Laurie Gray has made listening to kids her life’s work.

In her first career, she was a Spanish teacher at Whitko High School, then an Allen County deputy prosecutor who often worked with juveniles, and now, a young-adult author.

And in every role, she’s tried to get kids to think for themselves, take responsibility for their actions and recognize that they can change their life’s course for the better.

“I like looking kids in the eyes and saying, ‘You have greatness within you,’ ” says Gray, 46.

Her latest project, the novel “Summer Sanctuary,” features a 12-year-old boy who befriends a homeless girl at the library.

Gray, who is married with an 8-year-old daughter, hopes readers will find it wholesome and empowering. While it does have some realistic PG-13 themes, it doesn’t contain violence or profanity.

It also includes six poems, five of which were written by Gray when she was a teen.

“Poetry is a good way for kids to get their feelings out,” she says, so when she visits schools she encourages students to try their hand at writing it.

While the book’s protagonist is the home-schooled son of a pastor, it apparently didn’t show a clear moral for the Christian publishers who rejected it, she says. They didn’t like that Matthew lied to his parents and wasn’t really punished, in their opinion.

“The secular world thought it was too Christian, and the Christian world didn’t think it was Christian enough,” she says.

But that experience just highlighted a theme in the book, which was judging others, she says.

Her ultimate goal: To “help kids get through (the process of) being kids.”

One good way to do that, she’s found, is introducing them to the Socratic Method. It’s a way of sharpening critical thinking skills by asking questions, in the manner of the Greek philosopher.

Gray also founded Socratic Parenting (www.socraticparenting.com).

“You’re not telling kids what to think, but teaching them to ask questions to know who they are. … It’s about character … and not always having all the answers,” she says.

And she used the method in her second young-adult novel, which she’s shopping around to publishers, called “Just Myrto.” Her fictional account of one of Socrates’ real wives details a journey of self-empowerment and focuses on a three-year period, beginning when Myrto is 18.

It’s really about “the feeling of going from nothing to everything – not because the world around her had changed, but because she had changed, on the inside,” Gray says.

That can be a lifelong process, so she’s involved in other projects, too.

She’s a consultant for a local women’s support group called Sophie’s Café ( www.sophiescafe.org). The group’s logo is a circle-shaped rainbow with a white center.

“It’s about finding wisdom in yourself,” she says.

And she created the Token of Change, a coin with affirmations that reads: “My world reflects the change in me.”

All of her ventures are really about finding common ground, at all stages of life.

“We’re all human,” she says. “We’re all in this together.”

sscarlett@jg.net