Scratch That: Parenting & ReParenting Off Script

🎙️ Flipping the Script on Disability with Lucy & James Catchpole

Mar 24, 2025

Lucy and James Catchpole, both disabled parents and children's authors, share their compelling journeys navigating disability. They discuss how their experiences shape their parenting and creative work, challenging societal norms about disability. From James's joy in physical movement to Lucy's unique perspective on dignified representation, they emphasize finding liberation in limitations. The conversation delves into the importance of honest narratives in children's literature and the need for more authentic depictions of disability, fostering community and understanding.

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INSIGHT

Limitations as Liberation

Rebekah Tosig connects Lucy's experience to the concept of limitations in creativity.
Constraints, like those in a haiku, can be a source of creative expression.

ANECDOTE

Embracing Freedom

James Catchpole recalls swapping his prosthetic leg for crutches at age 14.
This allowed him to experience the joy of movement and expanded his horizons.

ADVICE

Parenting Without Guilt

Parent with the absence of guilt about your limitations.
Children adjust to their parent's disability as their normal.

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Will these charming Brits be able to withstand Rebekah's gushing?? If you don't yet know who Lucy and James Catchpole are, tune into our episode from last week, "Catchpoles + Andy J Pizza Love Fest." Two disabled parents who run a children's literary agency and write picture books, Lucy and James talk to us about their early experiences with disability, the ways disability shapes their parenting, and how their creative work reframes disability as ordinary, in sharp contrast to the cultural narratives of awe and pity.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

❤️ Restriction as a liberating starting point.

🪶 James's early memory of swapping the goal of normalcy for the joy of moving his body freely.

👑 Lucy's rare experience as a non-disabled child seeing disability represented as dignified and regal.

🌀 Lucy's origin story of learning to parent without guilt.

❓Common non-disabled narratives of disability that laud asking and kindness.

🤝 Belonging to a disability legacy and culture that we can pass on to younger generations.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Pre-Order the forthcoming YA collection of first-person essays, Owning It: Tales From Our Disabled Childhoods, edited by Jen Campbell, Lucy and James Catchpole, and illustrated by Sophie Kamlish. (You can read an essay by Rebekah in this collection, too!) (All orders from Blackwell include free shipping to the US!)

Check out all three of James and Lucy's picture books –

Watch Lucy and James sing their own pandemic lockdown version of "Oh my darling, Clementine" with their daughter. (Highly recommend. Easily the sweetest thing you'll watch/listen to this week.)

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Who are the creators lighting up your world these days? Let fill up the comments with a big ol' show and tell!