How to Talk About Puberty (and Why You Shouldn’t Be Afraid To!)
Dr. Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll-Bennett of the Puberty Podcast answering all of your questions on puberty
Dr. Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll-Bennett are the hosts of the ever-popular Puberty Podcast and authors of the recent book, This is So Awkward: Modern Puberty Explained. Dr. Cara Natterson is a pediatrician and author of the best-selling Care and Keeping of You series. Vanessa Kroll-Bennett is a puberty expert, writer, and founder of Dynamo Girl, a company focused on building children’s self-esteem through physical activity and puberty education. Together they created the first-ever company focused 100% on puberty called Order of Magnitude (OOM). When I heard them speak last Fall, I knew that I needed to interview them for the Parenting Translator newsletter and podcast. Cara and Vanessa are a gift to all of us parents who are nervous about puberty— they are as hilarious as they are informative AND they present research-backed information about puberty in a way that helps all of us to feel more prepared and less stressed for this huge life transition.
You can listen to the interview through the link below or read the transcript of the interview in this newsletter
Cara Goodwin: Hi everyone, this is Dr. Cara Goodwin. Welcome to the Parenting Translator Newsletter and Podcast. I am beyond thrilled today because I have some of the best guests today. I have Dr. Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll-Bennett who are the authors of the recent book, This is So Awkward, Modern Puberty Explained. Thank you so much for being here. Could you both introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the book?
Cara Natterson: Sure. So I'll start. I'm Cara. Cara and I have already bonded. We don't even need to know each other and we've bonded over the Cara of it all. I'm Cara Natterson. I'm a pediatrician. I came at this work through first Pediatrics and then I flipped into writing books. I wrote books about parenting, books about growing up. I worked on the American Girl: Care and Keeping of You line which has been a true joy. As I really got into that line of books was when I realized there was nothing more than some really wonderful, but limited books in terms of helping guide kids and their adults through the journey of puberty. So I started a product company that makes really comfortable product that is aimed at solving the pain points of puberty and partnered with Vanessa on all of it. Now we are a 360 degree solution to the decade of life that is physical and emotional transformation.
Vanessa Kroll-Bennett: I come to the world of puberty from having run a girls’ sports program for a decade using sports to build girls’ self-esteem. Pretty quickly into running that program, I noticed how the girls in my classes, the 8-, 9-, and 10-year-old girls were starting puberty and everyone was pretty surprised about it, the girls and their parents and the coaches and everyone. So I set out thinking if we want to help keep kids' self-esteem high over the course of the tween and teen years, a big part of that is giving them reliable, science-based, relatable information about their growing and changing bodies and giving their parents that information because it helps only if everybody understands what's happening.
Cara Goodwin: I saw Vanessa and Cara speak at my kids’ school and you were just so hilarious and also informative at the same time. I just knew I had to have you on the podcast and I'm so thrilled to have you here. I have so many questions and my kids haven't even started puberty, so I can't imagine how many questions parents who are in the thick of this have.
I'd love to jump right into it. I have younger kids. I have my baby here with me as we're recording. My oldest is 8 and I have a 5-year-old and 3-year-old. A lot of my listeners and followers also have younger kids who aren't quite at puberty age. I think I speak for all of us with younger kids that we’re already pretty worried about it.
When do we need to start talking to kids about puberty? And what do we say to young kids to prepare them and start the conversation, but not scare them about all this crazy stuff that they have coming in the future?
Cara & Vanessa: Let's start with removing the fear and the worry. That's the very first thing. It's completely rational and sane to be concerned about it, but we are going go give you full permission to let that emotion go because if you're armed with information and you're armed with the gift of knowing that you get to try these conversations lots of different ways over lots of different years, it feels less stressful, right?
That's the first big piece of advice we have is to the adults in the equation, take a breath, let it go, it's going to be fine. In terms of talking to kids, I'll tee it off and then pass it off to Vanessa, but our feeling is it's never too soon to start conversations about transforming bodies, transforming feelings, transforming friendships, and family dynamics, right?
Starting to use language, specific language, to identify the anatomical body parts or the way you feel about something are the toes into the water that become the more complicated conversations about puberty. So for instance, like with a baby on the changing table, you can use the anatomically correct words for all of her body parts. With kids in the bath, you can refer to their body parts as vulva and vagina and penis.
So we like to say if you're a household that's talking about “pocketbooks” and “swords,” it's time to move to vaginas and penises. But it's really hard because if you didn't grow up using that terminology, if you don't come from a background where those words were deemed totally normal and acceptable and instead they were considered “bad words” that takes some getting over and some getting used to. We just want to reassure people for whom that feels really intimidating and challenging. Like we hear you, we see you, but the research tells us that kids who know the names of all of their body parts are less likely to be victims of sexual predation. So like truly, truly teaching kids the names of their body parts helps keep them safer.
The other thing that can start as early as preschool or kindergarten are conversations about consent. Not conversations about consent in the context of sex, that comes much, much later in life, but conversations such as: “Can I sit on your lap? Can I hold your hand? Can I have a bite of your sandwich? Those are things where kids learn about their own boundaries, asking for permission to be in someone else's space requiring permission. So like we're in between all the holidays right now and being around relatives who demand hugs or kisses from our kids when maybe our kids don't feel super comfortable doing that, teaching them it's okay to say, “No thank you, can I give you a high five instead?” So those are early conversations that are really the foundation for later conversations about puberty and then later down the road for more complex conversations about sexuality, but those you can have with kids at any age, at any stage.
Cara Goodwin: So the answer is it's never too early.
Cara & Vanessa: It's never too early and it's never too late because we hear from people with kids in high school who say, I have never had these conversations with my kids. Am I too late? And the truth is no, because at any point by opening up these conversations, what you're saying to your kid is, I recognize that you have a body that's growing and changing and you are in the world in that body and we can talk about it even if it feels awkward or uncomfortable for one of us or both of us.
Cara Goodwin: Yes, and probably both of us is usually the situation.
So, speaking about talking to young kids, I love this approach of being open, but how do we be open and honest with our kids without telling too much when other parents are maybe not ready for that?
Cara & Vanessa: Kids need to understand what is news to share and what is not. There's a fine line between shaming the information, making the information secretive versus explaining to them why another adult, a parent, grandparent, caretaker, might be a little offended that they gave the information.
One way that parents can do it is to say: “I'm going to talk to you about all this, but this is information that parents often like to talk about with their kids directly. So I'm going to ask that we have this conversation, and if you have questions or want to talk about it again, you come back to me, but not to your friends.” It’s a great way of not making the conversation secretive. You're just emphasizing that it's between the two of you.
We get this question, not just about talking about periods or any of the many, many conversations we have with kids. It could be about having a conversation with kids about pornography or having conversations with kids about sex. And people are like, I don't wanna shame them, but also as you experienced, and as we have both experienced at different times in our parenting journey, our kids have taken it upon themselves to share that information.
There's nothing inappropriate about explaining bodily functions to your kid. It's just as you say every family has different comfort levels with that information and mostly people worry about what the next questions they're going to get because they assume if you talk about periods that next we're going to talk about sex or something like that. So I think it's I think it's just a matter of making sure kids know you're giving them this information and there's nothing shameful or wrong with it. And also it's not for them to educate the entire kindergarten class.
Cara Goodwin: So explain to them that this is something that just we talk about. It doesn't mean it's a secret. It doesn't mean there's anything shameful about it. It just is a conversation between you and me.
So I've heard this before, but I haven't seen any research backing this up. Is there anything to the idea that moms should discuss puberty with girls and dads should discuss puberty with boys? And then what do you do If you are a single-parent or one parent just isn't really good at having these conversations? Is there anything to that idea?
Cara & Vanessa: We really believe that parents of all genders should be talking to kids of all genders about this decade long stage of life. As you point out, there are families where there's a single parent and they don't share the same equipment as their kid. It doesn't mean they're not going have the conversation with that kid or a household where there's two parents of the same sex and they have kids of a different sex. I think societally we've had this situation where people say mom should talk to girls and dads should talk to boys because they share the equipment. But honestly, sometimes parents are really comfortable and good at having these conversations and they don't share the equipment. Or sometimes the parents are really uncomfortable, but the fact is that they need to be part of the conversation because you never know when they're more comfortable going to one parent than another. And then all of a sudden it changes and that parent is like out of fashion and the other parent is the one they want to go to.
Everybody needs to be connected to kids and having these conversations with kids, partially just to send the message, there's nothing wrong with these conversations. There's nothing shameful or inappropriate. If one parent is always having them and the other one isn't, a kid might infer that there's something wrong with talking about these things. There's also a benefit to having some conversations with the expert, the person who has been through something or lived with something and some conversations with someone who's on the steep part of the learning curve. So if you've got a dad of a daughter and the dad really doesn't know anything about female anatomy and about periods and he educates himself, and he's on the steep learning curve, sometimes that conversation resonates more. It's like, we're both learning about this. How awesome is this? How crazy is this? And sometimes going to the one who has lived it is more valuable. So there's benefit across the board to having lots of different types of conversations with all the adults in your life.
I do think if you are a parent, we've heard from many, many parents over the years who are either a single-parent or in a same-sex couple who are raising kids of other genders, and they say I want someone of their gender to also talk to them. Then you go out and you find other trusted adults who can be another source of information, another resource for your kid. Because I don't know what it feels like to have an erection or wake up in the morning and have noticed that there's a wet dream that happened in the middle of the night. Kids do want to ask people who've experienced those experiences. So if you are a parent who's raising a kid and you haven't had the physical transformation that kid has had, find a relative, a friend, somebody in the community who you trust to be another resource for your kid.
Cara Goodwin: Okay, that is so helpful. So it's really helpful to have both parents talk to them. If you need to find somebody of the same gender, that can be really helpful.
So when do you need to start talking to kids about being naked together? I know it's not even as simple as separating opposite genders— it's more complicated. So when do you need to start thinking about that? And also with parents, when do I need to not shower with my child and think about that and how do we gauge their comfort level?
Cara & Vanessa: You know, our best advice is you use the kids as your guide because all of this is driven by not just what feels “right” in big quotation marks, but also the personalities and temperaments and numbers of kids in the house and reality, how many bathrooms are there, how much time is there. And then there's things like comfort level and, history, what if you have a child who's been the victim of an assault? What does that look like versus a child who has never had that experience? So there are lots and lots and lots of mitigating factors. But our best piece of advice is, if both of the kids are asking for it and are totally comfortable, and the dynamic that you see is totally playful and healthy and wonderful, great, continue. As soon as your adult radar picks up that one of them doesn't really want to be in that situation, feels a little embarrassed, wants to be private, is thinking that they're saying yes to please everyone around them, but really doesn't want to, you call it. That's when you speak up and say something.
We had a situation in my house where one of my oldest kids would come to the breakfast table without a shirt on. And one morning my daughter was like: “Can you go put a shirt on? I don't want to be at the breakfast table with you without a shirt on.” Now, she's a forceful, expressive kid. So she was comfortable saying that. Not every kid is going to say that. So sometimes we have to read the body language and the facial expressions of the kids. But I think in so many ways, our society projects sexuality onto kids at ages when they're really not feeling it or thinking about it and they're still really just interested in being together and spending time together.
The other question we get all the time is when can I stop walking around naked in front of my kids as an adult? That's another common question. And again, the kids will tell you or they'll stop just barging into your bathroom or they'll stop just barging into your bedroom. They'll start to knock or they'll start to ask. And those are all skills that we really want kids to develop and learn. Those are foundational skills in terms of beginning to respect boundaries, beginning to ask for boundaries. We actually want kids to build the muscle of expressing those things, rather than always moving ahead of them and creating the scenarios for them without building those.
But I would add a big asterisk, which is if you are a naked household, and that is what works for your family. Great. But educate your kids as they get older about being in other people's households and how other families might do it differently because there's a real shock coming when your kid is a nudist at someone else's house and you get the phone call.
Dr. Cara Goodwin: Oh my gosh. Great, great points. Even if they are comfortable, remind them that maybe not everybody is comfortable with it.
In the book, you talk a lot about the research on puberty starting earlier. I think this research is just fascinating. So could you talk a little bit about this? Is puberty really starting earlier? Why? And what does that mean for our kids?
Cara & Vanessa: Yes. How's this for a short answer— it is starting on average between eight and nine for girls and between nine and 10 for boys. That is different from a generation or two ago when it started at 11 for girls and 11 and a half for boys. How we measure that is looking mostly at physical shifts that are markers of the path to sexual maturity. So breast growth in females, penile and testicular growth in males. So that's what we're looking at.
The studies are not robust. They only look at three racial groups of kids. So White or Caucasian, Hispanic or Latino, Black or African American. No other racial groups have been thoroughly investigated in big enough numbers. So that's a travesty and people are working on correcting that. We generalize data and we can use statistical powering. There are always going to be people who read studies who say that's not reflective of what's really going on because of X, Y, and Z. There's always going to be criticism of the data, which is why you always keep collecting data to make sure that the data stays relevant. But yeah, puberty starts two and a half to three years sooner on average than it did certainly when I was going through it. Now you all are a little bit younger than I am. And so maybe the timeframe had already started to shift.
Then the follow-up question we get is: Why? And the answer is nobody knows that either. But it's some combination of everything that we put into and onto our body. And it's not really everything, it's the things that ultimately disrupt the way hormones work. There are a bunch of studies now furiously trying to answer what exactly are those things. So that's one bucket. Another bucket is antibiotics, but not the antibiotics you give a kid for ear infections or strep throat. It's the antibiotics in the food supply. That's a low dose, chronic load of antibiotics that's shifting the microbiome in the gut that probably has an impact on hormones. And stress, chronic stress that causes cortisol levels to be high, and cortisol levels being high are associated with an earlier onset of puberty.
It's important for people to know that even though it's starting earlier, it's not going faster, it's actually lasting longer. So the researchers, after establishing the earlier onset of puberty, later studies established that the first period, which is a middle marker of female puberty has barely moved. On average, it happens a few months earlier than it did a generation ago. So even though it starts earlier, it's lasting longer. Cara likes to say it stretches like taffy. So that means what used to be like a three to four year sprint through puberty is now basically twice as long and it lasts almost a decade rather than just a few years in middle school.
One of the things that we really encourage people to think about is that even though puberty starts earlier, you can’t assume that a kid with breast buds or growing penis or testicles is automatically becoming a sexual person and someone who's interested in being sexually active. And the truth is that's not the case. Kids' interest in romantic feelings and then later sexual interests, that still comes later in puberty and adolescence. So your eight- or nine-year-old girl is not all of a sudden going to be interested in being sexually active. Your nine- or ten-year-old boy is not all of a sudden going to be interested in being sexually active. And that's where the fear sits. I think that's where the discomfort in knowing that puberty starts earlier, that people assume that like they're going to run out and start doing all sorts of things. No, they're not. And so we want to remember to treat kids emotionally and socially just as we would eight-and nine- and 10-year-olds because they are still socially emotionally those ages.
But the world does sexualize them. Especially girls, you know, girls with budding breasts are sexualized. They are seen through a sexual lens by our society. And it is on us as adults to call that out and stop that behavior because as Vanessa said, they are not becoming sexual beings for several years to come. It's part of puberty, but it's not an early sign of becoming sexual. So why do we as a society ascribe that to kids? I get it, right? So breasts are part of being a sexually mature adult. I get it, but we're calling it. Like, let's all stop.
Dr. Cara Goodwin: That's such an important message. And it also makes me think about the influence of social media. So social media is also a big difference from when we went through puberty that is now just such a big part of it. And I've seen like a series of reels of like, this is what I looked like as a teenager and it shows like the dorky teenager you would think of. And then it's like, and this is teenagers now and it shows these girls wearing midriffs and they were like doing these TikTok dances and looking perfect. And you're like, what? What has happened in the past, 20, 30 years since I went through puberty that now teenagers look like that? Could we talk a little bit about the influence of social media and how that plays into puberty?
Cara & Vanessa: This is a really complex and multi-layered aspect of raising kids today. I think one of the most important things about talking to kids about social media, I mean, yes, we can delay access. Yes, we can delay giving them a phone, but they're on a million other devices— iPads, computers, our phones, their friends' devices. So we can't prevent them from being exposed to social media.
But what we can do is help them become better cultural critics when they are seeing things, right? So a perfect example is a reel of two adolescent girls who have perfectly contoured makeup, who have the latest outfit from Brandy Melville, who've very possibly put on filters and photoshopped whatever they've put out into the world.
And so part of it is making sure kids know that all those things are happening, right? Like they may have spent two hours doing their makeup before they decided to film the TikTok. They might've filmed that TikTok 25 times before they did the one that they decided to air. If it's a still photo, they might've Photoshopped it and filtered it in a million different ways, right? Like letting them know that what the perfection that they're seeing is not necessarily realistic.
By the way, people talk about girls all the time and girls on social media. Boys are no different. The teenage boys that we talk to like to make sure that people know that the guys who show up shirtless and really like jacked and muscular on social media, they've probably lifted weights and done pushups before they film the TikTok or they take the photo of themselves so they look more pumped. They've probably used different filters and Photoshopped themselves just as girls have. They've probably removed lots of body hair or put on self-tanner of some sort. So when we talk to kids about social media, it's really critical not to gender it because kids of all genders are trying to create a “perfect'“ image of how they present themselves on social media. I will say, and then I think Cara will add the flip side of the positive of social media— there are universes where kids present the silly side, the “ugly” side of social media, that unfiltered side, and there are counters to what we see as the perfection ideal.
It's funny, I'm sitting here thinking, we wrote a book called This is So Awkward. I think as a parent of kids who have just come out the other side of puberty, I can say to the question you asked, I expected their puberty to look as awkward as mine did. I was awkward and everyone I knew was awkward. And you're right— this generation is going through this stage of life in a slightly less awkward way, which feels a little weird as the parent who is raising the kid through it. Like, it's not that I want them to feel the way I felt, it's just that I expected that was their journey, and it's a different journey. And the journey is very much a manicured journey, the way Vanessa described it, but the bottom line is, my kids will not have the pictures of themselves that I have of myself from their adolescence, because there's a whole world of documentation that looks different to their generation, right? They do Photoshop and they do filter and they do this. My daughter's favorite, my daughter's 20, her favorite pictures of her childhood self are the weird ones, the ones where she's doing silly things, the ones that are totally not filtered. And I know they're her favorite pictures because she posts those on social media. Like, so I think this whole concept of awkward is very much that, what you're hitting on.
I do think we do need to speak to the positives of social media for one second. So when you look at marginalized communities, LGBTQ plus kids as a perfect example, there's a ton of data that shows that social media has been not just positive, but life-saving for kids. So pediatricians have done a really, really bad job of walking the fine line between the good and the bad with screens and now social media. We're getting better. We're learning from our mistakes. But 10 years ago, we were adamant that no screen time was the way to manage all of this and you could set a clock by it and that was going to solve all the problems. Nope, nope, nope. Didn't help. It was a good idea. Didn't work. It's quality, not quantity. I mean, quantity matters and what they're seeing and what they're watching is as important. And rigidity, like in every other corner of life, rigidity doesn't work as well as flexibility and openness. Kids want limits, kids want rules, they want boundaries, but in the world of social media, you can't just demonize it and say it's all bad. Some of it is really positive. And so being that flexible adult who learns about what they're seeing online, learns about the communities. Yeah, if they're down an Eating Disorders rabbit hole on TikTok, you need to know. But if they're learning how to cook with a community of other kids online who love to cook, wouldn't that be great to know?
Cara Goodwin: Yes, yes. I love that idea of not demonizing social media. You know, it's not so black and white This isn't all evil and it's not all good and that's what we have to teach our kids. Speaking of things that are online and things that have changed I know we need to talk about porn because porn actually was around when I was going through puberty, but it it wasn't everywhere. How do we start, when do we start thinking about this and how do we talk to our kids about it?
Cara & Vanessa: Porn has been around for millennia. It's not a creation of the 21st century. The difference is that the porn of today is so easily accessible online and it's video and it's fed to kids, it's so easily accessed. And then it's not just one video, but it's video after video after video. And free porn, which is what kids are exposed to. It's not the feminist ethical porn behind a paywall. Free porn is often violent and aggressive and non-consensual. So it's scary. It's not just advanced or inappropriate for them. It can be really frightening for kids to see. So we really encourage parents, because the average age of exposure to porn in this country now is 12. Boys are first, but girls aren't far behind. And the Common Sense Media study that came out in January of 2023 told us that 15% of 10-year-olds are exposed to porn.
So knowing that, we have to have conversations with kids about porn because we want to get there before the porn does. We don't want porn to define what they imagine sex to be, what intimate relationships to be, what naked adult bodies should look like, right? There's a million ways in which porn can define for our kids what future relationships are. We know anyone listening has broken out into a cold sweat and feels nauseous with the idea, right? Like we, we're not saying this is easy to understand. It is frightening and uncomfortable. But again it keeps kids healthier and safer if we present ourselves as a reliable source of information as someone they can come to, to ask questions when someone shows it to them on the bus or they see it in school because 41% of kids have seen porn in school. So Cara, I don't know if you want to talk about how you toe into these conversations. I want to give this particular audience a number they can wrap their brain around.
So in a class, typical 25 student class in a fourth grade classroom, three of those kids have seen porn. Right, so that's a number that you can relate to. And we had a parent ask us when we were speaking, at one point they said, but I have a nice kid and my kid has nice friends. One has nothing to do with the other. Porn does not discriminate between, first of all, most kids are nice. Second of all, porn doesn't care, right? That's not how it makes its way to our kids.
So how do you toe into it? Well, you start by defining terms, and the first term is sex. If they don't know what sex is, then a conversation about porn, which is a conversation about the visualization of sex and the commercialization of sex, how are you going to have that conversation? So this is a very slow toe in and it begins with conversations around sex. Do you know what sex is, right? We have a million conversation starters and not a million, but probably conservatively, 30, 40, 50 conversation starters about sex because just getting into that conversation is hard and depends on your personality, your kid's personality, all the circumstances that surround you and your kid. So there are a lot of different ways to describe it.
What we talk about when we're on the road and we feel very strongly about is that an inclusive definition of sex is the only way to go. So if the way that you learned about sex was penis and vagina, which is the way most people learned about sex, okay, that's one way to have sex. But you're going to have to figure out a way to describe the broader category of sexual acts because if you don't include, and this doesn't have to be minute one, but if you don't include oral sex and you don't include anal sex, you're not keeping kids safe. And if you don't talk about masturbation, sex with yourself, you're not being inclusive of all the different kinds of sex. So those conversations may stretch over a long period of time, and it may take you a while to get to porn. Okay, that's fine. When you do get to the porn conversation, you want to start by explaining the why. You want say why you will have no judgment when they see it, because it's a when, not an if. You want to explain to them that you'll never be mad, and you'll always be open to conversation about it.
Again, the words are going to be different in different households. Why it's not the sex you hope they will have. So how do you do that? Again, we have 20, 30, 40 ways into that conversation in the book. It's really going to depend on you and your circumstances. But the most important is the attitude behind it. You're not in trouble. You didn't do anything wrong. You can always come talk to me. As Vanessa always says, even if you're screaming inside your own head, when you're talking to them, you're not sharing any of that angst because it will find them.
Cara Goodwin: That is scary, but so helpful to know. I know you both have to run soon, but just really quickly, could we talk about some of the mood changes to expect in puberty, which I think this is so important because we have a huge mental health crisis right now for adolescents, and so I think it's so important for parents to know what is normal in terms of mood changes, when to be concerned.
Cara & Vanessa: We'll start with our favorite researcher, Louise Greenspan, who says, "The first sign of puberty is not a breast bud and it's not growing testicles or a growing penis. It's a slamming door." And that is the truth. It is the truth and it's the truth for all genders. They may not slam it, they may just shut it and be behind it. But moods are very real. They are physiologically connected to the hormone swings of puberty. So puberty is caused not by a nice slow steady incline in the sex hormones, but by rapid shifts, high highs and low lows of estrogen and progesterone and testosterone. And those hormones circulate in and around the brain and they make your brain feel different. They make kids emotions feel out of control or form.
The hysterical laughter when things aren't that funny, the hysterical tears when things aren't that sad, the rage when the other person's infraction maybe didn't demand such anger, but the anger is bubbling over, the silence, the desire to retreat and put oneself behind a wall. There's a bunch of different ways that moods present themselves. Our society thinks of hormonal moods and mood swings as like the purview of females, but males have their own kinds of moods and mood swings.
So when you're in a household with a kid who is experiencing that, and by the way, if puberty is starting earlier, then mood swings are starting earlier. You want to have some empathy for it, right? They're shocked, confused, embarrassed, ashamed to be having these out of control mood swings and not totally understand what's going on. So empathy is important. Helping them come down from those mood swings, helping them regulate, having them take a deep breath or take a minute is really important. And also when we meet them at their very high level of anger or upset or whatever might be going on, if we meet them there, we're not helping them. So when we do that, when we scream back in the face of a screaming kid, That's a chance to take a do-over and apologize and say to them. “Hey, you needed me to help you calm down and I wasn't helpful and I am so sorry. Can I have another chance to be there for you?” And that might be the most important tool we have in dealing with kids’ mood swings.
Cara Goodwin: That is so, so helpful. I cannot thank you both enough. This has been just beyond interesting. I have so many more questions. Please come back. This has been such a helpful peek into what I have ahead of me and what I can start working on now. Can you tell my listeners and followers where to find more information?
Cara & Vanessa: We'll come back, Cara. We'll come back, I promise. Everything is available at modernpuberty.com. You can find links to our podcast, The Puberty Podcast. You can find links to our product site, which is called Oomla, where we make bras and breathable shorts and socks that do not smell, which are a miracle. You can find links to our puberty portal, which are articles written by and for tweens and teens about very specific experiences of going through puberty.
You can find a sign-up link for our newsletter and a sign-up link for information about the health and sex ed curricula that we are launching to help hopefully solve a lot of informational gaps in schools. So, lots there. On our website, we have resources that we love. So books for kids, books for adults, websites, other podcasts. Many experts that we've respected and have had on the podcast. That's a great place to go. And then on social media, you can find us at Spilling the Pubertea on Instagram and TikTok and at MyOomla. And people can DM us at Spilling the Pubertea. They can email us at thepubertypodcast@gmail.com if they have questions or episode requests. We love, love hearing from people. So don't be shy, get in touch.
Cara Goodwin: Amazing. You have puberty covered, which is just amazing. This is what all of us parents need. So, so grateful to both of you for being here and for providing all of these resources for parents. Thank you so, so much.
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Welcome to the Parenting Translator newsletter! I am Dr. Cara Goodwin, a licensed psychologist with a PhD in child psychology and mother to four children (currently a baby, 3-year-old, 5-year-old, and 8-year-old). I specialize in taking all of the research that is out there related to parenting and child development and turning it into information that is accurate, relevant, and useful for parents! I recently turned these efforts into a non-profit organization since I believe that all parents deserve access to unbiased and free information. This means that I am only here to help YOU as a parent so please send along any feedback, topic suggestions, or questions that you have! You can also find me on Instagram @parentingtranslator, on TikTok @parentingtranslator, and my website (www.parentingtranslator.org).
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