From Cringe to Connection: How to Talk About Modern Puberty (with Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll Bennett)

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Intro – 00:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: This is Relationscapes. We're mapping out the stories and ideas that shape who we are and how we connect with each other. I'm Blair Hodges, introducing our guides in this episode, Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll Bennett.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: The main question is, how do you connect with a kid who feels far away? That's the larger question. It might be about puberty, but it might be about academics, or friendships. And you're trying desperately to reach that kid, and you feel like what you say or how you say it just makes them move further and further away from you.

BLAIR HODGES: Puberty is awkward, but talking about it doesn't always have to be. The real challenge is figuring out how to have these conversations with kids in a way that brings us closer instead of pushing us further apart. It's a tough needle to thread!

That's why I was so relieved to discover the work of Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll Bennett, co-authors of This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained. The medical doctor joined forces with the educator to break down why these conversations feel so tough and how to navigate them with confidence, humor, and connection—not to mention the best science-based updates on what puberty is all about.

A lot has changed since we were young. So how can we share the latest information to empower kids without being cringe? And what do we do if we hit a brick wall? We're talking about it right now.

 

How They Got Into Puberty (Figuratively Speaking) – 01:55

 

BLAIR HODGES: Dr. Cara Natterson, welcome to Relationscapes.

CARA NATTERSON: Thank you so much. Thrilled to be here.

BLAIR HODGES: We're also joined by Vanessa Kroll Bennett. Vanessa, it's great to have you.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Thanks for having me.

BLAIR HODGES: I'm excited to talk to you all about puberty. [laughter] You've written a book about puberty, you host a podcast about puberty, so people might assume both of you feel really comfortable talking about it, and maybe even kind of like weirdly so! Like, "Wow, they really got this puberty thing going on."

But I got the impression from the book that these conversations can still be awkward, even for you. You're specialists in this and there can still be some awkwardness there. For example, I mean, you don't have the fondest memories of puberty yourselves. So, Cara, why don't we start with you and talk about how you feel talking about puberty?

CARA NATTERSON: You know, I'm a pediatrician, so when I put my clinical hat on, I feel super comfortable, right? I can tell you things about your body or the way things work inside of organs or inside cells. And I make it totally not about me and not about you. And that feels super comfortable.

Then for decades I went home and parented my own children—as infants, as toddlers, all the way through puberty. And I mean, what do they say about the cobbler, right? So my poor children! When we take off our work hats, Vanessa and I become regular people who are experiencing all the same things that other trusted adults are experiencing with their kids.

And so much of that is rooted in the fact that we have our own puberty baggage. We went through this stage of life ourselves. Everyone did. And it's very hard. Even though this is what we preach to everyone, it's very hard to divorce your own experience from your kids. And it can make it messy and uncomfortable and awkward.

And we mess up—I don't wanna say Vanessa, you—I mess it up all the time. [laughter] My kids are now out of the house. They are both college students. I continue to mess it up. But what I've gotten really good at, thanks to being in this field, is acknowledging when I've messed up and then telling my kids, "Hey, I gotta do that again. I'm gonna take the do over. This is the information I know that I'm going to impart to you, but how I imparted it to you was a mess. So let me try again."

BLAIR HODGES: What about you, Vanessa? I mean, Cara's got the pediatrician background. How did you come into this space and decide to focus on this?

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: I'm not a pediatrician, although Cara has conferred upon me an honorary medical degree from the Medical School of Natterson. [laughter]

CARA NATTERSON: That's true.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: I worked for a decade with girls using sports classes that were infused with social emotional learning to build girls’ self-esteem. I created it when my daughter was three and I realized I couldn't—

I live in New York City and I couldn't find a sports class for my daughter that was fun, that taught her all different sports skills, and that supported her full identity as a creative, joyful kid who loved to draw and sing and dance and also run around with a ball. And so I created it because the research shows us that girls’ self-esteem peaks at age 9 and then declines through the tween and teen years.

And right now it's never to return to its pre-9-year-old levels, which was so devastating to me that I wanted to do something about it. And pretty early on in coaching these girls, I noticed they were all—or many of them were in puberty earlier than I expected. So, the second and third grade girls in my classes were in puberty.

And I thought, well, if I'm trying to not have them lose their self-esteem, then talking to them about puberty, and also talking to their adults about their puberty, is a super important way. So, I started running workshops in New York and LA, I got connected to Cara, and ever since then we then sort of launched this whole three-sixty world of puberty—podcast, book, everything.

And I grew up in a house where talking about puberty and sex and all of those things was actually like totally fine. It wasn't uncomfortable, it didn't feel awkward for me. And so I am a definitely an imperfect parent like Cara. And I laugh about the term "parenting expert" because like, truly no one in the entire universe is a parenting expert.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: And it's the same thing with puberty. You can't be a "puberty expert." You can be an expert in the science of puberty or how puberty has evolved and changed over generations, but it's ever, ever, ever evolving, because it involves human beings. And so I just thought, well, if I can create something that educates people and empowers people, and if I'm willing to take on the conversations that other people don't feel so comfortable taking them on, then maybe I'll spread a little...reassurance in the process.

CARA NATTERSON: I thought you were going to say “joy.”

BLAIR HODGES: Joy! [laughs]

CARA NATTERSON: But you're just going to spread reassurance.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Hopefully I'll spread joy, but I'll take reassurance!

CARA NATTERSON: She's a bundle of joy every day. That is not a joke. Joy of a human. [laughter]

BLAIR HODGES: Well, and I think there's joy in your whole approach. And nothing says “joy” like an excellent pun. So I'm going to pitch a new tagline for you: “Puberty: The time to learn all about You-berty.”

CARA NATTERSON: Blair, come sit by me. This is gonna go great, this interview.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Oh my G-d. Two punsters. Actually, it's funny because friends of ours, Melisa Holmes and Trish Hutchison, who are two physicians, wrote a really lovely kids’ book about puberty called You-ology. They're founders of a company called Girlology, but it is a non-gendered, inclusive of race and developmental abilities and all of those things. It's a wonderful book and it is called You-ology, and they're totally awesome.

So I will let the two punsters that I'm sitting with play out that concept, but I will recuse myself from commenting. [laughter]

 

Defining Puberty - 07:58

 

BLAIR HODGES: Vanessa, you mentioned something really important, how you noticed puberty was starting much earlier. And that isn't just anecdotal. The data actually backs that up. Puberty's starting earlier and stretching out longer than before. To help people understand how that works, define what puberty is.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: When we keynote, we start with Cara putting up a slide of Mel Brooks, you know, The History of the World, but instead of world, it says the history of puberty. And depending on where we are in the country, it gets a bigger or smaller laugh. [laughter] But puberty has changed dramatically over the last few decades.

And on average, it now starts between 8 and 9 for girls and between 9 and 10 for boys. But it doesn't happen faster. In fact, it happens slower. A first period is a middle-marker of puberty. And that's not happening much earlier for girls, which means that they're in puberty for potentially three to four years before they get their first period.

And then there's lots of puberty and development after the first period. So it now lasts almost a decade as opposed to the three-to-four-year sprint that we think of from our growing up as puberty.

CARA NATTERSON: And I'll just jump in and say there is a very narrow definition of puberty, which is the sexual maturation of an individual. You go from, "I cannot be part of a baby making equation," to, "I can potentially be part of a baby making equation." I use those words very intentionally because some people might not choose to, or some people might have other downstream issues that make it hard to be part of that process.

But the reproductive organs mature. Right? And once they are fully mature, you have reached the end of puberty. That's the narrow definition.

What's the broad definition? The broad definition is all those sex hormones, namely LH and FSH, made in the brain, and estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, made in the body—all made in all bodies by the way—those sex hormones impact the way the brain thinks and feels.

And so what we used to call adolescence—which was really the emotional experience of all of this, and we separated from puberty, which was more the physical experience, we now recognize is really one and the same. That so much of the way that the brain is responding to the world around it has to do with this swell of hormones rising and falling in and around the brain.

So semantics have changed. Puberty itself has stretched and what we call "puberty" has changed.

 

Three Possible Drivers of Earlier Puberty - 10:55

 

BLAIR HODGES: That's really helpful because it's more than just groins and breasts or like, pubic hair or something. And you mentioned having a period is not the beginning of puberty for people who have periods, and it's basically adolescence. And for people who might ask, well, why? is it happening earlier?

Are there environmental factors? Are there genetic factors? What's happening? You point out that the research is pretty unclear on it. We don't have solid answers on that. So I don't want to spend a ton of time there, only to point out people are looking into that, there are studies being done, we don't really have—Is that right, Cara? We don't have the clearest answers on that?

CARA NATTERSON: Yes, "comma," and—a quick side note that there are really three buckets of drivers that are being studied most aggressively, and these are all looking like they impact the earlier shift in sex hormones in the body.

The first one is a whole bunch of endocrine disrupting chemicals. These are chemicals that change the way hormones rise and fall and work inside the body.

There are a thousand of them. And there was just a study a few months ago that looked at one called Musk ambrette that was the first one that was directly connected to earlier onset of puberty. So there's endocrine disrupting hormones that will definitely, in five or ten years, be part of the definitive answer.

BLAIR HODGES: Are we getting that in Mountain Dew or something? What is the environmental—[laughs]

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: No, in cosmetics.

BLAIR HODGES: Oh, interesting.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: It's a cheap way to put fragrance—It's like a chemical version of musk.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: And it's a cheap way of putting fragrance into cosmetics. And so it's been literally shown to cause GnRH to tell the pituitary gland to send LH and FSH down to the gonads. And it's already been banned in Europe, but it's still legal in the United States.

BLAIR HODGES: And then what are the other two buckets Cara was mentioning?

CARA NATTERSON: The second bucket is antibiotics. Not the antibiotics you get for strep throat or an ear infection, but antibiotics that are given to poultry and cattle that wind up in our food chain, and they do impact the agricultural produce in and around them as well, because those animals are getting a lot of antibiotics and then shedding a lot of these microorganisms that have been exposed to and might be resistant to antibiotics there. The science there is pretty messy, but basically, antibiotic exposure in these feed animals then causes inflammation in the gut, which seems to trigger puberty a little bit earlier. I'm very eager to understand the science better, and I think we'll see a lot more come out soon.

And then the biggest and almost, I'd say, most prescient bucket is the stress bucket—that cortisol, the stress hormone, looks to tip bodies into puberty both directly and indirectly. Again, unclear which is conferring the most impact. But cortisol does act on the brain and does shift the way that LH and FSH are released.

It also works on what we call the periphery, the rest of the body, and changes the way sex hormones behave. It can actually flip pre-testosterone hormones into active testosterone. I mean, it's really very interesting science that boils down to, our kids are growing up in a really stressful world, and that is probably part of what's tipping them into puberty.

BLAIR HODGES: So as people can tell, it can be kind of complicated. And I just want to throw this in here as an aside. I don't really want to spend much time on it, but I do want to say there are a lot of people out there on social media who want to tell us what's happening and identify these really easy, simple reasons why stuff's happening.

Like, "Oh, it's seed oils," or "Oh, it's this." And, like, "Here's this supplement that," you know. So I just want to remind people it's really important to listen to specialists on these issues, to take our time to maybe be skeptical about the easy answers that are connected to moneyed interests and to be careful about the voices that we're listening to, because we all see this happening, but then you've got kind of hucksters out there ready to sell some product based on it.

CARA NATTERSON: I mean, we would love an easy answer, but if there was one—

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Right.

CARA NATTERSON: Wouldn't we just like, fix one thing?

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: And the danger is not only for us, but it's for kids who are consuming social media and seeing the "easy" answer or the magic bullet or the simplified or inaccurate science. So that's another reason—and there are 4 million reasons—but that's another reason to be in conversation with kids about this stuff. Not just to ingest the information ourselves, but to be in dialogue with them.

 

Treat Kids According to Age, Not Appearance - 15:33

 

BLAIR HODGES: The big takeaway from the beginning of your book is that you invite us to treat kids according to their age, not according to their appearance, because we can be misled. These kids might be sprouting up, getting big, looking more mature than what we realize they are. And so you really remind adults to remember that these are kids, regardless of what they look like.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Yeah, I mean, we can all remember that one kid in our class who looked five years older than everybody else, was inches taller, maybe had a full beard, you know, full muscles or, you know, a full pair of breasts. Whatever it was, they looked much older. And now that can be, you know, half a classroom.

Kids look that way. And there's a few concerns about that, Blair. I mean, thank God for educators, because teachers who've been doing this a while know that, as we like to say, they look at their sixth-grade classroom and it's like a Star Wars bar. Right? [laughter] You've got kids of everything shape and size and stage of development.

And educators know these are all still sixth graders. They're gonna pack their backpacks like sixth graders. They're gonna deal with conflict like sixth graders. They're gonna forget their homework like sixth graders. But the people out in the world who are not trained professionals, either mental health professionals or educators or pediatricians, don't realize that it puts kids at risk if they are treated as the age they appear and not the age they are.

And it puts older kids at risk because they are exposed to things that are not age appropriate. Substances or comments or behaviors, people assuming they're older.

It's also really detrimental to kids who look much younger than they actually are. The late bloomers who may look 8 but are actually 11 or 12. It's incredibly demeaning for those kids as well, who have the cognitive abilities of all of their peers at 11 or 12, but just look little.

And it's pretty humiliating when they get treated like a third grader and not a sixth grader.

BLAIR HODGES: This also tends to fall disproportionately on people of color. Black kids are often treated differently because they're viewed differently or expected to be more aggressive or, you know, there are studies that show they receive different penalties and harsher penalties in schools, or they're more often suspended for the same kinds of behavior.

So it's not just with age, but also, we really need to take into account race and all these other factors about how we're judging kids.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Yeah, I mean, there's tons of research about how Black girls are sexualized at earlier ages and the data about earlier puberty. Black girls, based on the data, are first to puberty. They are the earliest bloomers when we divide kids, and there's a few different studies, and they look at racial differences. And Black boys also, the data tells us, develop earlier, on average, than their white counterparts.

So there's that, layered with the systemic racism that puts Black children more likely to receive punishments more severe than their white peers in school settings. So it's the sexualization coupled with, you know, just inherent racism that makes it really concerning. And they are developing earlier, so it puts them at greater risk at earlier ages.

CARA NATTERSON: Although it bears saying that there are a lot of researchers who are looking at, is it genetic why they're going through puberty earlier, or is it going to turn out to be a function of zip code, which is really socioeconomic.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. What food are they eating? What can they afford?

CARA NATTERSON: Yeah, right. Systemic racism and socioeconomic differentials in this country are really going to turn out, I think, to be the answer. And I say that because Louise Greenspan, who is one of the lead researchers in this field and wrote a book called The New Puberty—she's incredible—she says so. And if Louise says so, then I say so.

 

Taking a Do-Over – 19:26

 

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, good. We're talking with Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll Bennett about This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained.

Okay, I want to do a little game now. So, Vanessa, I'm going to have you describe the first conversation you had with your oldest child about sex. They were like 10 years old. Just give us the basics about what happened, and then we're going to have Cara break down how you screwed that up.

CARA NATTERSON: Oh, boy. [laughter]

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: You just made her day, Blair.

So the first time I talked to my eldest child, he was 10. First conversation we had about sex, he was reading the newspaper. Those were in the days when people actually read a physical newspaper. And there was an article in the sports section about an athlete being accused of rape. And he looked up and he said, “Mom, what's rape?” And I was like, getting breakfast ready for four children and running around like crazy. And I said, “Oh, rape is when a man forces a woman to have sex.” And then I finished getting ready, and I, like, took him to the billion of activities that day.

And then literally hours later, I was like, I messed up that answer in so many ways. So the first thing I said to him was, and I don't know if you want me to go this far or you want Cara to go deeper—

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, I want Cara to point out what happened here.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: So, Cara, share all the ways I blew this first conversation.

BLAIR HODGES: And go hard. Don't be gentle.

CARA NATTERSON: Okay, guys, Sorry. I'm a glass-half-full person.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: It's true.

CARA NATTERSON: Okay, okay, so I'm gonna start with the fact that Vanessa took a do over.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, yeah.

CARA NATTERSON: That's the most important. Hours later, it was still roiling through her brain, and it was actually dawning on her. You know when you've got, like, a seed between your teeth, but you've got that thing in your brain where the seed is, like, slowly working its way out, and then five hours later, you're like, oh, my goodness, I can't believe I did that.

That was what Vanessa did. And then she didn't shove that down. She took a do over and she said, “Hey, buddy.” Literally, she said, “Hey, buddy, I realize I messed this up. I gave you an answer. I didn't ask you questions about what you knew and didn't know. I didn't define my terms right.”

So out of all the wrong came so much more right in that scenario that it's the perfect story to empower any parent or trusted adult. Like, you really can't mess this up, because even in your mess up, “trauma seals,” right? That trauma of the bad description from Vanessa opened up—

And by the way, it did not seal in her kid's brain. I've talked to him about it. He's like, whatever. What? It was much more traumatic for my mom.

BLAIR HODGES: He was like, “I just was hoping that,” you know, like, “I didn't want to lose my fantasy football player.”

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Exactly.

CARA NATTERSON: Totally. I mean, I used to have this thing, Blair, where I used to ask kids when I was practicing medicine, I would say, have your parents ever talked about sex, when I was in the exam room doing the one on one thing, and, you know, many would say, oh, no, never.

They'd be getting dressed or whatever. And I'd be in my office, and I’d talk to the parent and I'd say, you know, have you ever talked to your kid about sex? And they could describe exactly where they were, how long the conversation was, what it covered. It just goes to show what lands for us, traumatizes us, does not land for them and traumatize them.

But Vanessa took the do-over and she repaired. And I can tell you, as someone who has sat at her dinner table many, many times, she has such a beautiful way of opening up conversations. And I actually think, Vanessa, it might go date back to that moment for you.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: It probably does. I mean, Blair, I basically turned him in the backseat and was like, “Hey. I realized I had never defined sex.” Like, it was the first time we talked about sex. I was like, “Do you know what sex means?” And he was like, “Not really.” And I was like, “Okay, we'll start there.”

BLAIR HODGES: And you say you had gendered it earlier, too. How you made it about, “It's when a man does this.”

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Then once we got through sex—and I still remember this, we had parked and the trunk was open, and he's still in his seat, and I'm getting stuff out of the trunk. And he goes, “Well, but can a woman rape a man?” And that's when it hit me. Not only had I not defined sex, I had gendered rape or assault, which was a total screw up also.

I mean, there were many, many screw ups along the way of my conversation. And so then we had a conversation. “Yes, of course. Anybody can assault anybody, and rape is not gendered.” And then he'd had enough. And then he was like, okay, and he's done.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, you say you gotta pick up the signals. Because sometimes the kids are gonna be like, “okay,” right?

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: And if I had, like, fallen on my sword and been like, “Oh, I'm such a terrible parent. I'm so sorry. I've ruined your understanding of intimacy and love and sex forever and ever. And like, you'll never forgive me. I know you'll never forgive—”

Like, if I had done that, then maybe the trauma would be sealed in his brain. But he was like, “Great, thank you so much.” And then we moved on.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, I also liked your advice to ask why they were asking. To wonder like, oh, hey, where'd that come from? Because then you can kind of get the context for it. That was great advice.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Well, and that stems from a colleague of ours whose son asked her, “How was I made?” And she was like, rubbed her hands together and was like, here we go! And she was so excited to tell the story. And then she's like, you know, about reproduction and like all of the amazing parts of sex and love.

And then she pauses in the middle and she's like, wait a second, what made you ask that question? And he goes, “Well,” he pointed to their golden retriever and was like, “Well, I mean, he's my brother and I'm wondering, like, how you made him versus how you made me.”

And she was like, “Oh, I totally messed up finding out what the starting point is.”

Because it's, you know, pretty different answer if it's about your dog and how they got there.

BLAIR HODGES: The tips you give for talking about this stuff are great. Again, you're inviting people to listen first, to breathe and slow down. Don't let your baggage take over, to give your kids space as they need it. Leave the door open for later conversations. Try to avoid sounding like a lecture. So many good tips in here.

And like you said, if people are feeling nervous about keeping all that straight, there's always an opportunity to repair. So we don't have to be perfect at the first opportunity.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Correct.

 

Talking About Chests – 26:12

 

BLAIR HODGES: All right, let's talk about some of the specifics about puberty. Now that we kind of have a bigger picture about how to talk about it, we can talk about some of the things that get talked about. And, Cara, you decided to start out with breasts. This was the first chapter that gets specific, and I wondered why you decided to begin there.

CARA NATTERSON: Well, I mean, in part because breasts, which we often call boobs, because that's what the kids call them. Neither is a bad word, and neither is sort of an ineffective word. Some anatomy words get muddy and murky. This one, totally fair to use the two as synonyms.

But they're the first things to show up. That's why we started the book there. Because actually, again, to quote Louise Greenspan, really, the first sign of puberty is a slamming door. But if you're taking moods off the table and you're looking for the physical shifts, by far the most common one is breast development. And breast development impacts girls for obvious reasons, but it also impacts about 50% of male bodies.

About 50% of males have some degree of breast development on one side or both at some point during puberty.

BLAIR HODGES: And you invite us to normalize differences, to talk to our kids about differences. And, I mean, kids can look around and see that there are differences, so that can be helpful.

I also like the practical advice, for example, about buying some sort of bra or a training bra or whatever, where some kids are not going to be into this or feel really bad about it. And I think there was advice to, like, maybe buy a couple and just kind of leave them someplace. Like, okay, I'm just gonna, like, leave these over here. Whatever, whatever. Like, you don't have to be like, “Okay, we need to try this on, and we're gonna do this today.” You're really trying to give kids space.

CARA NATTERSON: I mean, that's the goal. I would argue that you know the kid in your life best.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

CARA NATTERSON: So try it the way that it feels like it would work best for them as opposed to for you. Right? But let's go back to the Vanessa sex story. Many will mess it up. You casually leave a bra on a bed. Oh, boy, will some people get read the riot act for that move.

Okay. There's an opportunity for repair. Repair allows for conversation. Let's talk about bras, right? There are lots and lots of ways to do this, but really the biggest question we get about breast development and bras is, do we really even need this? You know, there are lots of people who wonder.

And the answer is, that's another great conversation, because there are a lot of reasons why parents might think their kids want or need a bra, but there are a lot of kids have a lot of feelings about this topic. So, like everything else in the book, Blair, unfortunately, there's no one and done. This is like dozens and dozens of conversation starters over a long period of time.

 

Talking About Periods – 29:12

 

BLAIR HODGES: Well, let's talk about periods then. If people think talking about breasts is difficult, periods are a whole other thing. You talk about how a lot of people who've had periods, they feel a lot of shame or humiliation around, like, their first period or trying to come to terms with what it means, which is pretty wild because about half the earth's population menstruates.

So it's such a common thing with so much stigma and shame around it. And I know some kiddos who don't want to talk about it at all.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Right.

BLAIR HODGES: What do you suggest in that kind of a situation where a kid doesn't even want to begin the conversation?

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: You know, it's an interesting question because some people would say, just leave them be. Right? Don't force it. Except for the health and safety of that kid, there is information they really need from someone. And that someone doesn't have to be you. It could be, you know, an older sibling, a camp counselor, a guidance counselor at school, a health teacher, a grandparent. It could be a lot of different people.

But the main question is, how do you connect with a kid who feels far away? That's the larger question. And it's true of whether—it might be about puberty, but it might be about academics or friendships or extracurriculars. And you're trying desperately to reach that kid, and you feel like you just cannot reach them, or what you say or how you say it just makes them move further and further away from you.

And we interviewed Wendy Mogul a few years ago, and she's a wonderful psychologist and writer, and she talks about being enchanted with their enchantment. Kids have interests. Kids are passionate about stuff. And so if you want to create connection with them, connect with them over their interests to begin with. And then once you've opened the door to conversation, to connection, then you can try some other topics, right?

So you can start out by talking about Fortnite or Fantasy Football or YouTube makeup tutorials. And then you can move to, “Hey, what's like, going on in your classes right now? Or how is band practice?” You know, those kinds of things. So that's one piece of advice we give.

The second piece of advice we give is, some information is critical and it has to be imparted to that child. And we go into these conversations hoping there's going to be like this Kumbaya moment. It's like, “Blair, let's talk for four hours about this topic.” And the kids are like, “No way, no how. Go away.”

But if we say to a kid, listen, I'm going to talk for five minutes, I have to tell you three things about your changing body that's really important right now. Give me five minutes. You don't have to say anything. You don't have to do anything. And then when I'm done, you can go back to playing basketball or, you know, doing your drawing. But give me five minutes. And then they know, there's no pressure on them. There's a time limit. You're not lecturing them. They don't actually have to know anything. They can literally just be the recipients of the information.

And here's the thing. Parents then say to their kids, “Do you have any questions?” And if the kid doesn't have any questions or doesn't say anything in response, parents feel like they failed.

Like, “Oh, they weren't listening. It didn't get it. I give up.” When really sometimes kids come back a day later, a week later, a month later, and will say things like, “Hey, you know when we were talking about that thing? Here's what I don't understand.” And you're like, “Oh, they were listening! I can't believe they were listening.”

So don't lose hope. If it doesn't become a dialogue, if it feels a little bit like a monologue, keep it short, keep it tight, but still give them the information they need.

BLAIR HODGES: I also really liked, again, more practical advice in this chapter. Like where you talk about helping kids learn the logistics of having a period. Because as a guy who never had a period, this is not part of my world, other than I'm familiar with it because of my wife, but I didn't know much of anything about what kids are going through.

And so you suggest having a period kit, something they can keep in their locker. Maybe an extra change of clothes or some tampons or pads or whatever so that they don't get trapped someplace. And, you know, I've heard really sad and scary stories about embarrassing things that happen.

And then we haven't covered at all the actual mechanics of a period. And the book does. It was very helpful to get to know more about that stuff. So people are going to be getting the actual scientific explanation in a very easy to understand way. They're going to get advice about how to talk about it and then some logistical advice. And every one of your chapters has these points in it. It's what makes the book so helpful to me.

 

Talking About Hygiene – 34:00

 

BLAIR HODGES: But I want to talk about hygiene right now, because this is one where I really screwed up with my own kiddo.

You know, the feet smell just got me so bad, right? And I just responded with disgust. We're in the car on a trip, and I'm just like, “Put your shoes back on.” You know? And my wife is kind of looking at me like, shut up. Like, what are you doing?

And me, I'm just being an idiot. And so later on, she pulls me aside, and is like, “Okay, so here's why. What you did wasn't cool at all.”

And then in your book I see, okay, well, at least I'm not alone in making that kind of a mistake. But it's not good! [laughter]

CARA NATTERSON: Oh, no. Got to be careful!

I'm gonna make you laugh for a second. We have a business where we have consumer products that make puberty a little bit more comfortable. We sell bras, and we sell shorts that are super airy, and we sell socks that do not smell. And the origin story of those socks was the same. I was driving a carpool of boys home from a soccer practice, and it was raining, and I literally thought I might lose consciousness.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, I thought I was gagging!

CARA NATTERSON: I thought I was, yes. I'm not gonna say be dramatic and say I thought I would die, but I really actually thought I might pass out. And then who knows where the car goes? So I put all the windows down, and it's pouring, and the kids are like, “Cara, don't you know that it's raining outside?”

And it took everything in me not to say, “Put the shoes back on!” That was the origin story of the socks. You know, hygiene.

But I just want to circle back for a second to your comments about periods, just to say, sure, I believe that just like the hygiene conversation, which we're about to have, the period conversation is also for everyone. This is a tougher sell. I preach it. But did I put pads in my own son's backpack and say, be an ally and be there for anyone? I did not. Because given my dynamic with him at that particular age, those pads would have simply been removed immediately. And I understood the limitation there.

BLAIR HODGES: Or like stuck to the wall. [laughs]

CARA NATTERSON: Something with an aggressive message written on it. Yes, yes. But I do think that if we bring everyone under the umbrella of information, whether it's about something that's gonna happen to your body or something that's gonna happen to someone else's body, we empower everyone. And, you know, I love that you talk about learning about these things that don't personally impact you, but they do personally impact you.

And likewise, when we talk about hygiene, hygiene has nothing to do with your gender at all. They all get ripe during puberty. There's a very real reason why. And the science is explained in the book in great detail. But ultimately it has to do with certain sweat glands in certain spots on the body producing thicker, greasier, more protein-rich sweat.

And then the bacteria on the body loves it eating that sweat! And as Vanessa loves to say in front of large audiences, and it wins her, like, everyone in the room is like—Vanessa is my favorite person. The bacteria eat the proteins and then what do they do?

BLAIR HODGES: Poop it out?

CARA NATTERSON: They poop and fart it out. And it's really the farting.

BLAIR HODGES: The farting. I should’ve remembered that.

CARA NATTERSON: Yes, off-gassing the protein that presents this amazing smell that we recognize as body odor. And some kids have more of it and some kids have less of it, and some adults have more of it and some adults have less of it.

But it is a phenomenon that is universal among humans and it is solvable. And it is solvable with this incredible thing called soap. You can physically wash the bacteria off your body and they then—

BLAIR HODGES: Talk to your kids about it. Using some soap. By the way, whose idea was it to do the scratch and sniff B.O. on that chapter? That was a really cool.

CARA NATTERSON: That was your idea, Blair. [laughter] Brilliant.

But I will say for those who think what this is such a JV topic, like, it's really not. Actually, there's a lot of data that shows that good hygiene changes social interactions. It changes one's hire-ability, it changes one's trajectory in the world, whether it's at school or in the outside world.

Like, the way one presents them-sme—themselves, the way they look and the way they smell changes the way other people interact with them. That's a very big deal.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, and you almost said “them-smells.”

CARA NATTERSON: Them smells. I did.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Oh my G-d, the two punsters.

But, Blair, here's the thing. I mean, the other thing about hygiene is that people don't have to use the word penis or vulva or vagina to be in conversation with their kids about hygiene. And so in some ways, it's a great training ground to have other conversations with kids about their changing bodies and stuff.

Like, BO can sometimes show up before any other signs of development because it's actually part of adrenarche, not puberty. Technically, it's a different physiological process, which means you can have a kid with body odor and no other physical development, and you can start talking about changing bodies and how to take care of your body and what to notice about your body and how to go to people with questions about your body before it's ever about menstruation or wet dreams or erections.

And so it often feels safer for people to have those conversations with kids easier, less complicated than it does to have some of the other conversations about puberty.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, there's great advice, again, in the book about how to talk about that stuff. And to Cara's point earlier, about talking to boys about periods and stuff. That's awesome.

Also, you all point out in the chapter on penises and testicles that sometimes people think, “Oh, these boys are just becoming these raging horn dogs, and if we bring this up, it's gonna unleash the beast” or something.

But you talk about how boys really do wanna know about their bodies. It's unfair to boys to exclude them from conversations about periods and about what women's and other people's bodies are going through, but it's also unfair to shortchange them about their own. And so you really want us to think about both those things.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Blair, you would be amazed when we meet with—because we'll talk to auditoriums of two- or three hundred middle schoolers or high schoolers. And if we have time, we'll talk about the physical changes of puberty, not just some of the other things like mood swings and brain development.

And when we bring up the changes, when we talk about periods, the room is silent, right? Everyone is totally serious. When we talk about erections or wet dreams, everybody starts giggling. And then we'll say to the kids, “Hey. The reason we talk about things like erections and wet dreams is because our culture treats them like they're punchlines, like they're a joke, but they're not a joke.” I mean, it's great to laugh sometimes, but they're real physical experiences that people with penises have. And those people get to know about their changing bodies, both in fun ways and in serious ways, and to understand the science of their changing bodies.

And the room goes silent. It is like all of a sudden, these boys have words. There've been words put to the experience they've been having, which is like, “Oh, my body, my changes only get to be a joke and don't get to be treated with the same seriousness as girls’ changes.”

It's so powerful. And it's like my favorite part when we talk to kids.

CARA NATTERSON: It is your favorite part.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: It is my favorite part!

 

Many Ways to Be Normal – 41:50

 

BLAIR HODGES: Speaking of silence, you also talk about how sometimes silence is the best option, especially when it comes to talking to kids about their bodies and their size. Because kids gain weight, there's new curves, there's differences. And one of the most important points of the book is what we shouldn't say about people's bodies.

Because you say this is when body image and eating disorder issues really set in very easily during this time. And this happens with people of all gender identities, not just girls.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Yeah. I mean, it's super important at the outset to recognize that kids of all genders struggle with body image. It might look different. So boys might be worried more about musculature, size, getting jacked, getting amped. They feel all this pressure to follow this one bodily ideal for males. Whereas when we think about body image pressures, for girls, it's more about thinness.

Although, thank you to the Kardashians and other influencers, there are a variety of other unrealistic bodily ideals out there. But so part of it is like, we want to remove the focus on the body and move the focus to kids as a human being while still being able to be in conversation with them about changing bodies, about questions they have, about the unpredictability.

You know, so much of it for kids is like, but when is it gonna happen?

BLAIR HODGES: Or is it normal, right?

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: The big one is, “Am I normal?” Right? And there is no normal. I mean, Cara came up with—you won't be surprised to learn this, Blair, but Cara came up with this. We were working on our deck when we went out with the book, and I was saying, like, there's no one normal, right? There's many, many normals. Or as we say, typical.

And then Cara goes, “Yes, and there's no-one normal! And I was like, oh, my G-d.

CARA NATTERSON Isn't that amazing?

BLAIR HODGES: It is. [laughter]

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: And I was like, yes. And you have to imagine that made its way into many, many keynotes.

And so they have all these worries and for us to layer onto them, concerns about weight gain or shape or, people forget that kids who are very thin, some kids grow up really quickly and don't gain much weight at all. The world is saying to them, oh, aren't you lucky? Oh, I wish I had your body. When the kid is like, I don't like this body. I'm not happy with this body. I want to know when it's going to change.

So we just like to avoid projecting or commenting while still making ourselves available for all the questions and making sure that kids are moving their bodies enough.

It's really, really, really important for their mental and physical health that kids are getting enough exercise, whatever that is, walking the dog, doing a Zumba class, yoga with friends, playing sports, whatever it is. But it's super important for all of their wellness that kids are moving their bodies enough.

CARA NATTERSON: I mean, I think it bears saying that kids, especially teenagers, but also tweens, are very savvy to this, you know, “you're so beautiful” response to, “How do I look?”

Vanessa talks really beautifully about this. I can't even do it justice. She does such a good job of helping parents to understand that that is not just a disingenuous answer, but essentially it equates beauty with something.

This isn't a conversation about how we feel about how they look. This is a conversation about how they feel. And we have to honor when the world is sending them all of these conflicting messages, as Vanessa has described, or a lot of messages in one singular direction, we have to honor that. In a developing brain, that's a lot to handle.

And in a developing brain, with increasing independence, and you're starting to make all your own decisions about what you consume at lunch, at school and at friends’ houses, and sometimes when you're out to dinner, there's a really heavy burden placed on kids. And when our answer to all of the complicated swirl of questions in their mind is, “But you're beautiful!” To me, I think it's fair to remember that that's great, “comma,” and they want to know the way the world perceives them. Right? They want to have that conversation.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: We all have our thing that we bring into talking to kids about puberty, and body image was the thing I brought into it as someone who didn't love my body during these years. And, you know, I, because I do this work, knew I needed to find my own trusted adults who I could work through this with.

So besides my husband, who has no body image stuff and has no vanity and couldn't understand why it was an issue, normally he would be my trusted adult, but in this case, he wasn't. And I went to a dear friend, and I was like, “Oh, my G-d, I'm so struggling with this. I'm listening to the thoughts in my head when I look at my own child. I'm so embarrassed that this is what I'm thinking!”

And she said to me, “Me too! I'm, like, so ashamed that this is—”

And we were able to have the conversation about our inner monologue, so it didn't come out sideways, it didn't come out to our kids. And we didn't say the things we would come to regret to our children. We said it to each other so we could unburden ourselves and move forward without that baggage.

BLAIR HODGES: That's Vanessa Kroll Bennett, writer and podcaster who co-wrote This is So Awkward with Cara Natterson. Vanessa graduated from Wellesley College and has a master's degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary there.

And Cara is a pediatrician and a New York Times best-selling author of other books like the Care and Keeping of You series, Guy Stuff and Decoding Boys. Cara graduated from Harvard College and Johns Hopkins Medical School.

 

Puberty and Brain Development – 48:10

 

BLAIR HODGES: So it's not enough for these kids that their bodies are doing all these things. It'd be hard enough, right? But it's all happening while the brain is basically reorganizing itself completely. So, you know, when people hear the word puberty, they might think about sexual maturation.

But as you said, we also need to think about what's happening above the neck. It's a huge part of it. Not just because the brain is sending out all the hormones and signals and et cetera, but also because the way people are thinking is changing. They are actually chemical and electrical and physiological things happening in the brain.

Cara, do you want to take just a second to talk about what's going on upstairs for these kids? That would help parents deal with the mood swings that often happen with puberty.

CARA NATTERSON: Yeah, and I don't usually push reading our book heavily, but for this one, I push reading our book heavily. Because it's a lot to digest in the thirty seconds I'm gonna do it in.

BLAIR HODGES: Sure.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: There's no way she's gonna do it thirty seconds.

CARA NATTERSON: Oh. Time me. I'm on it. Challenge acceptance.

BLAIR HODGES: The clock starts now!

CARA NATTERSON: No, no, don't start yet, because I just wanna add: Kids love the science. We wrote the whole book, but really we wrote this chapter for them.

Okay. Ready?

BLAIR HODGES: Okay.

CARA NATTERSON: Hang on. I'm starting my timer too, because I'm gonna do it. Here we go.

BLAIR HODGES: I love it.

CARA NATTERSON: Okay, right, and action!

The brain matures in two different ways. One way is it prunes—gets rid of too many neurons that it has starting at birth. The second way is that it myelinates. Myelination is the insulation of nerve fibers that allows messages to travel faster down those nerve fibers.

And by the time a kid is in middle school, their brain is halfway myelinated. The part of their brain that is fully mature is their limbic system, which is the emotional epicenter. But the part that is not yet myelinated is their prefrontal cortex, which makes the smarter consequential decisions.

It's not a fair fight. They're going to make decisions that feel good unless they give their brain time. And it was 38 seconds!

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. So close. That was good, though. [laughter]

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: She's never gotten even close to that time in describing it. That was very impressive. Yes, very impressive.

BLAIR HODGES: You point out in the book, this is why kids can be so impulsive or, like, do weird stuff.

I was playing with my friend, and he's like, let's get the little metal ball out of a spray paint can. Okay! So we're hitting it with a board with a nail in it, and it explodes. [laughter]

And I'm, like, covered in paint head to toe. My brain was just like, yeah, do the thing. And it's because the actual way that it's sending and receiving messages, like, it's gonna hit that limbic, that gut level, yeah, do it before it's gonna hit my rational brain. Hold on. Let's think about what could happen here.

CARA NATTERSON: And just to round out the thought, we all know kids who always make good decisions. There's, like, one of them in every bunch, right? What's their special sauce? What are they doing that other kids aren't?

BLAIR HODGES: They're taking seed oils.

CARA NATTERSON: Seed oils! No, they're giving their brains time.

BLAIR HODGES: Pause.

CARA NATTERSON: We use this word “impulsivity” a lot, and it means a lot of different things in a lot of different settings, but really what they're doing is they're letting the neurons in their brain fire, and the prefrontal cortex is there. They have one, we all have one, but they're allowing their brains to access it.

Sidenote, it is not easy being the kid who always makes the right decision. So for parents who are listening, who are thinking, oh, I wish my kid was that way, yes, there are a lot of reasons why it's a bit safer and healthier to have a bunch of strategies that you employ that allow you to have time. But sometimes that one good decision maker carries the burden of all the other kids who are not letting their brains have time, and that's hard.

BLAIR HODGES: They have to be the police officer or they're dealing with maybe some stress and anxiety. That's helping slow things down. So tune into that kid, too.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: And, Blair, I would say explaining the science to kids, the reason, particularly when it comes to brain development, is that when kids make dumb decisions, they feel bad. They feel ashamed. They're worried they're going to disappoint us. And if they understand, it doesn't mean they're a bad person.

It just means they made a bad decision. It doesn't mean that they’re failures for life. It just meant, in that moment when their friend was lighting up their limbic system, they tried to get the metal ball out of the spray paint can, for example.

BLAIR HODGES: It was fun.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: They're still good kids.

BLAIR HODGES: We didn't get the ball either. I was covered in white paint.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: I was gonna say, there's no way you got it out.

BLAIR HODGES: I'm sure it flew off somewhere.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Your pet ate it or something. But with all of this stuff—mood swings, brain development—if kids understand that they're a work in progress, that they're not a bad person, because this part of their development is sort of taking over and not fostering great decision making or, you know, even-keeled lovely moods, it's okay. We still love them and we're still here for them, and we're not gonna abandon them because they made a bad decision.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

CARA NATTERSON: You know that line, like, “You're never gonna be in trouble if you just tell me what you did or don't lie,” right? This is the puberty version of that line. And it's really true. It's like, we want you to make the good choice, but we know that your hard wiring doesn't make that the default mode network. So I'm going to be proud of you.

Like, don't forget to acknowledge them when they do it, by the way. Right?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

CARA NATTERSON: I'm going to be proud of you when you do the right thing. But I'm here for you when your brain takes over and you don't do the right thing.

 

Talking About Sex – 54:04

 

BLAIR HODGES: Speaking of doing the right thing, let's talk about sex for a minute. And when it comes to sex—[laughter]

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Nice segue, Blair.

BLAIR HODGES: Thank you so much.

Overall, you say that the US could improve how we're approaching sex if we were more like the Dutch on this. This is an interesting comparison. Let's go at it that way because there are so many things we could talk about in this chapter, but for lack of time, maybe just tell us some things we could improve on about how we talk about sex with kiddos.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: So we can't take credit for that concept. Debbie Roffman wrote a piece for the Atlantic and wrote a book all about how to talk to kids about sex, including it doing it the way the Dutch do and—

BLAIR HODGES: Do it like the Dutch.

 VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Do it like the Dutch. That's a song that we would have listened to in the 80s.

And the point is that the Dutch begin health and sex ed with little kids when it's about consent and bodily autonomy and they are in conversations with kids their entire lives.

BLAIR HODGES: That's not even about sex. That's just about body autonomy and consent?

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: It's like, it begins with knowing how to respect someone else's boundaries, making sure other people respect your boundaries, knowing the anatomically correct terms for your body parts so you feel agency, so you're able to advocate for yourself with an adult or a physician.

And then as they grow and sex actually becomes a relevant topic, having conversations with them not just about the mechanics or fear-based conversations with them about how to not get pregnant or how to not get STIs, but about love and connection and intimacy and respect and communication.

And the Dutch do that. And their outcomes about healthier sex lives for their adolescents are like, markedly different from the US. Lower rates of teen pregnancy, lower rates of STI’s, more committed, loving, partnered relationships amongst young people. It's not theoretical. What they do actually works.

 

Talking About Gender Identity – 56:06

 

BLAIR HODGES: I think a lot of people get afraid to talk about sex because they think it will lead people to want to have sex or be more interested in sex. And I think the same goes for discussions of sexuality and gender identity. There are fears out there about, like, this “contagion effect,” that if kids find out there's nonbinary kids or that there are trans kids, they might get influenced or sucked into that.

There are all these misconceptions about how people become trans. And I think contagion is one of the big ones. You do spend a chapter talking about sexuality and gender identity. Take a moment to kind of give us the big takeaway from that chapter, Cara.

CARA NATTERSON: Yeah, I'll start. Well, we separate them, for starters. We have different chapters about sexual orientation and gender identity because they're completely separate topics that have a little bit of Venn diagram overlap, but really, they're quite different.

And in fact, I think the way you set that question up is a perfect framing for how those two things are different. This notion of, where does education empower versus where is there contagion? When we look at sex, sexual curiosity, sexual experimentation, who you want to be intimate with, what we know, the data is extraordinarily clear, and says education is not just empowering, it delays sexual experimentation, which is phenomenal to think about. It's the exact opposite of what a lot of people fear, which is, “If I tell them about it, they're going to do it.”

Actually, if I talk to them about it openly, some might do it and they'll probably do it more safely, and others might not. Or they might have the language to be able to recognize and express what they want in a sexual interaction and not find themselves in one because no one has ever been in conversation with them.

A big sidenote here. The average age of first porn viewing in this country is 12. This is a huge influence in terms of how kids learn about and think about sexual experimentation and sexual interactions.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, fortunately, pornography is very good at showing perfect relationships and healthy sexual expression!

CARA NATTERSON: Oh, my goodness. Free sex ed for everyone!

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: And realistic body shapes and sizes!

BLAIR HODGES: What sex even looks like!

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Totally. And how many orgasms people have when having sex!

CARA NATTERSON: Yes. And I love the modeling of consent. It's wonderful.

Yes, yes. So, I mean, if you think about how kids are seeing sex before they even hold someone's hand, right? Like the whole thing is upside down and backwards. So to the sexual orientation, sexual experimentation piece of the question, the gender identity piece of the question is, frankly, quite different.

The way we approach gender and gender identity is really meeting people where they are right now, which is needing a gigantic vocabulary lesson. People of a certain age, I would say adults who are new to this content, tend to be very overwhelmed by the language. And there are a lot of terms that sound similar and mean different things.

And then there's sort of a whole lot of emotion that gets lumped into the explaining of these terms and describing these terms. And so our approach, whether it's on our podcast or in our book or on social media, is simply to define the terms so that people can be in conversation about this topic.

You can't have discourse, you can't have an open back and forth conversation if no one knows what the words mean. This is important.

BLAIR HODGES: I think starting with books is a really good place for people who aren't familiar with gender identity issues. It's a safer place, because some people might be worried about the questions they ask. Is this going to be offensive or, you know, they bring preconceptions to it. And that's been helpful for me.

Well, number one, meeting people who are a variety of genders, actually knowing people in real life. Then also taking time to read a book or listen to some podcasts of actual trans folks or nonbinary folks. Listen to their voices. That's how I have been plugging into it. I've been using this show to help myself do that.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Yeah. We did a wonderful episode with a therapist in LA who works with kids and families who are trans or gender questioning. And we asked him about the contagion issue because it's a question we hear about all the time. And he says, you know, kids try on all sorts of identities through this stage of life.

It doesn't mean they're gonna choose to go on to actually transition and make a physical transition to another gender. They're exploring, they're testing things out. And it's not their job to know exactly who they are or who they want to be, whether that's about gender or about sexual—and that adults, we want sort of certainty, right?  We want our kids to land on who they are. And yet they don't know what career they're gonna have. They don't know what they're gonna study.

BLAIR HODGES: They're going to do what I tell them to do. So I do know. My kids will—[laughter]

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: That totally works all day.

BLAIR HODGES: This is the funny thing about contagion, Vanessa, is like, try to get a kid to do something they don't want. Good luck, especially with something this big.

CARA NATTERSON: I wish doing dishes was contagious, it would be amazing.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: But also, all kidding aside, in our conversation, he said—and he himself is a transgender person. He said it is such a hard road to choose. Like, you don't choose it because it's sort of fun or in vogue because it is a lifelong decision, and it is not an easy decision and it is physically and emotionally draining and difficult and a million other things.

And so he said, don't focus on what they're saying today. Just make sure they know that you love them and let them go through this process of figuring out who they are in the way they're doing in a million other ways at this age.

BLAIR HODGES: Because it's healthier for them. Let's say they're thinking about it and then they decide, okay, they kind of go back or, you know, retransition or whatever, or if they don't, either way, you've been there with them that whole time.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Yep.

BLAIR HODGES: So the goal here to me isn't to be like, okay, how can I best situate myself to control the outcome, but rather, how can I be supportive of my kid in the moment? The best studies show that being supportive of kids that are gender non-conforming or trying to figure that out is the best way to improve and keep their emotional health strong. Help them feel supported.

CARA NATTERSON: And I'll just add that in the exact same way that we tell kids, give your brain time to make good decisions, we tell parents, give your kid time before you need to jump on labeling something or taking action. This is, you know, the conversation Vanessa referenced. One of the most important takeaways for both of us was really this notion of being supportive sometimes just means listening and understanding.

It doesn't necessarily mean there are twenty-five things we have to take action on right now, today, or your window is closed. Especially around questions about identity. There's time to have conversation. And if we all gave ourselves the privilege of time and we paced things out and we didn't need to rush it all, I think we would save ourselves a lot of heartache on so many topics.

BLAIR HODGES: That's Cara Natterson. She co-hosts This is so Awkward. A really great podcast about puberty with Vanessa Kroll Bennett and they wrote the book together, This is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained.

 

Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises – 01:04:19

 

BLAIR HODGES: We always like to conclude with "Regrets, Challenges, & Surprises." You don't have to speak to all three. You can choose kind of, you know, what's the most interesting thing here?

Is there something you would change about the book now that it's out, what the hardest part about writing it was, or if there's something brand new you learned, like, “Wow, I thought I knew a lot. But as we're writing this book. Wow. Was I surprised by this thing that came up.”

So I'll let you decide what you want to speak to.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Cara, you want to go first? Do you want me to go first?

CARA NATTERSON: You know I'm writing notes right now to try to figure out—

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Always. Always—

CARA NATTERSON: Vanessa, you go. [laughter]

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: So, Blair, this was my first book and Cara's tenth book.

BLAIR HODGES: Oh, okay. I only mentioned, like, three of them. Oh, there was a series.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Yeah, it's a series. And then there's books that she wrote before The Care and Keeping of You. So one of us is a seasoned pro at writing these books, and one of us isn't. And we wrote this book in a summer. We wrote it in three months.

BLAIR HODGES: Wow.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Because we wanted it to come out a year before the 2024 election instead of having it come out right around the election. And that proved to be an excellent decision by us—actually, by Cara. And we wrote it together. Like, we literally split the book in half. There are certain chapters where Cara had to do a lot more writing, like the contraception chapter.

CARA NATTERSON: 500-page contraception chapter.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: So there were no regrets. It was a really joyful collaboration.

Cara is a fierce editor. I like four verbs when one verb would do just fine. But it was really, really wonderful I think, what I learned from Cara. And then I'll share what I learned about the science—is that science can be written in a really funny, engaging, beautiful, relatable way. And she does it so incredibly.

BLAIR HODGES: This book flows. It does.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: And we edited each other throughout. We didn't just have an amazing editor, but we edited each other over and over again. One of us edited the other one a little bit more, but, you know, that's okay. [laughter]

And the hardest part was actually creating a united voice while still letting personality shine through. And I think we did a nice job with that. I think we kept it voicey and fun and funny and relatable, even while covering some really intense topics.

The thing that I learned that I think about all the time is, you know how kids have, like, their feet seem so huge, like they're on skis? Like, they're not that tall, but somehow they have these enormous feet. And I always was like, “Oh, isn't that funny?” And their hands are like puppies. Right? They're, like, huge. So what I learned from the growth spurts chapter from Cara was that, literally, kids grow from the outside in. So the first things to grow are their hands and their feet and then their appendages, their arms and their legs, and their trunk is the last place to grow. The bones there grow last.

And so it's not just something I imagined. And I love thinking about it because it's like this beautiful metaphor of how kids grow as human beings. They grow from the outside in, and they're dealing, they're navigating with all these external changes, but also inside, at the heart of them, that might be the last place to grow, the last place to mature, but when it does, it's really incredible.

So that was my lovely surprise.

BLAIR HODGES: And that reminds me of your advice in the book to talk to kids about how, like, a lot of growth happens when they're sleeping. And I have definitely used that—I didn't tell my kids, you're gonna grow bigger if you sleep. I say, look, if you like growing, maybe you want to keep growing, and if we want to grow as much as your body can, sleep is when that's happening, kiddo. We gotta hit the hay right now.

CARA NATTERSON: Just saying.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. So thank you.

CARA NATTERSON: Mic drop.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, Cara, what have you got?

CARA NATTERSON: Okay. Wrote down my notes. I'm all organized now.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Okay. [laughter]

BLAIR HODGES: She wrote a new chapter.

CARA NATTERSON: Well, it's been five minutes, so I did write a chapter.

Regrets, that we didn't get to our final cover art sooner. Vanessa and I—I would say I really work hard to be a kind and loving person at all times, but I was not super kind and loving in the cover art process because I was so sure it mattered what was on the cover of the book.

PS It does! And we ended up with the coolest cover ever. But it took—I am not exaggerating, Blair—as long to write the book as it did to get to the cover art.

BLAIR HODGES: See, that's a big deal. Because publishers often control that. They're so controlled.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: They were very generous and gave us a lot of say-so. And in the end, a couple of people have realized what the inspiration is for the cover, the cover is inspired by Nora Ephron's book, I think. Is it called Things about My Neck or My Neck Hurts and Other Things?

And it was another Random House book. And so they were kind of, like, willing to play with that. But it took us months to get to that concept.

CARA NATTERSON: We were relentless.

BLAIR HODGES: What was the worst concept that you saw?

CARA NATTERSON: So many!

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: The ones with, like, eight fonts on them. I would say that was the one where Cara would text me and be like, I hate this so much. I don't even know what to do with myself.

BLAIR HODGES: I wanted one that looks like the carpet of a roller-skating rink from when I was a kid. You know, that's like all—

CARA NATTERSON: Carpet from roller-skating rink is the best line.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: We did look at having a roller coaster on the cover because we use that metaphor a lot in the book, but it felt like a little bit on the nose, and we couldn't find a roller coaster that we liked.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, okay.

CARA NATTERSON: I mean, so that was my regret, that we didn't get there faster. But I have no regrets about where we got.

Challenges. I'd say the biggest challenge was convincing Vanessa that one normally writes a hundred-thousand-word book in three months. It is not normal at all!

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: No.

CARA NATTERSON: I was like such a drill sergeant, but we had it in us. And Vanessa makes it sound like I did more writing than she did. By no means—

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Just on contraception.

CARA NATTERSON: Yes. She is such a fifty-fifty partner.

BLAIR HODGES: But all I remember from that chapter is that I'm supposed to throw condoms out the window as my kids are passing by.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Right.

BLAIR HODGES: Is that memory is correct?

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: At school, you just throw the condoms.

CARA NATTERSON: Out the car window with their names written on them. Yes. So that was the challenge. Vanessa met and exceeded the challenge. And it was only when we were in the first page proof review process that she said, wait a second. Normal people don't write a book in three months. It's fifteen months.

And I was like, sorry! That was a challenge.

The biggest surprise—and this is gonna sound so weird, but I think this is not so much a book thing as a sort of where Vanessa and I, we spend all day, every day working together. It's always surprising to me that what is in our brains is not common knowledge.

Like, I just leapfrog past the five most important foundational concepts because I want to get to the new research and the nitty gritty. And it takes the people around us going, “Stop, rewind. Nobody knows the first five things you just blurted out in one second flat. And go back and share all of that because we need to know.”

And I think that is a constant surprise to me, but it is something I'm trying to bring to the front of my brain and not be surprised by because it's when we share the most basic information that we get the most feedback. It's wild.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, I think you did such a terrific job with this book. I can't recommend enough. Truly. When I heard you were willing to do the show, I was absolutely thrilled because it's such an important topic and it’s the best book I've read on this, and I've read a number of them.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Thank you.

CARA NATTERSON: Thank you.

BLAIR HODGES: Yes, it's called This Is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained. Vanessa and Cara, thank you for talking to us about it today. This has been a lot of fun.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: You are a great interviewer, Blair, and as people who interview people for livelihood, it's a pleasure to be interviewed by someone who is as thoughtful and prepared and fun as you are. So thank you for having me.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, don't forget to rate and review the show, Vanessa.

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: I haven't rated and reviewed my own show, but I will come and rate and review your show because it's such a pleasure.

BLAIR HODGES: Thanks!

VANESSA KROLL BENNETT: Thank you so much.

CARA NATTERSON: Thank you.

 

Outro – 01:13:24

 

BLAIR HODGES: Thanks for listening to another episode of Relationscapes. We're mapping out the stories and ideas that shape who we are and how we connect with each other. If you enjoyed this episode and you're thirsty for more, you'll love Cara and Vanessa's book and also their podcast. This Is So Awkward. And while you're looking that up, you might as well take a second to rate and review Relationscapes in Apple Podcasts or in Spotify.

That's what BB 8642 did. I wonder if they're related to BB8, but they gave me five stars. They said they love how the show gives space to multiple perspectives and especially people who have unconventional wisdom to share. So thanks for reviewing BB. I really appreciate that.

I'm also looking for listener feedback. You can email or DM me a voice memo with your thoughts about this episode or any episode, really.

Send it to blair at firesidepod dot org or @_relationscapes on Instagram and you might find yourself featured in an upcoming mini episode.

Mates of State, provided our theme song. Relationscapes is part of the Dialogue Podcast Network. I'm Blair Hodges and I'll see you again soon.