From Grunts to Growth: Talking Boys with Christopher Pepper

0:00Elliott:Hey friends, Olivia from Oli. Between new routines and the ultimate group project known as parenting, you need science-backed solutions that work with your life. That's where Oli comes in. Start your mornings off right with Maltese made to support nutrition and immune health. Choose from our lineup of gut-supporting probiotics, and we've got occasional sleep support to help the whole fam chase their big dreams. Head back to class with the number one gummy supplement brand. Stock up on Oli.com today. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

0:35Elliott:Christopher Pepper writes the best-selling Substack newsletter Teen Health Today and is the co-author of the book Talk to Your Boys which will be out in September. He is an award-winning health educator in the San Francisco Unified School District where he has taught thousands of students about topics like sleep, mental health and sexuality. Christopher also helps coordinate the district's Young Men's Health Project, which brings middle and high school boys together to talk about relationships, emotions and healthy masculinity. His work has been featured in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Edutopia and on national public radio.

1:22Elliott:Christopher, welcome very much to the To Be A Boy podcast. Thank you so much. It's really nice to be here. And I appreciate the work that you're doing to bring attention to the needs of boys in our world now. Yeah, well, thank you. And we are really excited about your new book. We've had an opportunity to read it and it is going to be absolutely brilliant. As I said to you before, I'm really confident there is a massive market for this. lots of people confused about how to talk to their boys. So really excited about that coming out in September. Let's get into it. So according to Ecumundo, 72 % of young men in the US have been told a real man behaves a certain way, which involves being tough, being heterosexual and being a risk taker.

2:09Elliott:But research also finds that this traditional narrative of what it means to be a man is seriously harming our boys and men. So what would you say parents should be doing? I guess the message that I really want to get across to boys and to parents of boys is that I want boys to have a full menu of options for how they live their life. Often the lane that's sort of laid out for boys feels pretty small. I'm like, there's one way to be in the world. And if you stray out of that lane, you might get teased, you might get mocked, you might get beat up, or Or, you know, there's a lot of fear about people are not going to like me if I act in a certain way or don't act exactly as I think boys are expected to act.

2:49That's kind of going on a lot in the minds of young boys. And I really want to blow that up. I want boys to feel like, oh, I have lots of options for how to be in the world. I can do a career that's kind of traditionally coded as masculine. I could also do something that's maybe traditionally coded as feminine. and all those are fine and they're, you know, caring for other people is a great way to be a man in the world. And we need to really get that message across.

3:15Elliott:How do we do that when, as you say, careers that are coded as feminine, so nursing, childcare, lots of caring work, right? They are, they're just seen as not cool. I mean, they're seen as not cool. They're paid badly. How do we get that message across to boys? How do we say to them it's okay to be emotional it's okay to work in child care these things are great and good and cool without them feeling that they are being weak or being I don't know for want of a better word a bit gay because that's often what kids say you know that's a bit gay isn't it if it's feminine coded how do we show them that it's that it's not weak and it's not a bit gay to do that?

4:05We can start at home or in our own lives. As for men, we can start by thinking about how we express ourselves and whether we show a full range of emotions, whether we do a good job of connecting with friends and showing a wide range of activities that we do. I think it's really important for boys to see men caring for other people and seeing that that work is valued. And I think trying to, But I really do think we need a concerted campaign around this. We've had a lot of outreach efforts in the United States to encourage girls to go into STEM careers, science, technology, engineering, and math.

4:41Lots of posters about you can be an astronaut, you can be an engineer. Girls should go into computer science, things like that. And I think those are great. I really think those are kind of culture change campaigns that are important. I would love to see corollary campaigns for boys that say, we really need you to become a therapist. We need you to become a teacher or a nurse or to be a child care provider. Like we need men in those roles. It's a fun and interesting way to spend your day. You can get paid for doing it. And it's an important way. It's an important option to make sure that boys know is available to them.

5:16And we need to make, you know, if people are seeing that that is only for girls or seeing like, oh, those are gay professions, like we need to really work on that and have campaigns around it to really try and change that messaging.

5:30Elliott:Yeah, I would agree with you. I think it's something that we should, schools and the government should be looking at in order to how do we change that narrative, particularly because we know that we need men in caring professions desperately and in nursing and in teaching. And all of these professions are really lacking male role models and men in them. You've, for the last decade, you have been coordinating young men's health groups in San Francisco public schools. So you're talking to these young men constantly. Can you tell us what you've learned from those conversations? Yeah, I'm really proud of this program.

6:09It was actually started primarily as an HIV prevention intervention and has become over time really focused on social and emotional needs. because what we found was that boys would come to these groups and contrary to stereotype, they were really eager to talk and they really wanted to talk about what it means, what it's like to be a boy today, what kind of pressures they're facing in their lives. And they were eager to lend support to one another. They were eager to connect with other boys. They often, even after the groups only last for about eight weeks, and often after the group is over, they want to keep meeting.

6:43They find that they really connect with one another. What I've learned, I guess, is that often boys in these groups, they participate and they're like, no one's ever asked me about these things. No one's ever asked me what it's like to be a boy now. And I really appreciate the space to talk about it.

6:57Elliott:How do, what would your advice be to people listening who are desperate for their son or a boy in their life to open up to them about some of the challenges that they're experiencing? How would you tell them to approach that conversation? I think you need to look for openings when you can get them. And one real superpower in this area is curiosity. You're sort of both looking for times where boys do want to talk and often they're at awkward times. It might be at the end of the day after you're exhausted and you're trying to put your kid to bed and all of a sudden they want to start talking. or sometimes it's when you're out, you're going somewhere together, you're sitting side by side.

7:42Some boys do better with side by side conversations rather than I'm going to sit down and look at you and we're going to have an intense face-to-face conversation. But looking for those opportunities, some kids do better with text messaging. So use the tools that you have as any way to connect with them, but then make it safe for them to have those emotions, to have a wide range of feelings. and I think I said like curiosity is really a superpower in this for parents and adults to connect with young people so be curious about their lives if they're playing video games like tell me about this game why do you love playing this game what are you doing can I play with you if they're listening to music like have them play the songs that they're into have them show you the videos that they're laughing with their friends about be curious and interested in their lives and sort of recognize the different stages as they're growing up that they might have ideas that are different than you they might be interested in things that are your that you're not interested in automatically but be curious about who they are and who they're how they're developing and what they're into yeah i love that chris in terms of being curious i try to practice that with with my daughter and so it's very interesting watching family youtubers and listening to her music and a whole different world i'm also trying to not be judgmental as well so when i was younger I remember typical teenager, like didn't tell my parents anything really.

9:03And there was one time when I went out with my friend and we were in the car and we were going up this hill. And he was driving, but he wasn't looking to his right hand side. He pulled out and the car crashed into us. And we got into a car crash, basically. Walked away, we were safe, but the car was written off. And so we got the car onto the side, went back to his house, sorted it out. I went home and then my mum and dad were asking me like oh like how's the day been

9:28Elliott:and I was like oh it's been fine fine just mentioned I was in the car crash only until like later on the evening or the next day I just brought it up and I look back and think wow like I was like so typical I didn't tell my parents I was in the car crash like that's crazy and I think maybe don't get me wrong I love my mum and dad if you're listening I love you but I think it might have been partly thinking are they gonna like tell me off if I tell them and I'm gonna have to justify where I was and where I was going and like what I did wrong and you know just I might feel like I'm in trouble if I say anything so I'm really trying to like not be not make my daughters feel like if they tell me something they're going to get in trouble for it even if maybe they have done something they shouldn't have been doing if you know what I mean hey Elliot here as you may know as well as co-hosting this lovely podcast I also run Parenting Out Loud the workplace culture change program that supports dads to be loud and proud about their caring responsibilities at work and equal parents at home well I have some exciting news in September we are hosting the UK's first ever Working Dads Summit sponsored by Universal Music Group UK the one-day online event will bring together fathers, thought leaders, employers and change makers to explore what it really means to be a dad in today's world and how we can create workplace environments where dads can parent loudly.

10:53Expect real stories, bold conversations and practical solutions. So whether you are a dad, an employer, HR leader or dad advocate, this summit is for anyone who believes in equal parenting and gender equality at work and at home. 23rd of September, online, 1pm to 5pm, completely free. So register on WorkingDadsSummit.com and join the community over on LinkedIn. Just search for Parenting Out Loud. Right, back to the show. What do you think about that in terms of just being non-judgmental and trying to approach the conversation in that way? I think it's a real balance because we do as adults and as parents, we want to set expectations and we want to be clear about those expectations of how we want our kids to act and what things are okay and sort of our value system, what's important to us.

11:47At the same time, one of the goals of adolescence and living through this time period is to make mistakes, to learn from your mistakes and to get better. So I think starting with that understanding of like, kids are going to screw up and they're going to do things that are embarrassing. They're going to do things that you're like, how could you do this? And to really let them know, like, no matter what, I love you. I'm going to be there for you. You can talk to me about things. It doesn't mean that I'm not going to be upset or, you know, it doesn't mean that you can do whatever and I don't care.

12:21It means I care about you so much that even when you screw up and even if you screw up badly, I still love you and I'm still going to be there for you.

12:29Elliott:Yeah, that's nice. My two kids, one of them will tell me everything immediately. I pick him up from school and he just doesn't stop talking as I'm walking home. It's a constant stream of consciousness. And the other one just grunts at me and has always been like that. And I ask him questions about his life and his day and it's one weird answers. And I really struggle to get him to tell me anything about his life, what he enjoys, what's upsetting him. When things have, when he's had a horrible time when something awful has happened to him, he'll sometimes tell me, but it'll be weeks later. And they'll say, you know, that time when, oh, that's because this had happened.

13:12Elliott:And I know in your book, you give some questions, some guides for parents on things that they can ask to prompt to get their kids to open up a little bit. What kind of style of questioning do you think can work well with boys? Sure. I mean, I do think it's good to recognize that just people are different. And just like with adults, there's going to be some adults who are more talkative than others. and some people do need some processing time to think about things and they maybe talk about it later. So there may be just personality differences in people and that's okay. But trying to move away from the routine questions of like, how was your day?

13:49How are you doing? Asking about more specific details sometimes is a way to get a little more conversation. So asking things like, what was the funniest thing that you heard today? Or who did you sit with at lunch? Was there surprised you the most today. Things that get at specific details that you can't just answer, fine, everything's good, are sometimes a way to prompt at least a little bit of sharing about what's going on. And then I do think it's good to look for other adults to include in a kid's life. So sometimes that's professionals, mental health professionals, therapists, or coaches.

14:24Sometimes it's just an uncle or a family friend or somebody that a kid can have a relationship with that they may feel comfortable talking about some things that they're not as comfortable talking about with their parent and those are often important relationships in kids lives and there's nothing wrong with that it's a real asset if you can find some people to be in your kid's life like that

14:46Elliott:yeah nice I do ask my kids always what they had for lunch and that's the only time they talk to me they love telling me what they had for their lunch what are the signs would you say that a kid is struggling. They're really like they're not doing well. There's some serious problems. You may need to get external intervention of some degree involved. Sure. I'm glad you're asking. We do see a lot of boys who are struggling right now, a lot of girls who are struggling right now, just a lot of kids who feel lonely or disconnected or really trying to find their place in the world and figure out what's important to them and how they matter in the world.

15:26So definitely keep your eyes open. And you're looking for changes. You're looking for a kid who suddenly goes from talking all the time to suddenly not talking or being by themselves a lot when they used to be more social. Things that we think about as depressive symptoms of just someone having trouble motivating to get out of bed in the morning, trouble feeling joy or finding joy in day-to-day life. So you're looking for those kind of signs. Sometimes in boys, depression doesn't look like that. Sometimes it looks like anger or sort of more outwardly expressed feelings. They're not necessarily internalizing those, but acting rough toward the outside world and doesn't always get recognized as depression or a mental health issue like that.

16:05So those would be signs where I'd go for help. And it's rarely a bad decision to ask for support. I mean, you can sometimes start with the school or it can just be a check-in and you may find, oh, everything's kind of typical, nothing really wrong. but if a kid does need support helping them get to that support is really important and trying to make it as much like a routine as you can because there is a lot of stigma around mental health care particularly for boys like i'm just going to handle this on my own i don't need to talk to anyone and we want to try and move away from those stigmas as much as possible and i guess chris as well to like to be able to notice those changes we have to like know our kids really well we have to be around them we have to understand what they normally do and i guess it's in terms of the modern world i think that's like a key challenge for parents is actually being present like i know for me i would say i'm like you know an involved parent but it is a challenge right because i'm working a lot bit of a workaholic i have a social try and have a social life try to try and see my friends every now and again and staying close to your kids is like another full time job which is fine because that's what we sign up for with parenting but i guess it can be like a challenge in the modern world and previous generations as well of just like actually we have to stay really close we've got to be there physically mentally emotionally do you find in your work that parents struggle with with that aspect of just parenting i really do so recognizing that that is a hard it's a hard ask it's a hard thing for adults to do to stay close to their kids.

17:42I would ask parents to pay close attention to this kind of transition period when people are going from primary school to secondary school, because it's often when parents kind of say, okay, I'm going to step back a little bit. I don't need to be as involved. What I see often with boys in particular is that they don't really have great social skills to kind of be able to make all their social plans with friends and be able to maintain friendships and support, have deep kind of emotionally rich supportive friendships. So when we are asking them to manage those on their own, they often kind of flounder for a while.

18:17They don't quite know how to do it. And we see adults who never quite get those skills down. We have a lot of adult men who are just lonely. They don't have a lot of friends. So I think explicitly teaching those skills, like how do you make a friend, how do you keep a friend, showing that in your own life. So actually going out with your friends is a great thing for your kids to see and seeing that, oh, that is something that adults do and here's how they do it. And you can explicitly kind of, sometimes it's good to narrate, like, here's what I'm doing to keep in touch with people who I care about.

18:47Sometimes it's good to narrate what you're doing so that they can really see it. But the thing that happens right at this transition time is that adults are taking a step back and kids get phones and their whole social life becomes, they're navigating it through their phones or through other ways of connecting online. Often those connections are not, that supportive they can really they can go sideways in a lot of different directions and it is a time where i think one that parents in the modern era need to not really take a step back but take a close look at what's going on and try and find different ways to be involved and to stay close for maybe longer than you expected that you would have to be so involved yeah so when i'm going to the football on saturday i'll say to my kids i'm doing this for you okay so you can see what it's like to have friends i'll see you tomorrow can we talk about that transition period please because i've got two years left and then my daughter goes the eldest goes into secondary school and i'm sort of shitting myself a little bit because i'm really enjoying this period of like primary school and like everyone cares and everyone's nice and pastoral care is really friendly and i know the secondary school is going to be very different like what what do you think is there any particular advice for that period that parents should think about that transition to secondary school?

20:02So my friend Lisa DeMoor, who's a writer about emotions and teenagers, really emphasizes that kids don't need a lot of friends, but having one or two close friends is very important. So sometimes adults get hung up on popularity and like, is my kid going to be the most popular kid in school? They don't need to be to be happy, but they do need to have one or two close friends. So trying to cultivate that is something that an adult can do of just making it really easy for them to have people over. If you see them starting to have a a friendship, like don't put up any barriers to keep those kids separated.

20:34Try and encourage that without being too pushy about it, but try to encourage any budding friendships. And then I think it's important for schools to do a lot around social-emotional learning, particularly for students who are just coming in, either when they're first starting or when they're transferring into a new school, to try and make those connections seamless and try and help young people find the kids that they'll click with at a school and to do things like bullying prevention to make sure that the school feels safe for everyone and that there's a clear message about the culture of the school and how do we at our school how do we treat one another and what are the expectations and so that there's a culture set from the beginning of how things go I don't want kids going to school and feeling like they have to have their armor up all the time or have walking down the hall.

21:25Elliott:Yeah. And I think, you know, speaking as a woman who grew up as a girl, I have worried about this a lot because I've never really been in a fight. I mean, I've sort of been in a fight, but I've never really been in a fight, whereas every man I know has been in a full-on fist fight, you know. And my son, who's about to start secondary school in September, is already, I can see him putting on the armour metaphorically and preparing himself ready for secondary school and he's asked me for boxing lessons and you can see he expects secondary school to just be a one big fight that feels like those are the messages that he's getting so I'm trying not to reinforce those messages as much as I can I think what I have said to my son about fights at school is you should run in the other direction go in the other direction if anybody ever threatens you don't don't challenge it just run and he looks at me like I'm mad and says I can't do that mom of course I can't do that because then they'll just keep picking on me and I don't really know what to say to him Christopher help me what a challenging situation I think I do think the school that should not be the situation that anybody is dealing with when they go to school like school is for learning for forming social relationships with other people as a part of school but having to fight your way out every day or feeling like you're always on guard.

22:47If that's happening, that is a problem at the school level that they should be paying a lot of attention to. I think for that individual kid, for your kid, it might be useful to think about similar situations for adults because you're ultimately trying to help your teenagers learn the skills that they're going to keep practicing when they're adults. Getting away from a sketchy situation that might turn into a fight is a really good skill that I think a lot of adults learn. So you see some kind of conflict on the sidewalk when you're walking around and you say, I'm going to just cross the street.

23:19I'm going to get away from that. Or I'm going to see what's going on and see if I can step in and help. But those are self-protective skills and getting away from a situation is the first one that you really want to cultivate. So that is not a bad thing to teach. You might want to teach it about like how to get out of a situation in a way that doesn't, that's a little less public. So like how do you slide out in the background and not make a big show of the fact that you're leaving the situation? I think those situations where it's a particular personal challenge where someone's like feeling challenged and feeling like I have to stand up for myself or else this is going to continue or things will get worse.

24:00That is kind of the hardest situation to navigate. and that is a place where you want the school to be able to step in. Sometimes it is helpful for young people to just have self-confidence around their physicality, like how to learn some self-defense skills or things like that. But a lot of self-defense is like how to get out of a situation. If you take a self-defense class, that's a lot of what they teach you. The main goal is to not actually get in a physical altercation. The main goal is to try and figure out how do you get away from this.

24:29Elliott:yeah rather than boxing which is probably a bit more just punch them right yeah that's why i'm like i'm not sure about boxing not sure that's the way forward do you know my daughter does a gracie jujitsu on a wednesday and it is so cool it's so funny so the the instructor ben amazing guy there's about 20 kids they're sitting around in a circle and he'll be talking to them about food fizzy drinks like drink water kids like all messages about nutrition and whatnot and his his key message is you want to position yourself where no one wants to fight you and you don't want to fight and the first thing needs to be to disarm to walk away to like not getting in a fight but if you do get in a fight here's how you pin someone down so they can't hit you um he's so good the other day we're just all the parents were on the side and the kids are sitting around in a circle and he gets this like plastic knife and just throws it in the middle of the circle he's like what would you do if you go to a friend's house and they've got a knife and one of the kids has got a knife and obviously the 10 year olds and you just see the whites of their eyes open but he talks through you know what would you do like how would if you found this knife or how would you pick it up and like how would you respond and it's incredible and i think when we talk about like role models in the community like ben for for us is one of those um the way he talks to the kids on a very real level like seriously very very real um but just helps them and a lot of the kids there have been bullied so they go there because they have been bullied in the past and he just gives them so much like confidence to stand in a in an empowered way you know so people don't pick on them essentially so yeah big up ben gracie jiu-jitsu and watford big up ben and martial arts generally seem to instill these very good lessons and kids about self-defense and getting away from stuff unlike boxing which is what my kids want to do um christopher i i have a bit of an issue one of my kids gets angry like he'll get really angry but and he says to me please help me i feel really angry and i don't know how to deal with it what would you how can you help kids deal with their emotions better so i do think with kids going through puberty it is like we often think of puberty as a big physical change that sort of noticeable changes that people have in their bodies really start getting taller and growing body hair and things like that, there is also a tremendous amount of change in the brain.

26:56And so I think it's important for kids to know that and understand that because it is very common for people to have big changes in how the hormones that they're getting can cause emotional changes. And they don't come in evenly. So it can feel like all of a sudden I've got this surge of anger or I'm all of a sudden sad a lot more than I used to be. And over time, most people learn to sort of adjust to that and the hormone levels even out, but they can come in pretty unevenly at first and it can just take a while for people to figure out how do I deal with these new feelings that weren't here before.

27:37So part of it's just normalizing, like that is not uncommon and it won't last forever. But I think if you talk to a lot of adult men, Like, what was it like to go through your preteen years or your teen years? Anger is a common thing that people talk about. Like, sometimes I'd just be really angry and I didn't know why. And that does tend to even out over time. But doing the basic things of self-care that help for many people, taking a shower, getting up at a regular time, getting plenty of sleep really helps with emotional regulation. It is a place where, you know, that's an easy recommendation to make.

28:12It's not necessarily an easy change, but trying to get adequate sleep can really help with emotional regulation. And then physical exercise in some teenagers respond really well to like more intense physical exercise, incorporating some weights or some exercise that's a little more intense or challenging than previous can help with just the baseline emotional regulation.

28:35Elliott:Hey, friends, Olivia from OLLI. between new routines and the ultimate group project known as parenting, you need science-backed solutions that work with your life. That's where Oli comes in. Start your mornings off right with Maltese made to support nutrition and immune health. Choose from our lineup of gut-supporting probiotics, and we've got occasional sleep support to help the whole fan chase their big dreams. Head back to class with the number one gummy supplement brand. Stock up on Oli.com today. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.