Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Andy: I read the book here, Raising Empowered Daughters: A-Dad-to-Dad Guide. And I thought that it was just so timely and also, kind of inspirational, but also, really, a call to arms. I think a call to action that we have work to do. And so, I thought it was really nice though because it also has really practical things that you can do, which I really liked. Can you just talk a little bit about kind of how it came to be and what inspired it?

Mike: Yeah. I'm happy to, Andy, thank you so much for having me. My pronouns are he, him, and his for the wider audience. Kind of inspiration was just kind of a blind rage, frankly, at the presidential campaign, as well as kind of the reawakening of the Me Too movement, which came in response to that and stories obviously out of Hollywood. So it's that and then writing in the parenting sphere about kind of calling out gender bias in childhood and in parenting that we see, but it kind of just all came together in this. I just really feel we need to do something that kind of tackles two things at once, raise strong, powerful, confident daughters, like my own, who I think is amazing and awesome, and I'm trying my best. But we can't just... And it's kind of the crux of the book, we just can't raise powerful, strong daughters and say, "Well, good luck to you. Here's your armor. See you later." I really wanted to have a conversation, dad to dad, man to man, to kind of pave a better way and say, "If we recognize that a lot of the things our daughters going to face are not necessarily the most wonderful things in the world, we have a responsibility to make it a little bit easier for them." So it's really about doing a couple of things at the same time.

Andy: The negative messages come at them from every possible direction and you kind of shine the spotlight on a lot of them and break them down in this book. And one of them, towards the beginning, that I really enjoyed was clothes shopping. Can you talk a little bit about the clothing options in H&M and why they piss you off so much?

Mike: You know, it's so funny. I always have to hold a special place. I have to hold space for a distance that I'm afforded in that when I talk about these things, I sound in my brain like a crazy conspiracy theorist, like, "Well, there's gender bias in clothing. There's gender bias in sports. There's gender bias in government. There's gender bias at the workplace." And for me, there's a certain amount of distance because I'm not experiencing it, it's not my lived experience versus someone who's going through it. So I kind of wanted to bring a certain amount of outrage to the audience I'm writing to, fellow dads, to say, "Hey, this might sound crazy, but it is crazy. And it's, frankly, absurd," and clothes shopping is a pretty good example. I start the book with an example that I think a lot of guys or dads, hopefully when you're going to the store and you're shopping for clothes, just kind of do it in the everyday thing of making the family run.

Mike: When you go to the boys' section, the clothes are like roomy. They're made for movement, and bouncing around, and they've got sharks on them, and they say adventure, and I'm going to college. And they're just cool. I like them. They're nice clothes, and they're made for play, and they've got cool messages. And then I noticed this, specifically at H&M and other big retailers, you go to the girls' section and all of a sudden the clothes shrink. A size eight for a boy is suddenly like a size four for a girl, and it's just hard to move, and you're showing skin, you got to apply sunscreen to your shoulders in ways you don't for boys, and the messages on them. It's like everything's kind of cute, and frothy, and pink, which is totally cool.

Mike: I love cute and frothy and pink, but it seems to be the only options for sale on a lot of these stores. So it goes from adventurous, violence, sports hero for boys to cute, and frothy, flowery, hashtags peace, cupcakes, woo. And it's just kind of the only option. So you can really see this disparity in clothes that allow for movement and kind of adventure for boys, and clothes that are a little bit more restricting, like slim jeans for girls at a really young age, and heels, and kind of messages that are more about appearance than in actually doing things. I wanted to just highlight that early in the book because that kind of offers a good segue into the rest of it, which is equally as absurd and outrageous.

Andy: One of the big themes of the book is that there's such a big difference in the way boys and girls are treated and what's expected from them in society, and a lot of it seems just social and you kind of break down the history of it. And you also break down, though, a lot of research. And so, one of the things that I thought that was really interesting was you have a chapter in here on the "very large differences that have been found in research between boys and girls." Could you walk me through how that looks?

Mike: Yeah, that was a really fun chapter to write. And I guess I want to hold a caveat that I'm not like a neuroscientist. I talked to a lot of experts, namely one, Lisa Elliott, who is talking about people often point to, "Well, boys are better at math, or tech, or kind of these mathy things." Clearly, I'm not a math person myself. Because their brains are bigger and they have like all these connections and she says, "Well, yeah, on average, that's true. But men, on average, are bigger. Their hearts are bigger. Their kidneys are bigger. They're just, they're taller on average thing." And so we can't use that to justify discrimination. And that's kind of what I wanted to call out in the book is that often when this stuff is talked about, these kind of tiny differences that we might have, and we, sure, no one's arguing there's no differences between boys and girls.

Mike: I don't think that's an argument anyone in science or academia is making. It's just when, culturally, we talk about a lot of these differences, they're not used in a productive way to say, "Well, there's some small biological differences between boys and girls, and maybe men and women. So let's see if we can kind of work through that so that eventually we can have the same opportunities for boys and girls, and men and women." It's usually carted out to say, "Well, there's a giant disparity in hiring in tech, and that's fine because men's brains, on average, are bigger." It's carved out to really justify-

Andy: That they're just better.

Mike: Exactly. So if you're working in the high sciences, or academia, or medicine to try to say like, "Oh, what are the differences? Do we need to do anything to close in the gaps?" That's cool. But if you're just constantly looking for small differences, which are very small, they're not very big, to justify just kind of ongoing oppression, I always have to wonder why are you doing that?

Andy: Something that was super amusing to me, and also just really interesting, was this chapter where you talk about how you often receive praise and applause from people for your fatherly... For your being just such a good father out there. I'm curious. What is it that you do that sets you so apart from other parents that you receive applause all over the place?

Mike: I really like the way you set that up because it is, it's something I do as a person that really does set me apart and that's merely existing in a world as a man with-

Andy: We want to know these secrets, Mike. Tell us the secret.

Mike: It happens, still, in more ways than I can imagine. And I talk about it in the book, this idea that I'm literally just walking down the sidewalk with my daughter, who was a toddler at this age and was just kind of holding hands and I'll get applause. People clap and say, "Oh my gosh, Dad, you're killing it. Way to go." And I'm literally just in the vicinity of my daughter. It's cool. I enjoy it on some level because I'm like, "Gosh, how many people when they're just going about their day to day, stopped in their cubicle and get applause?" Like, "Way to do your job." I'm a stay at home dad. This is literally my role. And so, on some level, yeah, it's like, "Ah, phew. Not really screwing up today. That feels great."

Mike: But what I call out is it creates, and it's a part of this cultural messaging system that says dads with kids, even messing up, walking down the street is still like, "You're close enough, good job. You deserve applause." And the message that send is it's so out of the ordinary, dads with kids, that it's worthy of praise. And the flip side of that is if it's so out of the ordinary, what is the ordinary? And the ordinary in our culture is still very much if you're a mom, you've got to be with your kid. If you're in a board meeting, where's the kid? What are you doing? How on earth can you work? Where's the kid? And so that message feels good in the moment, but it's really part of a broader kind of cultural structure of oppression that says on the sidewalk, in the store, Dad's at work, that we're not supposed to be with our kids. We're not supposed to parent the very things that we helped create.

Andy: Anything you're doing, and that is above and beyond.

Mike: Exactly.

Andy: Just even just spending a few minutes here, is like, "Wow, you're stellar."

Mike: Yeah. It puts us in kind of a box because it cuts us off in many ways from just the cool everyday stuff which, I'm a parent, it could be totally annoying. And it also kind of pigeonholes moms and women as just the ultimate caregivers that, no matter what aspirations they have, they should be with their kids. And that's not cool. I wanted to point that out for dads so we can recognize that we might need to do more in those moments, but we might need to do more to make sure we're carrying that emotional load that makes parenting if you're in a... If you happen to be in a shared relationship, a shared responsibility.

Andy: Hey, have you guys checked out my favorite nutrition company yet? These guys are called Wild Foods and they are on a mission to fix the broken food system. They believe, like I do, that real, whole food is medicine. And they have set out to partner with farmers so they can get the highest quality ingredients in everything they do. Wildfoods.co is where you can go to check out everything they sell. I highly recommend it. And they've even given our listeners a 12% discount as part of our partnership, and you can get that with the code, talking wild, at wildfoods.co.

Andy: If you've had any trouble finding the right match for your teenager, or if you've thought about maybe getting a counselor or a therapist, but weren't sure where to go to look for the right person, I recommend teencounseling.com. You answer a few questions and they pair your teenager up with the perfect counselor or therapist right where they spend the most time, on their smartphone. It's completely affordable and scholarships are available. To find out more, head on over to teencounseling.com and use the code, talking to teens.

Andy: Okay. So it's hard to talk about raising girls today without talking about the messages they receive from the media, from athletes and celebrities, from movies and TV shows that they see, what the characters look like, and the body types that are represented. So, what do you think is our responsibility as parents to try and combat those messages? How do we kind of stand up against those a little bit?

Mike: Yeah. That's a really good question to do in the moment with your kids because I know from personal experience that if you start going off on gender bias, and media, and sports representation in every TV show or movie you watch with your kid, eventually your kid's going to tune out and go, "Oh my gosh, Dad, please stop. I get it. I see it. I know." So you definitely got to pick your moments, but it is as simple as kind of like, "Huh, that's interesting. We've been watching this show for a half-hour and it's been all white dudes talking and maybe one woman who kind of flashed by, and they showed a picture of her butt. What do you think that's about?" It could literally be that simple and you're calling it out to the kid to let them know that's not normal and that's not okay.

Mike: But what I found, and I wrote about in the book, it's this idea that... So that's something you could talk about with your kids with, but how can you shift culture? How can you shift society to something different? And I think of this example from Star Wars. I'm such a Star Wars nerd. I cannot wait for the new one to come out, and I'm just already like a tuning fork of emotion waiting for that to hit. And I think of the first reinvigorated Star Wars, starring Rey, and as that was announced a picture was released and it was a group of all the Star Wars people. Like, "Hey, here's this black and white photo of everyone that's going to be in Star Wars." And it was something, I forget exactly, there's like 20 dudes and maybe two women. And people called that out on Facebook, on Twitter, on social media, which might seem like total griping online, like, "Oh my god, they're just complaining."

Mike: But he thing is, it actually had an impact. The screenwriter came back later and was like, "Well, one of the reasons we created Captain Phasma and made that person a woman and tried to incorporate more background characters who are women and just kind of populate a fictional universe that wasn't all dudes and Chewbaccas was because of this outrage, because of people spoke up and said, 'No, we want better. This is the 2000-teens and we deserve better.'" So, that's something that I think concrete we can do. And it might seem on some level like complaining. I get that, but it's also voices that move the culture, whether on social media or even in your friend circles. I think that's very important to get to a broader topic on how to shift things culturally. We seem very small individually sometimes.

Mike: What power do I have to shift these giant cultural narratives? And I think very often of Allan Johnson, he wrote a book called The Gender Knot, and he explains that we all live in the patriarchy. We can't really help that that's just the system, that's how it's set up, and we don't get to decide whether we participate in it, we just are, but we do get to decide how we participate in it. And that's really the main message I wanted to talk to dads about, whether it comes to media representation, or talks about girls and talks about boys, or talks about opportunity, is we get to decide whether we want to kind of bolster systems as they exist, or kind of shift them a little bit from the inside to say like, "Oh, I think it's fantastic that the new hero is Rey instead of Luke Skywalker." Little things like that can shift your dad groups a little bit, or your men groups, or your friend groups of guys that can change things a little bit from the inside.

Mike: And it's just calling out like, "Ah, geez. I wanted to watch that movie, but it was just all dudes. It just seemed kind of weird." Little things like that I think can shift, whether you're doing it online, in social media, or with your dad groups kind of over beers. I think that's important to just talk about it. You don't need to get in giant fights about it, but you just need to kind of bring it to the table and say, "Eh, I kind of want something better."

Andy: Another one that you point out in the book that I really like is this attitude of boys will be boys. And that kind of more rowdy and risky is sort of expected and taken for granted from boys. So, A, why is that? Where does that come from? And then, B, as a parent today, what can you do to sort of shift it in your family?

Mike: That's a fantastic question, and would that I knew where it came from exactly, other than we have a long history of excusing pretty poor behavior just by saying, "Eh." We expect so little from boys that, no bigs. And when I think of boys being boys, it's usually trotted out as an excuse for bad behavior, right. We never see a boy baking cupcakes and we're like, "Oh, boys will be boys." It's always kind of something dangerous, something physical, something violent, something that maybe hurt somebody else. It's like, "Eh, boys will be boys. They just can't really help it." Well, obviously, they can. It's a cultural construct we're creating each time we say that. Like, I love to sew. I love to cross-stitch. I love to work out and run long-distance races. All of that stuff, I like to tell dads, is totally cool.

Mike: There's no right way to be a man. There's no right way to be a boy. There's a huge spectrum of things we can do in the spectrum of masculinity, and that's just all okay. So, that's kind of goes to the second part of what you can do in your circles to help shift that. I think I take a more strident tone in the book in terms of, people trod it out, boys will be boys. And I think, I'm like, "Yeah, boys will be jerks. Let's call them out on it and make sure they're not in the future." But I think it just kind of goes to the overall message of you can just say little things. You don't have to be a total... You don't have to get in fight with all your friends and family, but you can say like, "We expect better behavior than that. And we're not going to excuse away bad behavior just because of who you are. That's silly. That's not okay."

Mike: So that's something I really am calling on dads to just kind of be aware of and be present every time you kind of get that urge to say that. Well, explore why and what that excuses away exactly, and whether that fits your own full spectrum of emotion that we're often not capable, sometimes, of expressing, of bringing out, and bringing to word, to language. So that's one of the things I definitely wanted to make sure we talked about and just keep an intentional space in your brain for not letting that creep in as an excuse for bad behavior because it does add up. We excuse away little things and then, all of a sudden, we're excusing away bad things.

Andy: Yeah. I totally agree. I feel it's kind of about trying to find the way that feels authentic for you to be able to dissent a little bit. Because it's like if those moments happen and you don't say anything, you're just kind of silently, implicitly allowing it to go on or agreeing. Martin Luther King said, "There comes a time when silence is betrayal." And I think that's true with a lot of this kind of stuff. So, your edict in the book to say something, to call people out on it, I think is valid. And it might not be that people might not all do it the same way as you, but you can find a way, I think, that's authentic to you to just say something just so that people know that you're not just agreeing with whatever's kind of being done.

Mike: Yeah. That's a really good thing to put kind of a fine point on is that feeling of... I think a lot of people get twitchy, myself included. I get it. It feels uncomfortable to have what you think might be an oppositional conversation about it.

Andy: But I think we avoid confrontation a lot.

Mike: Right.

Andy: It feels like you just would rather just let it... Just not rock the boat or something, sometimes.

Mike: Yeah. Sociologists have that thing, and then what passes as normal. It's a symbolic interactionism. It's the idea that we kind of through shared language and symbols kind of create our normal in culture. And for far too long, the normal we've created is just, eh, boys will be boys. So it does take a little bit of effort, a confrontation to say, "I want something better. I'm willing to engage in a little bit of trouble to make it better." And again, it's going to be a little bit uncomfortable. You might get in an argument with dudes, but at the end of the day, we're really stifling our boys. And we're putting our girls at danger, health danger, physical danger because we're saying, "Things are okay to do to them because boys just can't help it." And that's not cool. That's worth having a little conversation with Aunt Sally about sometimes, I think.

Andy: Because the flip side of the boys will be boys is that girls are expected to just kind of be polite, and well mannered, and good, and not really to express those kind of negative emotions as much anger. And so, you talk about in here, I thought was pretty cool, the idea of getting a punching bag for girls or finding ways, if you have girls, to kind of help them to express and get out some of those fear, and anger, and sadness, and those more negative emotions that girls aren't "supposed to express as much."

Mike: Yeah. It's funny. We actually do have a punching bag at home that is there, but my daughter's finding a lot more relief in taking a pillow and just throwing it down like a medicine ball as hard as she can, like... And I told her to add in a good scream for that. And now that she's 13, and this just kind of goes toward the idea of earlier on, I've helped manage tantrums and frustrations a little bit differently and I'm like, "Oh, you know what, kiddo? I want you to find a curse word you're comfortable saying. Not a big one, but maybe a low key one," because science has found that when you pair that with throwing a pillow down after a... maybe you stub your toe, it actually it helps relieve pain a little bit more than not cursing. She said "Dad, I'm not going to curse around you. That's crazy." I'm like, "All right." But just having that conversation, how can we deal with your emotions.