Why we must talk to our Boys the way we talk to our Girls | Cara Natterson | TEDxCrossroadsSchool

I have this completely simple but apparently radical idea about puberty it's not so different for boys and for girls I'm a pediatrician so I get that the parts are different and how those parts are going to change that's different and when and what they will do with those parts once they have transformed I get all that but how parents parent their girls versus their boys is different and it shouldn't be and in fact how the whole world talks to boys versus girls is different and it shouldn't be because the world talks to girls parents grandparents health experts educators content creators writers bloggers vloggers our endless communication with our girls is a boon but our lack of communication with our boys is a fail and I think we have to change that because the stakes have never been higher we pretty much all except at this point that the end of puberty is a ways away from full adulthood and yet teenagers they are accountable for their actions not only that but their actions their often being recorded and then shared either in the moment or saved for some future sharing opportunity so while adolescents used to be a time to make mistakes in reality now teenagers can only make certain types of mistakes now I get why we talked to girls when they're in puberty and that's because from the very beginning from that very first curve that appears girls tend to wear their moods on the outside and they get chatty so in the decades since I was a tween which by the way wasn't even a word when I was one there has been a profound shift to take advantage of that chattiness girls and so the world gave them a microphone and they used it they started to share how they felt about their body about their friends and then they moved to more profound topics they started to talk about self-esteem and safety and consent girls talk not always not always nicely not always to the adults in their lives and not always in the classroom but girls talk and you see it's not that girls have don't have issues with their femaleness because they do but they have the language to manage those issues they have the practice using that language because they have lots of talking practice now boys they go through puberty a very different way boys get quiet some of them it's like they're silent basically monosyllabic yeah no okay or just the grunt you know the grunt some boys talk to the adults in their lives or to their friends but it's usually less than before by the end of middle school when the zits are popping and taking off a pair of shoes can completely clear a room most boys have retreated and we all parents and grandparents and health experts and educators and content creators and writers and bloggers and vloggers we all honor it and allow it and we become silent in return we treat adolescent boy quiet like it is some sort of hormonal rite of passage not to be messed with and I will tell you I have looked through all the data but I cannot find a decent study that shows me why boys tend to go quiet during this period of their life so maybe it's hormones maybe it's not I don't know but what I do know is that dads tend to defend it they say I got quiet and I turned out fine so it's no big deal even I even turned out multi syllabic no one is giving our voice a microphone my idea is that we actively leave our boys out of the very same conversations that we pull our girls into and all the while puberty is not so different for boys and for girls yes the parts are different you know it's not different the experience of transformation you know what else isn't different the expectations on the other end when you emerge closer to adulthood those are the same for both genders and they are much better managed with communication skills I come at this topic from a unique perspective because I make a living communicating with kids in puberty so I am a pediatrician but I left my practice ten years ago to become a writer and I literally fell into writing the most widely read girl body book in the country a book called the care and keeping of you I did not write the original book that book came out 20 years ago I wish I had because it became a cult classic within an instant but several years ago I joined with American girl who is the publisher of that book and yes the manufacturer of those dolls and we partnered I updated the original Karen keeping and then I wrote a series of other books in the same title sequence and today six million girls own a caring keeping book these books are passed down through family members and through friend groups they are basic basic body-positive puberty primers designed to start conversations and their reach is bananas so when I got to American Girl first day I got there I pitched a boy book and they laughed at me and they didn't even laugh at me because they're a girl company that only makes things for girls they laughed at me because they said no boy would ever want to read a book about his body I disagreed so I took my idea to every publisher I knew big and small and they all said the same thing but the thing is every boy I had ever taken care of in the office every boy I knew would want to read that book frankly the only boy who would not want to read that book was my son because it's not the book you want to read when it's written by your mother I pitched for five years and I got know a hundred different ways and then one day out of the blue I get a call from American girl and they said we're reconsidering because hey boys go through puberty too and I wrote that book so fast I was not giving anyone a chance to think twice in 2017 we launched guy stuff the body book for boys 80% of the content in the boy book and the girl book is identical the words are a little different the tone the pictures but the content is the same and that's because the basic lessons of puberty whether it's the virtue of sleep or why you need to use soap in the shower these lessons have nothing to do with gender oh they have to do with is good basic information and communication I think the real reason I prevailed actually was that the simple fact that our kids today are entering puberty 1 to 2 years earlier than we did and this information first came to light in 1997 when a very large study of girls was released the data was released showing that girls in fact were going into puberty much younger than their mothers ever did did so over the past two decades we've seen multiple studies looking at girl populations and they've all confirmed with the original 1997 study showed which is why we now accept it as completely normal to see signs of puberty beginning as young as 8 in Caucasian and Hispanic girls and as young as 7 in black girls and in fact this is why American Girl wrote the original Karen keeping book they saw this article in the New York Times and said we have to address our core constituency of little girls who are starting to look like women 15 years later data started to emerge about boys and it turns out that they too were facing a downward shift in the entry to puberty but the thing is when boys enter puberty they tend to do it quietly they don't have budding breasts and widening hips for all the world to see their changes for the first couple of years at least happen under the underpants and the thing is that parents will tell you that if you have a son in the very beginning of puberty living in your house this is the very same age when boys become incredibly private so parents always say to me how am I supposed to know what's happening under their underpants because of the privacy thing it's very amazing to me to see the difference in the reaction to these two sets of articles but I understand it now in 1997 we wanted to talk about girls and their body changes because we could all see it but 15 years later in 2012 when the data showed that the average age for a boy to enter puberty was 10 if he was Caucasian or Hispanic and 9 if he was black I think no one believed it because we didn't see it we don't talk to our boys as they enter puberty because we don't recognize that they are in it they just smell a little bit more and they think a little bit less and they slowly slowly start to shut their doors and their mouths we don't talk to them because according to every man I have ever asked no one talked to me and I came out ok it's nothing to worry about they say we don't talk to them because we don't think they're ready for it we know their brains are not mature they are not going to be able to think like adult and make smart consequential long decisions consistently for another one to two decades but they don't have long we have to have those conversations sooner - parents who do talk to their boys often they cover any given subject once or twice which is great but this stuff is like feeding a new food to a baby you need to give it ten times before they stop spitting it out we can do better and we have to because the future of our kids our boys and our girls depends not just on navigating school and sports and future job prospects but also friendships and safety romance and consent bullying and violence standing by and standing up and if we don't have those conversations with our kids we're not modeling for them what they need to do to manage those issues nor are we filling the toolkit that they need for life so it is having a thousand conversations in a thousand different ways that help prepare our kids for life's myriad of scenarios I am telling you as a pediatrician as an expert in puberty and as a mom of a teenage daughter and a teenage son we need to talk to our boys the way we talk to our girls which means constantly we need to hand them a microphone so that they can find their voice and they can then find a way to talk back to us and to their friends and the world we would not tolerate our girls shutting the door and going silent because they need to know while our boys need to know so if you have a son who is retreating and starting to shut the door which is completely normal just stick your foot in and start talking thank you you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 8,209

Rating: 4.8888888 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Change, Children, Gender

Id: zyd7A9bInfM

Length: 13min 18sec (798 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 10 2019