5 Key Takeaways on Puberty

I’m getting a little help from the puberty folks, Vanessa Bennett and Dr. Cara Natterson

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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

One thing that won’t wait while the world continues to astound us all is puberty (sorry, I just feel it necessary to keep acknowledging that the world is upside down). Puberty is happening for our children each and everyday and there is plenty to get in front of (and get comfortable with). 

This week on the podcast, I had Dr. Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll Bennett on to help me with all things puberty. Here are my top 5 takeaways to share.

1. Puberty starts earlier and lasts longer. Before you feel prepared, ready, or even aware, puberty conversations are upon you. Thinking about, learning about, and planning for these hard moments can make the experience less stressful, shocking, and terrifying for parents.

Puberty now starts, on average, between eight and nine years old for girls, and for boys between nine and 10 years old. And it lasts nearly a decade. So it starts earlier, lasts longer, and happens with a cell phone in hand. - Vanessa Kroll Bennett

2. As parents, we need to leave our baggage at the door. Watching our children go through puberty can activate many feelings in all of us. Our reactions to the legs, the hair, the weight gain, the mooooooood swings, all send our children confusing - and sometimes downright traumatic - messages about their body image and our ability to handle change. Instead of off-loading all of these potential bombshells on our kids, we need to find adults to process this with (try the new book This is So Awkward for your next book club meeting), or even face our own lingering childhood traumas with a professional. So many of the damaging messages we received, or punishing behaviors we may have tried, can come back to haunt us as we experience this process again as parents. There is help!

We are raising kids in a generation where we want them to feel proud of what their bodies can do, not what their bodies look like. Who they are as human beings on the inside, not just how they look on the outside. - Vanessa Kroll Bennett

3. Many of us fall easily into the reassurance trap. We run to say, “Your body is like mine,” or something equally untrue like, “It will all work out in the end.” In fact, we have absolutely no guarantee on how this process will work out for our kids, how they will feel at the end of it, or how long it will take to get through it. We cannot reassure them with false hopes and promises, or by trying to fix their feelings (see this post from last year). Instead, we need to learn to do less. In the hardest moments, we need to offer just a hug. Offer a sympathetic ear. Offer our love and our company. In the absence of any real answers, those are the most powerful ways we can help our children through. 

It's extraordinarily hard to find a narrative that makes a kid feel great about how their body looks through puberty. - Dr. Dr. Cara Natterson

4. Like all things, our relationships will support us through puberty. Talking to our children openly about what is going on, making space for their questions and concerns, and making TONS of mistakes together is not only expected, but demanded. If we want our children to feel comfortable coming to us, feel safe confiding in us, and feel loved unconditionally by us, we need to show up. A strong parent-child relationship - built in the small everyday moments - creates a buffer around our children as they experience hard things. They can struggle, fail, even break, with the safety of knowing their parentis there to support them.

​​The beauty of toe-ing into, or flailing into, tricky conversations with kids is knowing that you are going to do it over, and over, and over again. We will have many conversations, and there’s time and space to get it wrong, take a do-over, and get it right. - Dr. Cara Natterson

5. Social media is playing a unique role in our children’s puberty experience. Vanessa and Cara offer these 3 tips to manage social media during puberty. Express curiosity over your child’s searching and viewing habits online. This can include looking at their “for you” page to see what the algorithm is suggesting, and being open with them about their habits and interests. They also recommend setting limits that keep screens and social media consumption to under 3 hours a day (the standard used in many of the recent research studies), and having open discussions around how social media makes you feel. In these cases, the team recommends sharing about your own social media use, how it makes you feel to see friends, family or celebrities doing and having things you don’t, and what positive or negative feelings you draw from these moments. Modeling the struggles we all face (because body image issues never go away!) can be an important way to connect with your tween or teen.

LGBTQ+ kids are at higher risk for body image issues and challenges. If you are caring for a kid in your life who identifies as such, you wanna be particularly aware of this issue and on it in a kind, empathetic and supportive way. - Vanessa Kroll Bennett

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