was an angry girl, okay. She was just angry. She wore a black sweatshirt and black sweatpants and just trudged off to school every day, and hated it. And she hung out with the – as near as I could tell – the gay and bisexual children of hard-core gangsters. And so these were kids who had been in jail, and were going to jail. That was her group. And she was not a good student. She was not liked by her teachers. She talked too much and just generally didn’t do her homework. She was just angry about the divorce, angry adolescent girl, right? So one day, as she’s walking out of class to go home because it’s the last class. There’s a group of popular students and they’re picking on this boy, a small gay boy, making him cry. And my daughter comes upon this situation and she could do anything. She could just walk around and go home. She could join the group. Literally, she had all options, and they kind of knew who she was because she was wearing all black and she has a reputation. And so what she does is she places herself between the boy and the crowd. And she looks at the crowd and she points her finger at them and says, “Why don’t you guys just shut the F up?” Now, I wasn’t there. I was in my classroom, cleaning up after school. So, how do you know that I know this? Well, there was a vice principal at the school coming around the corner, saw everything, called me in my classroom and said, “I’m suspending your daughter for three days. You need to come pick her up.” And so I came down. I had no idea what had happened. I just felt mildly sarcastic like “I’m never going to be able to put the bumper sticker ‘My child was a student of the month at Turlock Junior High School’ on my car now.” But that’s parenting sometimes. So I got in there and he told the story that I just told. And so I looked at my daughter and I said, “Is that what you said and is that what you did?” She goes, “Yeah. That’s exactly what I said, exactly what I did.” So then I looked at the vice principal and I said, “I have a problem with the suspension. I think it’s way too long. I don’t think it’s appropriate, but I’m not even going to argue that. I only have one question, what’s happening to the bullies?”

SARA: Yeah.

KEVIN: And I didn’t realize he went to my parent’s church and knew my parents really well at that moment in time. But he said, “Nothing’s going to happen to the bullies. I’m suspending your daughter for three days.”

SARA: Wow.

KEVIN: And I was like, so there’s times when you need to watch what you say. And I felt like “I need to be careful here because I really don’t want the police to come and arrest me. I've seen that happen at schools.” So I just sat there for a second and thought about it and I went, “You know, there’s a lot of problems at this school. Most of the problems aren’t the fault of a 13-year-old brown girl who wears all black to school and occasionally says the ‘F’ word. I think you’re probably most of the problem because you don’t even know when a child has done an amazing thing.” And I looked at Alejandra and I said, “Hija, Vamos, Let’s go.” And I said,” Have a blessed day.” And we walked out. So on the way to the car I looked at her and I said, “Okay. Alejandra, a couple of things. Not that important, but a little important, don’t use the ‘F’ word at school. It’s never going to help you. We could just leave the language at the gate. You hear it all the time. I have said a few bad words in my life. I don’t say them often. But we can just leave that language at the gate.” But I go, “Secondly, and eternally more important, is you did the right thing. Keep doing the right thing. And when you see someone who’s being put upon, when you see that person like that and you’re on their side,” I said, “I’ve taught 20 years. I cannot think of a time where I have had a student from my class or seen a student do exactly what you did. And it is 100% the right thing. And I’m so proud of you. And I love you so much. There is zero discipline coming from me. In fact, we’re going to celebrate it. And you’re going to have to go to grandma and grandpa’s for three days.” And I called my parents and I told them what happened and I said, “She’s not being punished, not by me. And I don’t want her punished by anyone.” But in my house, because I was a single dad, how we celebrated is you got to pick where we went to dinner. So for three nights in a row, we went to Olive Garden because that’s where she wanted to go, to Olive Garden. So, when she got back to school and her friends said, “What happened? We heard you were suspended for three days.” She goes, “Well. I didn’t really get in trouble. I got to go to Olive Garden for three nights in a row.” So that strength of character, of Max, stems from watching her be strong and help and say, “I’m going to be me. You’re going to have to react off of me. I’m not going to have you define me. I’m going to define my and then you have to work around it.” Now, I would also tell you that I deliberately made Max a little over-the-top that way. You can have a discussion like, “Should’ve he said it this way? Could he have done it this way?” But I wanted him to be a strong person like my daughter. I wanted him to be happy like Alex. Alex is just a happy kid, just to be that force that’s good. And so that story about my daughter, which is true, and then meeting all her friends – some of whom did end up in jail, or many of whom – I wanted that character in that story to be a reflection of strength because so often I think we perceive children in the LGBTQ+ community as weak and whatever bad words we would use for it. When my experience was, most of them are just kids, some good athletes, some not, some really good students, some weren’t good students. They were just like everybody else. And that’s what I wanted Max. “I’m just going to be me. And you react around me.” Anyway, so that’s a long answer to a question.

SARA: Wow. It’s a beautiful story, though. Thank you. It brought tears to my eyes. I think that was some years ago, I imagine.

KEVIN: Yes.

SARA: And we need more kids like your daughter to be good upstanders.

KEVIN: I grew up going to church and always was told, “Be a good neighbor. Be a good neighbor.” And that means standing up for people who don’t have that opportunity, who are being picked on, who are being victimized. And that doesn’t mean that that’s an easy thing to do. It sounds, always, heroic and noble. But sometimes it comes with a cost.

SARA: Yeah.

KEVIN: And so teaching a child that the right thing to do is more important than the expedient thing to do. It’s easy to walk away. It’s easy to go home and not care. To involve yourself to the point that it’s costing you, that makes you a better person. I think speaking in terms of Christianity, it makes you a better Christian. If you are someone who’s on the side of the persecutor, you’re not being a very good Christian, but that heads off into another topic of conversation. But I told her, “I want you to always be that person.” I remember when we’d go to Olive Garden, sometimes they’d have this “Buy One Get One for $5”, whatever. I don’t know if you ever, and you could get an extra. And so I remember going out to the car with my daughter and an unhoused person came up and asked me, “Do you have food? Can I have food?” And my reaction – and this is so pitiful – I immediately clutched this food that I’m probably going to put it in my refrigerator and not even eat it. And I immediately go, “Alejandra.” And by the time the last a comes out of my mouth, she’s over there and she’s giving her extra food – which I paid for, and that’s pitiful sounding and it should be – and she’s just handing it to the person and saying, “Here. You take this.” So that heart to help, that heart to serve, to help the people who can never pay you back, to me, that’s what I want to raise in children first. And so she has that. It’s not perfect, does some imperfect things, but she’s just always had that and I want her to go through life carrying that with her as kind of her shield in what she does. I just think that’s so important for kids to see that and for schools to create that environment where we have each other’s back.

SARA: Yeah. Absolutely.

KEVIN: Instead of we’re turning on each other. “Oh that person’s different. We better make fun or poke fun.” It's just, it’s the wrong environment in so many ways.

SARA: I’m curious about the reactions that you’ve received to Princess Max. And first, I want to start with, have you heard from kids or parents who saw themselves in Max?

KEVIN: Okay, so there’s things that in life I’m probably good at, not many. So the writing of the book, I think it turned out pretty well. I think it turned out to be a pretty good book. My ability to get the book out there in front of people and market it and do all that kind of stuff is something I am not good at. I’m on podcasts now and get help getting on podcasts. And one of the things they said was, “How’s your social media going?” And so I think in January, I had one follower on Instagram and it may have been myself. I’m growing these things. The people – so I go to Travis Park United Methodist Church in San Antonio. Shout out to Travis Park. It’s a great church. I’ve given books out to people. I’ve done a reading there. And people have really liked it and enjoyed the book and we’re going to do more with the book. So it is, in Texas and I think this would be true where you are from too, like I talked about, “Can I take this and be at a book fair?” Well, the State of Texas subsidizes book fairs which means they get to control some of the books that are in the book fairs. So you get this kind of bureaucratic banning of books. So I chose Texas because there’s no State income tax and it’s cheap homes in San Antonio. But it comes with this kind of bureaucratic banning of my book. So my message is getting out through the ability to talk to people like you on podcasts and some social media things, which I don’t really understand because I’m old and I’m a technological immigrant. But all the reaction I’ve had so far from people who have heard me read it, from people from the church, from people I know, friends of mine, has been positive. Now, on Amazon where anyone can read it, you get the 0 star review that’s, “I don’t like boys in dresses.”

SARA: Right.

KEVIN: So there is a bunch of people go, “We love this. This is what we should strive for. This is acceptance. Good story.” And then there’s 0 star, “I don’t like this.” And so I can’t do anything about that. I don’t even try. I don’t worry about it. So I’m hoping that more people can see the book, read the book, and I can go do readings and talk about it, do public speaking, tell stories. But right now, we’re kind of in the beginning stages of doing that. That’s why I came back from Costa Rica to live in the United States to start to do this. So it’s a learning experience for me.

SARA: Beautiful. Well, I want to let our listeners know, like we do for all our guests, we’ll make sure to put a link to the book – which we’ll have for sale in our Mama Dragons Book Shop so folks can go check it out. And, you know, I’m scrolling through the Amazon Reviews and here’s one from a high school teacher who also runs a library club once a week for younger kids and says this book is so powerful and so great for them. So certainly all the 5 star reviews are getting it.

KEVIN: And I don’t think anything I do is perfect or that it couldn’t be better. But I think this one really hits home with people in a way. And it’s an easy read to read to children. It’s something you can sit down with at almost any age and there’s questions at the end. There’s some comprehension questions. And that’s true with The Good War which deals more with racism. That they are easy to read with children. And I wanted a book about this that could do that. And I have a friend of mine named Elizabeth, who works with LGBTQ+ high school students in Salt Lake City, which is not an easy place to do that job. And I said, one of the first people I contacted, I said, “Can you read through this because it is not a community that I am in all day, every day. And if I have worded something in a way that’s awkward or wrong or offensive, please let me know because I will change it.” And she read it and I’ve had a few other people read it and go, “No, there is nothing in there. That’s just a good story.” And so I felt good about what I’d written and that it was coming across and the comments people make about Max, which he’s just so confident. He is who he is. And maybe too confident. Maybe too cocky at some times. But that’s okay. Kids are kids. And so I wanted him to be strong in who he was and unafraid. And that resonates. But to be in a situation where he could impact and change people’s perceptions of him.

SARA: We’re in this moment in our history, in our political landscape, where there are a lot of increased messages and a lot of increased legislation and executive orders that are coming out about gender and what’s okay and not okay. I live in a state and there are a few of us, and I’m sure Texas is right on it as well, where there are bills that are forcing educators to out their trans students to their parents for perceived incongruity with their “biological sex”, which is just astonishing to me that we’re in this moment in time. And it feels really scary. And I’m curious, as an educator, and then also as an author who wrote this story, what are your thoughts about that? And what role do you see stories like Princess Max playing in helping to reshape or push back on that narrative?

KEVIN: I have to go back a little bit because I was in Costa Rica and Panama for seven and a half years. And one of the things most of the expats do, not all, is we stay away from news from the US. In fact, a lot of expats, both conservative and liberal, will watch the BBC to watch news from the US. So there were some, I think, not changes, but there was an increase in some things I was completely unaware of. Like there is this sort of whole thing about pronouns, which I largely was unaware of. My general thought was, I was getting something done and this lady sent me an email and it said, “She/Her” and her name. And I was like, “Wow. Okay. Doesn’t bother me at all.” And then I kind of read about it and I go, “Okay. There are nonbinary people. There are some who are not XX or XY and so we’re attempting to allow them to have an identity – that’s how I would perceive it – in a way that makes them feel comfortable. I don’t see how anyone could have a problem with this.” And that’s how I lived for the most part until you start coming back to the US and then you realize somehow that is just a horrific thing with some people. Now, what it is, is it’s people making a lot out of something to scare people, so they can make money, so The Right can gain power and have access to even – in my estimation – increasing tax cuts for the rich. So if you have these scare tactics, and it’s a great scare tactic unless you just think about it. Well, there’s people who aren’t binary and we can progress and we can say, “We need to figure out how we incorporate them best and easiest into society and allow them to have their identity of who they are.” I have zero problem with that. I may not be saying it very well. But I was largely unaware of that. I got to San Antonio in September, I think around September sometime I was flying back. I was not aware of some things just because I was out of the country, and I didn’t want to get into that drama. Because when you come back to the states, almost every expat will tell you, it feels like an angry place. There’s an anger here that’s been made up and ginned up by people on The Right who want you to be afraid of people who are different than you. And that “fear of the other” is so wrong. And so my hope for Princess Max, if everyone could read the book, I wouldn’t expect everyone to like it. That’s fine with me. If someone doesn’t like a book they don’t have to read it. But the message is, there’s a bunch of people out there and we make progress, we move forward in society, progress is a positive thing. And part of what we want to do as a society is move forward towards accepting people and realizing that the science says people are just different. It’s not like we used to think. So with that change, we need to change how we think about things. And that change, when you have someone else who’s trying to manipulate fear – and that’s all it is, is just a manipulation of fear – it’s hard to do. And so I think it’s important, I don’t know, my guess is if this book gets a greater range of readers, greater viewership, there will be people who really hate it and try to ban it. Okay, which to me is not the worst thing in the world, books ban. But I think because it’s a really easy book for children and parents to read, a parent can sit down and read it and have fun, I don’t think all books are like that. But this one is really designed for parents to read to children. And so if you’re looking for something and you as the parent, “How am I supposed to approach talking to my child?” It’s a really easy book to sit down and read to your kids. And so I’m hoping that that access would be there for parents to go as a resource, “Hey we have this book to read.” And if they have a child that’s contemplating what they are or who they are, here’s a book we can read. And that’s what I’d like to see, ultimately, knowing that there could be struggles with it.

SARA: It’s a great book that can help answer questions so young children who might be seeing a peer wearing something different than they expect them to, or seeing adults out in the world who look different than this young child in their world has ever experienced before, it’s a great teaching book to be able to say, “Let’s read a story about this and talk about this,” in a really positive way, right? Where Max gets to be a positive example . . .

KEVIN: Right.

SARA: . . . of someone who’s like, “I’m just me. I’m wearing what I like. I’m doing the things that I like. And I’m still just me.”

KEVIN: And Mandy is a really good character as his friend, as someone – the girl Mandy – and you do get to see change. You do get to see that because of who he is, people around him who are really negative, do change. And I wanted to see that happen, kind of put some of those things deliberately in there. 

A quick story about James Talarico if I can tell it? He came and talked at our church. He came to the church and then talked for about five minutes and took questions. And so he had a trans person stand up and ask a question, “I would love to go to your rally today, but there’s going to be police there and they’re going to be taking pictures. And they have in Texas, can identify trans people as terrorists. What should I do?” And he was very, very gentle and a great answer he says, “You stay home. I want you to be safe.” And it was just such a real moment where, like, why is this happening in America? Why can’t someone just be who they are, go to a rally, for whoever? And you have police there. You have police taking pictures. You have police trying to identify people. And it’s so cataclysmically wrong at every level. And yet, that person has to live in fear for just being who they are. And so you get a guy like that who just says, “No. You need to be safe.” And to think about what that means when you’re telling a person you need to be safe just to be who you are. It’s a scary time. It is a scary time for people in states, and everywhere though really, because there’s just so much that the government is doing to identify people in different ways, not just ICE and Immigration.

SARA: Thanks for telling that story. It is a scary time. Why do you think adults are so afraid, or what do you think they’re afraid of when they push back against gender expansive stories and difference and all that we’re seeing right now?

KEVIN: I think, because I grew up around – and I just want to say this – a wonderful, loving, conservative evangelical church. The people were all nice to me. I have great family. My mom and dad are both teachers. My dad, who is a licensed minister, not active preacher, spoke at the Gospel Mission sometimes. But my dad always told me one thing that most people in the evangelical community don’t hear, which is, “Just because someone says it from a pulpit, doesn’t make it true.”

SARA: Wow. No, most people don’t hear that.

KEVIN: And so all, my brother and sister and I, we grew up, as we listened to sermons going, “Okay. What do we think? How do we evaluate this? What’s going on? How does this match to what we think?” And so most people just kind of open up and dump it in. What I noticed, having gone to fairly conservative churches in my life, is that there is not a lot of critical thinking going on. It is sort of, here’s what you think and here’s why you think it. And when that environment is closed, there’s no room for people to kind of think outside the box. When I got to San Antonio, I did some church shopping because I go to church on Sunday. And the first place I went to and the guy was talking on John 3:16, which is a good verse to talk about. There’s a lady sitting next to me, she says, “This is my first time in church. I haven’t been to church in a while. I need to get back to church.” So in the middle of the sermon he just, for no reason, he just went off on Muslims in a really caustic, and rude and negative way about how “Muslims are blah, blah, blah.” And the lady who’s first time in church, just got up and left. I’m sitting here going, “This has zero to do with John 3:16, but are any of these people aware or are they just opening up and taking that in.” So I end up going to Travis Park United Methodist Church which I knew was going to have a high population of LGBTQ+ people. I said, “Okay. I’m going to go try it.” And they had a Sunday school class, a friend of mine now, taught on Universalism. And I made the assumption that the United Methodist Church, because they had this guy giving a class on universalism, was a universalist church. Because, obviously, it wouldn’t have someone who wasn’t, come and talk about something that they didn’t. It turns out, the United Methodist church is heavily Wesleyan, which you probably know about. And they’re not universalists. But they are not afraid to have someone come in and talk about, “Well, here’s how some other people view things.” And the minute you do that, the minute to get people to go, “Well, here’s how some other people think, and it’s not wrong. It’s just how different people think.” All of that fear goes away. But when you keep people in these sort of terrariums of theology, there’s nothing getting in from the outside. They’re being told, “This is what you have to think because anything else is dangerous.” You’ve got these people who don’t know how to get out of that. And there’s no real discussion to be had there either. And what Trump has done is he’s taken that, this natural sort of thing which is not good, people stuck in this, and made everybody hyper afraid. And it’s an easy thing to do. When you can’t see the other and another person’s viewpoint and value it, you can be made afraid of that person. And then what you can do, once those people are afraid, is you can take all their money. And that’s what’s happening. And I feel kind of bad. I have to have empathy for the people that said, “But I didn’t vote for this. He took my SNAP benefits. He’s taking all my money.” Well, he made you afraid. So it’s a simple kind of snake oil salesman thing, scare people and get them to buy some garbage and then you take all their money. And now they’re realizing, “Well, I don’t have anything.” So I feel bad, but it goes back to, I think, the church leaders because they know exactly what they’re doing. Your basic person going to church like the people a thousand years ago showing up at a mass. They didn’t know much about the bible. They didn’t know much, they just kind of do whatever they’re told. If they’re told to be good to their neighbor, they’re going to be good to their neighbor. If they show up at a church these days and told to dislike people because they’re doing this or that, that’s probably what they’re going to do. And I look at those leaders – I was talking with my brother about this last night on the phone. And I said, “Those people surrounding Trump with their hands on him, praying publicly, I just find they are just dragging everyone down in a negative. That is so toxic, that environment that they’re creating because they know exactly what he’s doing and they’re supporting it.”

SARA: Right.

KEVIN: And so part of it is spineless Republicans in the Senate and House and a Supreme Court which seems to allow him to do most things he wants to do. But at the core of it, is a group of spiritual leaders who just want power and want to have big churches, mega churches, and are willing to make people afraid. That’s a long answer, but that’s kind of how I think about things.

SARA: No, I think that’s accurate.

KEVIN: Thank you. I don’t want to make you mad.

SARA: It doesn’t make me mad.

KEVIN: Right.

SARA: It opens up opportunity for conversation for us to really think. Here in our Mama Dragons community we have people who have left their faith for a lot of those reasons and for a lack of feeling supported as they are trying to support their queer kids. And we have Mama Dragons in our community who are trying to stay in it and trying to work from the inside. And so it runs the gambit. And in our community, many of our listeners are parents, grandparents, caregivers, have family members of queer kids who want to show up for their kids. Some of us might worry that we will get it wrong.

KEVIN: Right.

SARA: What are some small, everyday ways that parents, teachers, folks who are in space with young people can communicate to them, “You are safe. You are loved. You can be exactly who you are?”

KEVIN: I think you have to recognize the level of toxicity that is out there on social media and everywhere. And part of it is just keeping your children away from some things as they’re young. I mean, obviously, as they become adults, they become responsible for their thoughts and their views. But there’s so much crud out there that’s hitting children. But parents are still the most vital cog. And again, I go back to the class because we were talking about something and a parent said, “My mom wants to tell my son that he’s going to Hell.” And I’ve always said, “It is very important for parents, your children are the single most important thing for you, more important than your friends, more important than your family, cousins, aunts, uncles. When you get to that relationship as your mom or dad and that’s your child, that’s a complex thing. But even then, you may have to make a boundary because your child’s psychology and their safety and their ability to understand comes first.” And the interesting thing is, as conservative as my parents were, they 100% supported my daughter when she came out. When she was over at their house, she was loved always. When her friends came over to their house, they were all loved by my mom. And my dad passed away a few years before my mom did. And I don’t realize how much of a blessing that was because what I’ve learned is that most people don’t have that happen. And it is the role of grandparents to support, not supersede, your child’s parenting. If you can’t support it, then just be quiet because they’re the ones who are given that task of raising. And so my parents, when my daughter went over there for three days on her suspension, they were taking her to McDonalds and saying, “You did a great thing, because that’s what our son wanted.” And so your first role as a parent is to know where can you pare away, how much toxicity can you get. And if it’s coming from people you know, you have to have the spine to say, “No. I won’t allow that in my child’s sphere of influence. I’m going to put them in places and around people who care about them and love them.” And you have to do that as an adult and it’s just absolutely important. It’s like, I am for protesting. I am for standing up for people’s rights. I’m for doing that. But I also want to be cautious about how, particularly small children, if there’s just a perpetual anger. Children are not designed to be in perpetually angry environments. It’s not healthy for them. You should stand up for people. You should have fun doing that. But if what all that does is makes you a toxic person, has you just watching TV all the time, “Oh that’s crazy. I don’t like that.” Anger is anger. Left or right, it’s not a healthy thing for children to see people who are angry all the time. So you need, as a parent, to have a sense of a purpose and joy that emanates out of you so that your kids can go, “Here’s how my mom – or dad or however their families are constructed – deal with the struggles in the world.” And I think the first thing as a parent is know what’s around your children, know what you’re bringing around your children because you’re the adult and if you go to a get-together and Uncle Bob is out there just, “I hate this. And these people and bleep, bleep, bleep” And all the bad words, it’s your children or Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob needs to go. That’s how it works. And you can talk to them, you can go out and talk to Uncle Bob as an adult and say, “I’m not going to have my child around this. If you can’t change, I love you, you’re an important part of my life.” And growing up I had a bunch of uncles and aunts I care about deeply, but if I had to say, “No. You can’t be around my child,” I would do that in a heartbeat. And that is something you do as a parent. Knowing what’s going on at school because sometimes you have to have a really good communication with your child to know, is there something that’s going on in school that’s not right? Are they being hurt in some way? It’s that daily conversation with them, “Hey, what happened? What’s going on? How’s your teachers?” Teachers are not perfect. They get it wrong. Administrators get it wrong. But it doesn’t mean you have to yell and scream about everything that goes wrong. But be aware of what’s going on. Be actively involved in your child’s school to know what’s going on. So that’s kind of how I view it.

SARA: Yeah. I think even moreso today as our government, State Governments, are legislating what teachers can and cannot say and do and support queer kids in particular. It really strikes me as a parent and in a community of parents that unfortunately there’s more work, there’s more onus now, even more onus on us to make sure that our kids are in classrooms with teachers we know will be supportive and create those safe spaces for them, teachers like you. And that’s not always a guarantee.

KEVIN: It is a scary world right now. And I don’t see it that much because I grew up a middle-class white family, right? Quick story of my older son. Came home one day, he’s 19 years old – and I have three adopted children from Guatemala – he goes, “Guess what, Dad? The police stopped me today.” I go, “What, dude. What happened? He’s walking across Cal State Stanislaus University, 1:00 in the afternoon. And he goes, “Police stopped me.” I go, “What were you where you wearing?” Because I wanted to know were you wearing anything gang related. He goes no. And he wasn’t, he was just wearing kid clothes and drinking a Pepsi, no alcohol. And he told me, I had to leave the campus. And so I was really mad and I called the school president. I go, “Why were your security people telling my son to get off campus at 1:00 in the afternoon. He’s 19. Blah, blah, blah.” “It wasn’t ours, it was the Turlock Police Department.” So I got on the phone with the Turlock Police Chief because I felt entitled like I could. “What are you doing, [stuttering language]” “Well, let me look at the report. And I’ll never forget, as long as I live, this voice on the other end said, “The police said your son was walking suspiciously.” And I looked at my son and I go, “Dude, how do you walk suspiciously?” And I hung up, and it dawned on me that if he had been with me, or if he looked like me, that would’ve never happened.

SARA: Right.

KEVIN: Something had gone on somewhere in a neighborhood and they found him and he was “looking suspicious.” And so part of what we have to do is realize that I may never have an experience that another person has, but I can validate that experience. That person is thought of as being suspicious and I will never have that. Now, in Costa Rica it’s a little different. Panama, we are kind of targeted sometimes. But in the United States, he will always, when he’s by himself, and we had some other things happen with my children when I wasn’t with them, that when I was with them it was completely different. So I saw that. And so the awareness. We think of it as LGBTQ+ children, but it’s really children of color. There’s an enormous amount of children who we retain kids because they speak Spanish. This was 30 years ago. That’s a terrible plan. But that’s what they did. They were all brown hair, brown eyes, spoke Spanish. We’ll retain them. So we have to find within ourselves that, yes, we’ve had some privileges that other people don’t have. And what that should make us do is go, “Let’s not assume anything about anyone. Let’s let them prove themselves.” Because not everybody is perfect. Not everybody’s great. But we can’t define someone by what they look like, the color they are, anything like that. Let’s just get to know people. And I’ve always found, if you get to know someone, most of the time you find they’re pretty good people.

SARA: Yeah. Thank you. And that story is a good reminder that those of us with privilege, whether it’s white privilege, class privilege, there’s all kinds of different privileges we carry in this, particularly in these moments where there is so much targeting of marginalized communities, to ask ourself, “How can I use my privilege . . .

KEVIN: Right.

SARA: . . . to show up in solidarity and support of those communities." And that’s a really great story. Kevin, this has been a really heartfelt, really beautiful conversation. Thank you for your work and for your stories and for reminding us through all of that that every child deserves to grow up knowing that they don’t have to change who they are to be loved. And they just have to be seen.

KEVIN: It’s what we should be doing as adults with all children. When I took students to tournaments and parents would come along. I needed help. I’d say, “First couple things that we do at this tournament because it’s an overnight trip to a national championship. One is, they’re all our kids. I know you love your kid the most. But we love all of them equally on this trip. We take care of all of them. We’re looking out for all of them. We want them all to come back safely. Another thing is winning is more fun than losing, but we don’t value a kid more because they win. We value them all equally.” And I talk to kids, I tell kids really honestly, “Losing’s not fun sometimes. But it doesn’t make you less valuable to me and nobody in that room.” And that’s something that parents and teachers who come along all understood that when they come through that door, win or lose, we’re just happy. We care about them. And so if that is the mantra and mentality of a school, that no matter who walks through that door, we care about them. That doesn’t mean they’re perfect. That doesn’t mean sometimes you don’t have to deal with some stuff. But we’re going to care about them. That changes a school environment. And that is how schools should operate. Schools shouldn’t be deciding, “Well, look at that person. Look at what they’re doing. We can’t deal with that.” That is so toxic and so negative and bad in so many ways that are just unproductive.

SARA: Thanks. Kevin, thank you for this conversation. This has been great.

KEVIN: I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

SARA: Thanks for joining us here In the Den. We want to tell you about free, public QPR classes. QPR is Question, Persuade, Refer and it is a powerful suicide prevention training designed to equip you with the skills and confidence to recognize warning signs and respond when someone you love may be in crisis. The training is online, secure, and just two hours long. It’s a small time commitment that can make a life-saving difference. You can register for this training on our website at mamadragons.org.

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