ON BOYS Podcast

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...

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+ Kids Rule of thumb: Never out someone. The dec...

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.  Ge...

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...

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...

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...

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 f...

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 Adolescent s , 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...

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 p...

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 youn...

You don’t want to raise an asshole.  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-asshole is a long term project. Kids, she notes, are  s...

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 breas...

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...

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 stra...

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...

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...

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...

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 pare...

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 enco...

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...

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...

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 bread...

Advanced parenting may involve guiding a child through a mental health crisis.  Or parenting a child with a chronic medical condition. Or both. It’s what parents must do when a child’s needs go beyond basic feeding, sheltering, loving, and nurturing. As a childhood cancer survivor and complex care pediatrician,  Dr. Kelly Fradin  knows that it’s difficult for parents to balance kids’ physical and...

Midlife parenting often means navigating puberty  and  perimenopause at the same time. The average age of first parenthood has increased in recent years, so many moms now find themselves going thru perimenopause around the same time their kids hit puberty, according to a 2021  New York Times  Parenting Newsletter article titled,  When Your Home is a Hormonal Hellscape. And while thinking of your h...

Middle school — and ages 11 to 14 — is “a time like no other!” It’s a time when significant biological, neurological and emotional changes are happening simultaneously. Middle school boys can be a confusing mix. They want to be treated like adults AND still do incredibly silly things.  Jerome Hunter , co-founder of the  Seattle School for Boys , recalls his middle school experience as a rollercoas...