What do you do in your downtime?
I read the newspapers every morning. That’s my start. I read four newspapers every morning. And that’s kind of my quiet, private time.
When you see a parent-child dynamic, what are your observations about the relationship between that parent and child?
You have parents who are just good. And you can recognize that right away, you will have other parents who let their anxiety overtake them. You know, I saw a lot of seriously ill children. The concerns of a dying child are very different than their parents. They’re thinking, can I go back to school next week? Not am I going to be alive in a month? And you need to understand what people are concerned about and listen to it, and respond to that and the anxiety.
How did you overcome obstacles?
Well, I think you have to always sit and go through it in your head, not obsess over it. Sometimes you can identify something in the process. It wasn’t right, the communication wasn’t right. The choice you made … to pass was the wrong one. And you can just try to hone your skills so that the next time you do it better, and then you have to put it away. You have to put it away. If you obsess on it, then you’re not doing anybody any good.
