MY INTERVIEW WITH Cara Natterson, paediatrician and bestselling author of puberty and parenting books

Q: How did you become interested in wellness and puberty?

A: Well, I tease and say I became interested in the job that would most humiliate my children. But I am a pediatrician by training, and I was in practice as a pediatrician for many years and when my kids were little, it was really hard for my husband and I to juggle our schedules because he also a doctor. And so, we were just never around or home. I decided to take a break from the clinical side of medicine and try doing something different in healthcare. So, I started writing and it was one of those one thing leads to another crazy circumstances and I ended up in a room with a bunch of people who said. “If you can do anything next, what would you do?” I said, “Oh, there is this book by American Girl called The Care & Keeping of You and I would take that book, I would update it and make it a huge series because every patient asks me what else they can read.” That meeting led to me being hired by American Girl to rewrite The Care of Keeping. It was like be careful what you ask for. I spent the next five years working really closely with American Girl on a series of puberty books and blowing out the line, both for girls and also for boys, which is awesome. It has cemented me in the pediatric wellness.

Q: This is a tough time for everyone. High schoolers are missing so many milestones - events that we’ve been looking forward to since freshman year e.g., prom, graduation, even just senior spring. Have you observed a difference in the ways in which boys are handling Covid-19 and the ways in which girls are handling it?

A: The reason why I write books for and about both boys and girls is that I don’t actually think there is a very big difference between the male and the female experience of transformation. I think that growing up and having your body completely shift and change, and having your emotional world completely shift and change, and having your friend world completely shift and change, those are genderless issues. So yeah, the parts are a little different and hormones are a little different, but for the most part that transition, that transformation is the same across both genders. Each individual experiences it very, very uniquely. But, as a whole, everyone experiences a fundamental shift. It became a no brainer to me to write about boys because they were kind of getting left out of the conversation. To answer your question about are their differences in what they are experiencing, I think the answer is yes and no. On the one hand, the variability and experiences, and I am sure your friends are experiencing wildly different things as this goes on, like over the time period as their emotions shift and also depending upon what their personalities are, what their family structure is, where they are, do they have good relationships with their siblings, do their siblings drive them crazy, there are all of these factors that impact the experience that each and every kid is going to have during a lockdown. I think it is impossible to divide along gender lines because all of those other factors weigh in so much. Did a kid lose a family member to corona virus? Did a kid’s parents lose a job because of corona virus? So, these things all impact the experience I think much more than gender. That being said, there is one thing that I definitely noticed that is gendered, and that is, I wrote a book that came out in February called Decoding Boys. It is a parenting book that is about when boys go through puberty, they get kind of quiet. Instead of having nice long answers to things, they might just use one syllable, one word, or they might just grunt, they shut their door all of the time. It is pretty common. I had heard from a lot of parents that during this period that has actually gotten better. I think what it is, is that when we had teen normal life, boys would get home from a long day of school, they would just need to shut the world out for a little while and they would shut their door. They would retreat from the people who were safest, their parents and their family members. Those are the people who are always going to love them. But, to know that this is where they are for school all day every day, they don’t have the same need to come home at the end of day and shut the world out. In fact, they need to open their door and get out of their rooms and engage with people a little bit more. Even though they are still quiet, and they still grunt, and they still have single word answers to questions, I think they are opening their doors a little bit more and it is because they are behind those closed doors much of day, so they are learning how to come out a little bit on their own.

Q: What can be done to inspire boys to enter the conversation about mental health?

A: Good question. I don’t know that this is the right answer, but here is one answer. Just like as a society we have done a really good job talking to girls about what is happening to their bodies and empowering them to have conversations about what is happening to their bodies. So, when I was growing up no one would even say the word “period”. Now, your generation it is like, “blah blah blah period this period that, boobs this boobs that,” and people are very open about what is happening on the inside. Likewise, girls have been very empowered to talk about their emotional wellness. We have to mold boys in the conversation the same way. I think there are a lot of different avenues that are opening up for boys to help them talk about their body. I think the show “Big Mouth” has done an enormous amount to help make boys comfortable with talking about what is happening to their body because it is funny, and it is irreverent. I think there is lots of content that is being created that addresses that, but I don’t think people have, the world at large, has done it for emotional wellness with boys in the same way quite yet. So, I think boys are a little bit behind girls in terms of willingness to open up about these things and I feel like mental health is going to be the last thing that boys start to open up about. It is just baby steps. Part of it is the branding of mental health. It used to be that we thought the phrase “mental health” was negative, now of course we know it is not. It is a positive phrase. It is all about mental wellness and understanding when it is negative, how to flip that around and care for yourself. I think that piece of it needs to be communicated to guys and maybe it is your generation of females that can help pull in the males to make it cooler or more acceptable to talk about.

Q:  If you could offer one piece of advice to a high school student, what would it be and why?

A: Sure. So, my biggest advice and it is the same for parents as it is for kids, is finding comfort with the phrase “I don’t know” is going to help you a lot. When is this going to be over? I don’t know. When am I going to be able to be back in school full time? I don’t know. When am I going to be able to hang out with my friends? I don’t know. Am I going to be safe or am I going to get really sick? I don’t know. Are my parents going to be ok? I don’t know. I know what I hope the answers to all those things are, but I think the importance of surrendering a little bit to the “I don’t know”, which is really scary. Surrendering that allows you to then shift your mindset and go, “Okay. Since I don’t know, how can I behave in a way that keeps me safe and healthy.” That helps empower kids to practice distancing, I call it physical distancing because I don’t think you should be socially distanced, I only think you should be physically distanced. It helps kids make smarter and better choices about how they engage in the world as long as we don’t know.

Q: What’s a book you’ve read recently that opened your mind to new concepts around wellness or something else?

A: I am almost finished reading Untamed. It is amazing! It is by Glennon Doyle. She talks openly about mental health, addiction, identity, and she is a wonderful storyteller.