Talk to Your Boys: Raising Confident, Caring Young Men

The Ask Lisa Podcast does not constitute medical advice and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have concerns about your child’s well-being, consult a physician or mental health professional.

The following transcript has been automatically generated by an AI system and should be used for informational purposes only. We cannot guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the information provided.

Christopher Pepper:
Boys are really struggling right now.

Reena Ninan:
A lot of what they’re learning comes from TikTok and YouTube. And even porn.

Joanna Schroeder:
There’s all these ideological predators online that are looking for lonely teenagers to recruit to this extremist hate based behavior.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
How can parents combat these toxic messages without getting into the battle with their boys

Christopher Pepper:
To be accepted in social environments, boys learned to cut off their emotional selves.

Reena Ninan:
How does it affect their mental health and their development?

Joanna Schroeder:
You want him to be a great athlete. You want him to go to Stanford. Those things don’t really matter. What kind of person do you want him to be in the world?

Reena Ninan:
I’m really excited about today because having a ninth grade boy, this next book, the authors that we’re going to talk to today, I just thought this book was incredible and every parent of boys should read this one.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I agree, Reena, I had the opportunity to blurb this book when it came to me. I was so excited. There is so much concern about boys right now. It is entirely justified. I think about the episode we did about the TV show, “Adolescence” and how much traction it got. And I have to say, I think this book is a perfect response to all of the concerns that are being shared right now about how boys are doing. It is absolutely a beautiful must-read book.

Reena Ninan:
You’re absolutely right. We did that episode. We got so much incredible feedback from parents. As a psychologist, what was it about this book that really stood out to you, that made you think, wow, this is a really good one?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
The thing that is extraordinary about this book is that Christopher and Joanna are boots on the ground. They are talking to boys, they’re interacting with boys. They get boys, they understand boys and they like boys. And at the same time, they are bringing this incredible knowledge-base about all of the really tricky things that boys are struggling with, all the things they need help with. They marry all of this into an incredible guide that teaches adults how to talk to boys effectively about all of these really complex and delicate topics. I mean, it’s just an unbelievable contribution.

Joanna Schroeder:
And I guess when boys are silent, you just think to be silent. And that was the big takeaway for me. I can’t wait. Let’s get right into it.
Today we’re diving into the book that so many parents of boys have been waiting for, Lisa. It’s called “Talk to Your Boys” by Joanna Schroeder and Christopher Pepper. It’s not just a parenting manual, it’s really a guide to the conversations that we need to have with our sons about emotions, identity, respect, friendship, sex, and navigating this current world that they’re living in. So let’s welcome to the podcast Joanna Schroeder and Christopher Pepper. Authors of the book “Talk to Your Boys. 16 Conversations to Help tweens and Teens Grow into Confident, Caring Young Men”. Joanna is a writer and editor and media critic known for her bold perspectives on parenting issues. Christopher is an award-winning health teacher. He coordinates the Young Men’s Health Groups in San Francisco, public, middle and high school. The group brings boys together to talk about their lives, masculinity, emotions, and relationships.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Welcome, we’re thrilled to have you here.

Christopher Pepper:
Thank you. It’s so great to be here.

Joanna Schroeder:
Thank you for having us. We’re so excited to talk to you both.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
So let’s just dive right in. We are just so excited about this book and about what you have done. And so Joanna, I want to start with you. You are the mother of three, two boys and a girl. And in the book, mental health is a foundational theme. It’s a really, really key component of the book. What do you see as the biggest emotional blind spots that parents have, especially when talking to boys ages sort of 12 to 15?

Joanna Schroeder:
Well, it’s absolutely wild, but what we’ve noticed is that a lot of parents kind of stop parenting their boys around age 13 and at the very least they stopped talking to them. So maybe they’re still driving them to practice, maybe they’re still supervising a party, but they’re not engaging emotionally like they may have when their boys were eight or nine. And it’s a real tragedy because our boys need connection, especially in a society that tells them to numb it down and quiet down and only show anger and lust and destructive type of emotions.

Reena Ninan:
You know, Chris, you are also the father of two boys and also you’ve been a foster parent as well. I love the perspective you bring. You know in the book you say that we should normalize boys actually showing feelings. I’m curious about the research about what you’ve found about how boys learn to suppress their emotions and also from a psychological perspective, what happens when parents actually avoid these conversations? Cause it’s so easy to do.

Christopher Pepper:
Sure. For the research side, I really like the research that Judy Chu and Niobe Way we have done on boys and emotions. They both have great books about how this happens in the lives of boys. Boys learn that to be accepted in social environments, particularly in school, that they sort of need to cut off some of their selves, cut off their emotional selves and not show that to the world. And it’s almost like putting on armor to go through the day. I totally understand that impulse. It’s protective and keeps the kids who are worried about bullying, that’s one of the things that they’ll do. But when you put on armor, it gets in the way of connecting with other people. And that’s one of my big worries about boys and we see this playing out in the data around loneliness and boys saying they don’t really have any friends to connect with or they don’t feel like they have close friends they can count on. So that’s a big concern for me.

Reena Ninan:
So when boys sort of put on this armor that you talk about and kind of shut down, how does it affect them, their mental health and their development when they do that and the parents just don’t have these conversations with them?

Christopher Pepper:
Well, boys are really struggling right now and we see this in data playing out, but we also hear this in the stories that boys told us. We had a panel of over 80 boys who answered questions about each of the chapters in our book. They had some themes that came up over and over again with these boys. They wanted the adults in their lives to be closer with them. They wanted the adults in their lives to know who they really were and to recognize how they were changing and growing up as they went through their adolescent years. And I think there’s a real space for adults to keep those avenues of conversation going. I know it can be challenging. I know sometimes boys push you away when you try to connect with them. I guess our message to parents is to keep at it, to persist in trying to keep those connections going because the other thing we heard from boys is that they really want guidance around what it means to be a man. They want guidance around how to be successful in the world and when we don’t step in as caring adults in their lives and they’re turning to their friends some, but they’re also going online a lot and getting advice from TikTok, YouTube, websites that are trying to sell them a $19.99 a month plan for self-improvement and just getting a lot of advice that’s not so great and isn’t going to help them get to where we want them to be in the world.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah, no, I have to say, you mentioned the panel of boys that you talked to. One of my favorite parts of this book that I just adore everything about was the We Asked Boys call out boxes where you have the boys words about what they want adults to know. What’s the hardest part about being a boy? What gets in the way of talking about feelings? It is so compelling, it is so sweet, but it also I think really tells the story of what you’re trying to say, which is these boys are dying to share this stuff and it’s all right there. It’s just a matter of getting those conversations going.
So Joanna, to that point, I know that for a lot of boys, that kind of man-up culture is still really strong that you’re not really allowed to express vulnerable emotions. How can parents work against this? How can parents combat these toxic messages that boys get without getting into, sort of, a battle with their boys, without having to feel like they’re at odds with them?

Joanna Schroeder:
You know, we’re going to be at odds with our adolescent kids. That is a natural part of their development. As you know, of course Lisa, they will naturally push away from you and that’s healthy. The question is how do we allow them to explore who they want to be and the kind of men they’re going to become safely and in a way that reflects your family’s values? And that’s what we try to do. First, we want parents to dig into, well, what really are your values? What do you want your child’s future to look like? And then you need to be able to kind of disabuse yourself of the fact that you get to decide the specifics about your child’s future life. Oh, you want him to be a great athlete, you want him to go to Stanford? Those things don’t really matter. What kind of person do you want him to be in the world and establish that before you do anything else.
And then I think especially if you are a man in the home, or close to the boy, model how you handle your own emotions and show emotions. So, if you find out that your grandmother just passed away, it’s okay to cry over that. It’s okay to share those memories with your kids and say, man, she really did all these amazing things for me, or whatever it is that’s touching to you. Or maybe you had a bad relationship with her. And you can share how she hurt your feelings in the past and the complex experience you’re having with her passing. Too often men think they need to cry in private or just to their partners. And when they’re doing that in front of their boys, the boys are able to see, oh, here’s this guy I respect. And he’s handling his emotions.

Reena Ninan:
When Lisa wrote her book “The Emotional Lies of Teenagers,” I was like, oh my gosh, this is earth shattering. She says that Dads need to show their emotions like you need to look vulnerable. And nobody had ever said, I’d never thought of that before until I read her book. And that’s what I’m hearing from you guys in the research and everything that you’re saying, I’m raising a teenage son in ninth grade and I don’t know sometimes how to move past the one word answers. Like how sometimes where they don’t want to talk. Are there ways to open up conversations? Do you guys have a starter line or something that isn’t hokey that might get them to open up?

Joanna Schroeder:
Yeah, you know we find that movement is key. The research of Dr. Stan Tatkin, we cite throughout the book, talks about how there’s a way in which their emotional guard is let down when they’re moving. Now this isn’t for every kid. Some kid may open up in the car, some kid may open up when you’re having dinner together, if you’re having trouble getting past those one word answers, doing a project together, moving a stack of wood or whatever your kid’s interest is, taking a walk, hiking, building a tent, all of those things when you both are moving and engaged and looking somewhere other than right in each other’s eyes directly and intensely, that might be a good opportunity for him to open up, especially if you ask interesting questions that don’t prompt just a yes or no answer. If you’re asking how’s school you’re going to hear good. So ask a more

Dr. Lisa Damour:
“Fine.”

Joanna Schroeder:
interesting question. Yeah, “fine,” or “it sucks.” You’ll probably hear that one too sometimes.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
What happened? “Nothing.”

Joanna Schroeder:
“Nothing.” Yeah.
I like asking, “Who got in trouble today?” That’s my favorite question. My kids love to talk about who got in trouble. It helps me keep a tab on the neighborhood too. But just that idea of did anyone get in trouble today? Did anyone make you laugh today? Those kind of questions. And then if, oh, Roland made me laugh, okay, “What’s Roland’s deal? Tell me about Roland.”

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I love it. I love it. Getting specific.
Alright, Chris, over to you. You have 16 essential conversations that you lay out in this book and consent is one of them, but that’s a big conversation. So what are the psychological foundations that parents need to have laid in advance before having a constructive talk about consent and interpersonal boundaries?

Christopher Pepper:
For me, I just really appreciate how much our society has worked on this issue of consent and thought about it and wrestled with it. I started out doing work related to this when I was in college myself as an undergraduate working in rape prevention and I was working in the rape education office at my college and would go out and talk to boys and men often because I was a guy they would send me to fraternity houses and places like that. And the script that we had at the time was pretty negative. It was a sort of a list of things not to do and ways you could get in trouble and very kind of legalistic definition of what does it mean to rape someone. And I just think the language of consent really opens up a lane for engagement that is much more positive and creative and really focuses on how do we create an experience with another person that is pleasurable for everyone involved. And both people will walk away feeling good about, “Hey, this was something that I was really happy that I did and was really enjoyable,” and kind of setting that as a goal is so much more beautiful than just saying, “I didn’t get arrested” or

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Or “I got permission.” I mean permission is not nearly the bar we want to be setting here. I love that.

Christopher Pepper:
So really I think in the book we have a quote that’s from Shafi Lum where she talks about consent kind of being the floor. That’s the minimum that you want, but really you’re trying to create experiences with other people that are pleasurable and enjoyable. And the nice thing about this is you don’t have to involve sex in this at all. You can teach about consent from an early age and it’s really about bodily autonomy, not touching other people when they don’t want to be touched. Asking for permission. People do this with young kids now that talking like, okay, we’re going to go visit your relatives that you haven’t seen in a while and trying to teach those relatives and maybe coach them in advance. My kids may want to give you a hug, they might not. I’d appreciate it if you ask them first and not just run up and grab them. I think we’re learning those lessons as a society. Obviously not everyone is caught up on that, but we are doing a lot of learning and I think it’s really positive and it’s kind of fun to be creating a new way to interact with people.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I love that frame. I love that way of thinking about it.

Reena Ninan:
You know, Lisa touched on earlier, Chris, that one of the great things about this book is when you open up, there’s quotes from boys. You interviewed 85 different boys from the ages of 10 to 22, and one of the things they said was a lot of what they’re absorbing and learning comes from TikTok and YouTube and even porn in some cases. How do I as a parent counter the social media and what they’re absorbing when I want to send a different message?

Christopher Pepper:
I’m concerned about the content that boys are seeing online. However, I’m also concerned about what’s happening when they are spending all their time looking at that content. Because what we’re seeing is that time online is really replacing in-person time. So we’re seeing a decline in the amount of time that teens say they’re hanging out with other people, that they’re spending time with other people in person. We’re seeing a big decline in teen dating. So I think you do need to talk about what are you seeing online and Joanna’s really an expert on that and how think content online sometimes through jokes and means, memes can lead to extremist content. So I’m glad that that is really incorporated into our book and it is something that we need to talk about. But I think one of the best things that you can do as an adult in a kid’s life is to get them offline, to get them to spend time with other people where devices are not the main focus of that time. So spending time outside planning trips together and actually as an adult, making sure that you put your own devices away and have some focused time with them. In-person connections with caring people are really important and really a good way to address any kind of concerns that we have about what they’re seeing online because they’ll see, “Oh, these people who care about me are not reflecting those crazy things I saw online.”

Joanna Schroeder:
And that all comes down to media literacy. I find that one of the most important skills we can teach our kids, and I wish it was part of the curriculum for eighth graders at this point, is media literacy. You can start these conversations when they’re like five years old and they become more and more important as they get older and it protects them from all sorts of things from scams online. You hear about sextortion of these teenagers, especially teenage athletes, apparently they’re being targeted right now to, like we were saying, there’s all these ideological predators online that are looking for lonely teenagers to recruit to this extremist hate-based behavior when we teach them a few basics. Who made this? Why did they make it? Who are they hoping sees this and does it reflect your values? Is it true? And you can just go through and ask those questions even when you’re just watching a commercial on TV during the football game and just say, “Who do you think they’re targeting with this hamburger ad with a bikini model in it?” “Why do you think they have that model?” And, “Do you think this reflects real life?” Just simple questions like that get them thinking. And then that extends to adult content. And we mentioned Shafia Lum. She has a great analogy that I love and I want to shout from the rooftops, which is you don’t learn to drive from watching fast and furious movies and you don’t learn to have sex and enjoy pleasure with another consenting partner from watching porn.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
That is phenomenal. Joanna, just to take that idea a little further, because Christopher talked about, and you mentioned also these bad actors online who are waiting for lonely teenage boys to help them feel good if those boys feel small. So say that you can tell that your son is one way or another coming to this idea that his job is to be tough and championing these kind of tough ideas that are trafficked in those spaces. What does one do to foster compassion in that boy? How do you try to push him in a different direction from what’s being offered to him online?

Joanna Schroeder:
I think an interesting conversation to have with a kid who’s doing that is figure out what he gets out of it. And what I have learned from interviewing boys, from raising boys, from my boys’ friends is that they want to be helpful and they want to make a change in society. They want to feel a certain sense that they’re a hero. So it starts when they’re little and they like Superman and as they get older what appeals to them is the sense of being able to make a change. So if you are starting to hear stuff that doesn’t reflect your values, you can instead of reacting how I first reacted when I first heard some of these things from my children, instead of being like, “Where did you get that? What is going on? Don’t you know who does that?” I reacted from a trauma place. I’m a woman writing online.
And when I heard my kids, one of my kids, maybe he said “alpha” or some phrase that wasn’t quite as common then but was I’m used to it from hateful trolls online. I reacted from not my kid, but to be able to be like, what’s the context that’s being used right now and what do you think of that? What do you think it means? And just kind of asking about it in a way that puts your fear and anger aside. And that has been my personal work and it is hard to do, especially when they’re saying something that feels offensive, but just inquiring about it and then finding ways to engage them with who might be being hurt by it and replacing that behavior with another way to be helpful. They want to be helpful. So okay, you’re worried about if kids are getting a good education and maybe the kid is reflecting some kind of hateful ideology and that’s where it comes up. What can we do to help kids in your community? Do you want to go read a book during library hour? Do you want to try and give them opportunities and just keep reminding them that our choices and our words do affect people and we can choose if that’s for the better or for the worse.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
What I love about that, Joanna, is what you’re saying is they’re looking for purpose. They’re looking for something that gives them a sense of value and meaning and so you’re like, great, give them one. If they’re looking for purpose by being some tough guy. Well, or you can also get purpose by helping people out at the library to go for the motivation and try to not be completely blown out of the water by the offensive stuff that may be on the surface of it.

Joanna Schroeder:
Yeah, exactly. And ultimately getting to the root of what he’s getting from what he’s consuming that makes him feel tough. Another thing that I think is so important is to model how we handle our anger because anger is one of the few acceptable emotions that men are able to show in society. So it’s great if a man or a dad can do this in front of your boys, but you can do it too. And I keep bringing up this idea of road rage when we’re driving the car with a kid and we start to get angry. Talk through how you’re handling your anger.
“I’m so mad that guy cut me off. Oh my gosh, I am so tempted right now to flip that guy the bird. I’m going to take a breath. Okay, I feel better. I’m glad I didn’t do that, cause I don’t know what his reaction is and ultimately I feel better now, whatever.” Just process out how you’re handling that anger to show them I’m just going to take a moment. And when they make you angry, angry, you know what? I’m feeling really angry right now. I’m tempted to raise my voice now. I don’t want to do that. I want to be able to talk to you calmly, so I’m just going to take a beat. Let’s talk in five minutes so that they’re seeing us process that.

Reena Ninan:
And what if you’re a parent who yesterday did not do that during a roadrage moment and set a very bad example because she was very angry?

Joanna Schroeder:
Well, I live in Los Angeles, so there’s so many opportunities to get angry at people on the road and I will often just say, okay, I let myself get way too reactive to that guy. What that guy did was not okay and I felt scared cause I felt like we were at risk because of what they did, but that was not my best way of handling it and that’s making a repair and showing them that there’s a way back from that too. We don’t have to lean all the way into our wild emotions.

Christopher Pepper:
Thinking about this kind of combining these two threads of conversation, we were talking about how you feel emotionally when you see something and you see your kid doing something online or see them looking at content that you find offensive. I think a lot of parents right now are pretty alarmed. They’ve maybe read about concerns about social media or they watched “Adolescents” or other movies like that and they’re coming in a little freaked out about what’s going on with boys right now. And I think the tendency when you’re feeling alarmed is to come in hot and be, “What are you looking at online? Oh my gosh, turn that off right now I’m taking your computer and you’re never going to see it again.” Coming in with a lot of emotion. One of the phrases we tried to introduce in the book was to “Get curious, not furious.”
And it’s really going back to this idea of where Joanna was talking right before this about if you’re the parent, you’re saying, I’m going to take a minute to just let my emotions cool down and I’m going to be strategic and I’m going to talk to my kid and say, “What are you getting out of this material that you’re looking at? Why is that joke funny? Are your friends all looking at this? Can you tell me about how you found this?” Just being curious about what they’re getting out of it, why they’re engaging with it, that is going to be a lot more productive than just coming in and being angry and putting down a lot of restrictions. And it will also help you connect with where your kid is and give you a sense of if there is something to be really concerned about, you’ll have more information than if you just shut everything down without a conversation.

Reena Ninan:
And I think we’re wired to almost believe that they’re up to something bad or something is wrong. A couple of days ago I couldn’t find my son anywhere and I realize he’s in some parking lot somewhere I can see on the phone and I sent my husband over to go find him and my husband’s like, “Yep, we got to figure out a punishment for this kid. Very, very bad.” He was teaching elementary kids in the neighborhood who didn’t know how to hit kickball fast enough. They were down at the school playing kickball and learning because one of them said they didn’t know how to play kickball. They just went. And so I think sometimes, and for some of us who might be in the moment of perimenopause and menopause, we can go from zero to a thousand very quickly. I’m not making excuses, but I’m just being honest about this. But Christopher, one of the things you also write about in this is, which shocked me, I found this to be a shocker in the book, was that sometimes boys lose their closest friendships in adolescence. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Christopher Pepper:
We need to be attentive to boys’ friendships. One of the things that I really took away from Lisa’s work actually is how important it’s for kids to have at least one friend to have someone that they can count on in their lives. And I really get concerned when boys say they don’t have any close friends that they can depend on. But this sort of rigid definition of masculinity sometimes interferes with friendships in a way that causes boys to separate. I think one of the things that we need to do with boys is really make it safe for them to have a range of emotions and to have a range of experiences. There are a lot of things that are kind of traditionally coded as “girl things.” So you might think about dancing or wearing pink clothes, singing in a choir, things like that. Sometimes a boy will say, oh, I like to do those things. And other boys will be like, sorry, you can’t be my friend. People might think that I’m gay if I’m friends with someone who likes those things. And this sort of rigid rules around masculinity and what you’re allowed to and not like are, I’m amazed at how persistent they are and how strong they are.
And they’re particularly strong in the minds of boys when they’re just forming their identities and trying to figure out who they are in the world.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Would you say around middle school they hit a really intense peak?

Christopher Pepper:
Yeah, middle school is exactly the time where this really comes in because whereas students often move from one school to another, so they’re sort of having to define themselves at this new school, people are trying to figure out who you are and there’s a real tendency to act tough and act in a way that matches with what they think society wants from them as a boy. They’re not really sure of themselves and they put on a lot of performance about how they think they’re supposed to act. And this other element that comes in often now right at middle school is that kids get a lot more access to electronics. They start playing video games a lot more heavily. It’s a common time for kids to get phones. And so a lot of their behaviors are both informed by what they’re seeing online and mediated by conversations that they’re having online. So there’s this whole other conversation that adults often don’t know much about that’s going on in the lives of young people that is also influencing how they act and behave and treat one another.

Joanna Schroeder:
I can spot, especially after doing all of this work and research, I can spot a sixth grade boy from five miles away just based on how much they whoop and holler and yell and how much space they take up in public. And I think about they’re the littlest fellas in school and oftentimes the girls are developing much faster. So the girls might be taller, the girls tend to be a little more mature. It brings out a lot of cockiness that that’s the part you can spot. They’re just, their feathers are always puffed in their walking around the mall and making a mess. And I think when we have, at first when it was my boys, I was like, what is this strange? And I was like, this is a time when that comes from insecurity.
It comes from,

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Yeah, they feel small.

Joanna Schroeder:
fear, they feel small, but they also and they don’t want to be vulnerable. We have to remember that generations of men were literally physically traumatized for seeming gay or seeming weak. And so this fear of being seen as gay or fear of being seen as soft, it’s not something that’s just going to go away because feminism waved its magic wand and thank God for feminism, but we can’t just snap our fingers and wish away generations of trauma. They’re getting this message. It is a very serious message. Seeming “gay” to others was literally risking your life a few generations ago. Even when Christopher and I and probably you two were young, we all remember Matthew Shepherd. So just saying to our kids, “Who cares if someone thinks you’re gay?” There’s something deeper there.

Reena Ninan:
Well, I’m just curious as we wrap up now, if we could go to both of you to just give us your sense when you conducted the research for this book, was there something that stood out to you in the process that surprised you?

Christopher Pepper:
Well, I keep coming back to the fact that boys are really wanting adults to be connected with them and to be guides. One of the places where I’ve actually learned a lot in my career is that I’ve had the fortunate experience of being able to run boys groups in schools, coordinate this program where we have social emotional groups for boys in schools. I’ve got to tell you how amazing it is to see a group of teenage boys come together and say, we’re here for you and we want to talk about your feelings and what your life is like right now. And we want to help you. As soon as you build some trust with them, they want to talk. They want to give each other hugs, they want to be there for each other. It is very sweet and it is totally unlike most people’s stereotypes of what teenage boys want or need in their lives.
And I think there’s a big space that we are sort of missing as a society of providing those places for conversation and connection with tween and teen boys. I think there’s a lot more that we could do and I would encourage anyone who wants to be a mentor or a big brother or the uncle who takes your nephew out more often than maybe you expected to or actually go into a school and say, can we run a group at this school? You don’t have to be a gender studies PhD or something like that. You have to be somebody who shows up and shows up regularly that they can count on that has a good ear for listening and can help provide a safe space for boys. Cause they really need it.

Joanna Schroeder:
You know, one thing that struck me is how much our kids believe us when we tell them things. And it doesn’t seem like that when you’re the parent. Because if you say, “I like this brand of eggs, “they’re going to say, “those are terrible.”

Dr. Lisa Damour:
And “you’re dumb.”

Joanna Schroeder:
I only like this brand. Yeah, “those are dumb. That’s so dumb. Why are you being so dumb?”
We don’t realize how much they believe us. And I remember a story told by one of the boys I was, we were interviewing who said to me, “I had my heart broken by this girl and I know I don’t really know what love is, but I really am really, really sad.” And I was like, “Who told you you don’t know what love is?” “Well, my parents said, you don’t really know what love is until you’re older.” And I said, “Well, listen, your parents are probably great, but I disagree. I think you do know what love is. I think you did love her and I think you probably do love her. And I think your heartbreak is very, very real and it’s going to take some time to get over it.” Cause he felt like he was broken. He believed his parents when they said that wasn’t even real love.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
That just breaks my heart and gives me goosebumps at the same time what you said to that boy.
Well, thank you both. What an honor to get to be with you. This book is a must read. As I said, they feel like it actually should be waiting for families at the hospital and if they go home with a boy, I think it should also go home with that family. It’s out now. It is absolutely fantastic. And congratulations and thank you both. Just thank you for what you have done here.

Joanna Schroeder:
Thank you so much. And thank you for your beautiful blurb on our cover. Welcome. We are so grateful.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
You are welcome. You are welcome. That’s the best part of my job is getting to support incredible work like yours.

Christopher Pepper:
Really appreciate this conversation. Thank you both.

Reena Ninan:
The book is called “Talk to Your Boys, 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow into Confident Caring Young Men” with Joanna Schroeder and Christopher Pepper.
Thank you both.
When we have on authors, you’re always so cutting edge on who we have on that just really has impressive research in their books. And raising a son, I didn’t even realize the things that I carry that I assume he doesn’t want to talk to me, he doesn’t want to do this. And to hear them just now say that, no, no, no. They’re actually listening to what you say and they do want to talk and engage.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
It’s true. And actually what Joanna said, we do have research that absolutely confirms that, that kids actually pick up and actually heed a lot of what we say, even if they roll their eyes when we say it. But we know that what we say does shape their behavior. And so we want to be really mindful to use that both for good and then to avoid using it in ways that might hurt their feelings.

Reena Ninan:
So what do you have for us, Lisa, for Parenting to Go?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
Well, I was really taken with Joanna’s description of her roadrage moment where she was subtitling what her emotional experience was. And that’s how I would describe it. And she did it a few different times where she was talking through what was happening internally in front of her son. What it made me think about is our research on emotional intelligence, which is very much what we’re talking about here and trying to cultivate emotional intelligence in boys. And there’s a beautiful line from that research that says that “Emotional intelligence is seeing oneself from the outside and seeing other people from the inside.” I think it’s such a great line and I think that that’s exactly what was happening when Joanna was describing herself, driving down the road, walking her kid through what was happening internally. And so I think anytime we can take those moments to subtitle what may not be obvious or to help sort of bring to the surface what’s happening inside of us, that’s an emotional intelligence building moment. It’s good with all kids and for today’s conversation, maybe especially good with boys.

Reena Ninan:
So being able to sort of subtitle and tell them what you’re really feeling can really make a difference in a moment?

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I think can. It’s a great way to bring the feeling down to size, use it as a way to connect and do some really important teaching.

Reena Ninan:
I’ll see you next week.

Dr. Lisa Damour:
I’ll see you next week.