Health education varies greatly from place to place. Some boys receive great, age-appropriate, inclusive health education at school. Others do not. “It’s pretty inconsistent,” says Christopher Pepper, a health educator who currently teaches in the San Francisco Unified School District & is working on a book called TALK TO YOUR BOYS: 27 Crucial Conversations Parents Need to Have with Boys Today – and How to Start Having Them. “What’s covered is pretty different and how the subject is...

How do you make space for a teenage boy to make his own mistakes? Photo by olia danilevich via Pexels Especially when said teenager is frustrating, annoying, and contributing to family chaos? Sandra said: Teenager years are frustrating — wanting to tell him what do, yet I know he needs to make his own mistakes. Throw in toddler boy hitting/screaming at his brother….She is definitely not the only parent wondering how to deal with a teen boys & balance the needs of siblings! That’s we...

Have you heard of autonomy-supportive parenting?  Essentially, it’s the opposite of helicopter parenting. It’s a parenting style that allows, supports, and encourages kids to make decisions and take action. And unlike helicopter parenting, which demands near-constant parental activity, autonomy-supportive parenting also supports parental rest (and can reduce burnout). “Intensive parenting is not good for our kids. They need the freedom to explore and experiment, and this is where stepping...

If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, you can call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline for help in the United States. Call 988 or 800-273-TALK (8255). The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is open 24 hours a day, every day. Services are also available en espanol. AnneMoss Rogers’ son Charles was “the life of the party.” He loved dogs, people, & games. And he died of suicide at age 20. Statistically, Charles’ story is all too common. Suicide is the second leading cause of...

Supporting LGBTQ+ kids helps them become healthy adults. Jo Langford is a father, therapist, and author of The Pride Guide: A Guide to Social and Sexual health for LGBTQ Youth and Spare Me “The Talk!” (for both boy-identified and girl-identified youth). He helps kids and parents navigate sexuality, gender, media, and technology. Supporting LGBTQ+ KidsRule of thumb: Never out someone. The decision to disclose (or not disclose) one’s sexual orientation is an individual one. You should not out...

Gender equity begins at home. Policies matter, of course, but not as much as parenting. Think about that for a moment.  Parents need to think & talk about gender stereotypes and expectations because those stereotypes and expectations affect our parenting, says Shelly Vaziri Flais, a pediatrician, mom of four, and author of Nurturing Boys to Be Better Men: Gender Equality Starts at Home. Gender also affects our boys’ experiences in the world, so if we don’t consciously consider gender in...

Boys are twice as likely as girls to be friendless in middle school. And by adulthood, 1 in 5 men say they don’t have any close friends. Friendship matters for guys too – but clearly, boys face some unique challenges. “Boys & men have special challenges because of the image of how they’re ‘supposed to be,'” says Dr. Eileen Kennedy-Moore, a psychologist and author who may be better known as Dr. Friendtastic. Some boys, for instance, love rough & tumble play. But 40% of boys don’t like...

Jen Lumanlan, author of Parenting Beyond Power: How to Use Connection & Collaboration to Transform Your Family, believes there’s a direct link between parenting and social justice. “The way that we raise our children — the daily interactions that we have with them that seem like they’re about discipline — actually support our children in learning about how power works in families and in our culture,” she says. “That shapes how they go out into the world and treat other people. If we want...

Our boys are growing up in public. Between social media, online monitoring, and geo-tracking, our kids’ lives are public in a way ours never were when we were young. Helping kids manage this digital landscape can be a challenge for parents and adults who often worry and frequently ignore the upsides of digital life. “24/7 access to one another is a huge source of stress.”Feeling like you have to be accessible at all times is stressful for our kids. (And us!) But kids also enjoy positive...

How do you calm the chaos in your household? Big emotions, power struggles, and challenging behaviors can create (& feed!) chaos, affecting the entire family. And it’s next to impossible for anyone to operate at their best in a constant state of chaos. “I felt like an absolute failure for the first seven years” of parenting, says Dayna Abraham, author of Calm the Chaos: A Fail-Proof Roadmap for Parenting Even the Most Challenging Kids. “The calls from school were coming daily. My son was...

Dr. Lisa Damour is our go-to expert regarding the emotional lives of teens.  She is a psychologist & author of The Emotional Lives of Teenagers: Raising Connected, Capable, and Compassionate Adolescents, and although her previous two books were a deep dive into the world of girls, she gets boys. Consider this sentence: If a boy “doesn’t feel that he has permission to let people know he’s hurting, it’s a good bet that he will discharge his unwanted emotions by acting out.”That one sentence...

Crisis and catastrophe no longer seem so rare. There were 51 school shootings that resulted in injury or death in 2022. Wildfires are destroying communities and affecting air quality. Hurricanes, heat, infectious disease (malaria is back in the U.S & COVID-19 infections are rising), increasing rates of depression and suicide…it’s a lot. And that’s on top of the now-typical anxiety many parents and kids feel about school and sports performance. “We, as parents and caregivers of kids, are...

What do college students think about masculinity? About fatherhood? About the trauma & violence faced by men in society? Kevin Roy, a family science professor at the University of Maryland (& father of 3 sons), encourages his students to discuss these topics (& more) in his popular class, “Man Up.” “Young women come in saying, ‘what is going on with guys?'” Kevin says. “The young men who take the course are really interested in exploring different ways of thinking about, ‘what is...

You don’t want to raise an a*****e.  None of us do! Melinda Wenner Moyer, a science journalist, author, and mom of two, says that science can show us the way. In 2021, she published How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes: Science-Based Strategies for Better Parenting – from Tots to Teens. Melinda is up front about the fact that raising a non-a*****e is a long term project. Kids, she notes, are supposed to be assholes sometimes. “We feel like — and I think that sometimes society tells us — that...

What do boys need to know about birth, babies, and breastfeeding?  A lot more than we’re currently teaching them. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), 83.2% infants born in 2019 (the last year for which data is available) started out receiving some breast milk, and 78.6% were receiving any breast milk at 1 month. At 6 months, 55.8% of infants received any breast milk and 24.9% received breast milk exclusively. Breastfeeding rates tend to decline over time...

Raising Empowered Athletes, by former D1 athlete Kirsten Jones, is the book parents need to navigate today’s youth sports culture. Kids do not need to begin formal sports instruction in preschool, and they don’t need to specialize in a single sport in order to succeed or excel, Kirsten says. In fact, she recommends that kids “try everything” — all kinds of active, physical pursuits, including dance and solo sports – up until age 14 or so. Before that, sports participation should focus on the...

Middle school students are “superheroes in the making,” says Phyllis Fagell, a school counselor, mom, and author of Middle School Superpowers: Raising Resilient Tweens in Turbulent Times. If that sounds crazy to you, consider this: middle schoolers and superheroes “both get catapulted out of a world they know and sent on a jarring (& occasionally scarring) journey. At the start…they’re strangers to themselves and can feel as if their own bodies have betrayed them,” Phyllis says. Middle...

Body image concerns and eating disorders affect boys too.  As many as 75% of adolescent boys are dissatisfied with their bodies. 3% are now using steroids in an attempt to alter their bodies, 7% use supplements, and a 2019 study found that 1 in 5 guys aged 18-24 had an eating disorder due to a desire to enhance muscles. Boys, like girls, need help developing a healthy body image and healthy habits. Eating Disorders May Be Missed in BoysTo date, the “vast majority of body image and eating...

Yes, you can be an unflustered mom. Identifying your anxiety style is the first step, says Amber Trueblood, a mom of four boys (currently ages 10, 12, 14, & 15) and author of The Unflustered Mom: How Understanding the Five Anxiety Styles Transforms the Way We Parent, Partner, Live, and Love. “Anxiety is not one-size-fits-all. It doesn’t look the same for everybody,” Amber says. “What you’re trigged by is going to be different for what triggers someone else emotionally.” Five Anxiety...

Medical expenses are a part of life.  (Particularly if you live in the United States!) Figuring out how to budget and pay for well-child checks, sports physicals, ER and urgent care visits, and recommended screenings is confusing and overwhelming. Health insurance is expensive and difficult to decipher. Independent contractors and entrepreneurs typically don’t have access to group plans, and many available plans simply don’t meet the needs of today’s families. Cost-sharing plans are an...

Now is the best time to raise boys, says psychologist Michael Reichert, founding director of the Center for the Study of Boys’ & Girls’ Lives, author of How to Raise a Boy, and co-author of Equimundo’s recent State of American Men report.  It doesn’t feel that way to many parents (or boys), though. Recently, for the first time in recorded history, a majority of expectant American parents expressed a preference for a female child because boys’ lives are “too uncertain.” “There’s such a...

Sue Atkins encourages parents to slow down, relax, & learn from their children. “We are rushing through life,” says the UK parenting guru.. “We rush everything — we rush our children to eat their breakfast, to do their shoes up, to brush their teeth. And I think children have got something to teach us, because they just don’t worry about those things. They take their time.” Atkins also encourages parents to “exude confidence” — even if they’re not feeling 100% confident — via their voice...

The Whole Child, Whole Life approach can help kids thrive. Stephanie Malia Krauss, a mom of two boys and an author with a background in education and social work, wrote Whole Child, Whole life: 10 Ways to Help Kids Live, Learn, & Thrive because she realized that parents, educators, coaches, community leaders (and so many others!) all need to know how to nurture the whole child. Focusing on certain aspects of a child’s development — say, their academic or athletic development — while...

Want to connect with boys? Pay attention to your nonverbal communication. Tone of voice, body language, facial expressions, and even our breathing influence the perception of our words and messages, says Michael Grinder, who’s known as the “father of nonverbal communication. “If you look at someone and make eye contact, it increases the emotions,” he says. “So if you like the emotions, keep the eye contact. If you do not like the emotions, stop making eye contact.” Females tend to enjoy the...

Gemma Gaudette says “we don’t give boys enough credit.” Gemma, host of Idaho Matters & a mom of two sons (currently ages 11 & 15), knows (from personal experience!) that boys can be dramatic & sensitive, even though society has coded those traits as “feminine.” Yet many adults continue to insist on & impose so-called “masculine” expectations on boys, without recognizing the breadth of normal variation. Many adults also react to boys’ behavior based on their experiences with...