A Conversation About All Things Puberty, with Dr. Cara Natterson and Vanessa Kroll Bennett

Debbie:
Hey, Cara, Vanessa, welcome back to the podcast.

Vanessa Bennett:
Thank you. We’re so happy to be here.

Cara Natterson:
Thanks, Debbie.

Debbie:
Yeah, I’m really excited to have you back. I mean, really, when your publicist reached out and said, there’s a paperback edition of This is So Awkward. And I was like, great, bring them on. I just love getting to chat with you. And I consider you very wise about all things, teens and tweens and puberty. And so I just wanted to really get into conversation with you. In case people haven’t listened to our first episode together, which if you haven’t listeners, there’s a link in the show notes. Definitely check that out. But would you guys just take a few minutes and talk about your, who you are in your collaboration together? Cause it’s really pretty magical what you’ve got going on.

Cara Natterson:
I wanna, you want me to start Vanessa? I’ll start. Okay. So my origin story, this is Cara. My origin story is that I’m a pediatrician and I was in practice for a while in Los Angeles and ended up flipping into a career of writing books, which landed me at American Girl and writing their puberty series, The Care and Keeping of You and. You know, that opened so many very interesting, amazing doors for me. And maybe the most exciting door it opened was the door to Vanessa Kroll Bennett because she hasn’t heard this version of my story. Where is this going? You know, it’s, you get to be, you get to choose in life if you’re a collaborator or if you’re a sole operator and there’s nothing wrong with either one. I just thought I was a sole operator for a really long time. And then when I met Vanessa, I realized, maybe I’ve got that wrong and I’m a collaborator. And it’s been gangbusters ever since. So Vanessa and I podcast together and have for about five years now. we started with a podcast called, the puberty podcast, but it was about so much more than puberty that we broadened it to. become This Is So Awkward, the podcast which is coincidentally the name of our book that we wrote together called You Got It, This Is So Awkward. And we just create tons of content about growing up and our most exciting new addition since the last time we were here, Debbie, is a curriculum that is school-based and designed for educators with any level of background. to teach their students about health and wellness and consent and friendship and, and, and, and, yes, all the way up through sex education. So Vanessa, I’ll pass it off to you.

Vanessa Bennett:
Yes, please. Now that I know where she went with it, I know how to appropriately pick up. So my background, I’m not a pediatrician. My background came from, I started a company called Dynamo Girl, which used sports and social emotional learning to build girls’ self-esteem. And very quickly I saw the girls in my program were in puberty earlier than I expected. And so we started doing workshops with girls and their families to educate them about puberty. And very quickly I was introduced to Cara. by a mutual friend. And I said, well, I can’t meet her. She’s puberty royalty. She’s like the author of the care and keeping of you books. I’m not worthy. And this friend said, no, no, no, she’s so nice. You should meet her. And so we started collaborating and, it was, it’s really about giving adults and kids the information and tools that they need beginning with, for those folks who didn’t listen to our first episode with you, Debbie, the fact that kids start puberty on average about two to three years earlier than they did, so between eight and 10, which is much earlier than when we were growing up. And parents are shocked and surprised and feel ill-equipped. Teachers are shocked and surprised and feel equipped. So our job is to help give everyone what they need to handle it with more confidence.

Debbie:
Wow. Okay. So first of all, I just have to say puberty royalty. I really appreciate that phrase and accurate. And your collaboration really is, it’s unique. Like I think you guys are so well suited to be partnering together and you both bring so much. and as a team are just phenomenal. So anyway, I’m sorry, I’m gushing a bit, but I just really.

Vanessa Bennett:
We’re just going to stay here all day, Debbie. mean, nobody speaks to us this nicely, so.

Cara Natterson:
I know I’m parked for the afternoon here.

Debbie:
Well, you you said eight to 10 and, you know, we did talk about that on our first conversation, but it’s shocking every time I hear it. Is it still shocking for you?

Vanessa Bennett:
No, but every time we speak, there’s an audible gasp in the room. We just spoke to hundreds of middle school educators this past week at a conference. These are middle school educators. So folks who spend all day every day with kids between, let’s say, 10 and 14. And when we gave them that information, there was an audible gasp in the ballroom.

Cara Natterson:
Actually, what precedes the gasp is this deadly silence. there’s a moment where you’ve, you know, when you know you’ve got your audience, like you just say between eight and 10 and then there’s a, and then there’s a, yeah. But this data Debbie is almost 30 years old. That’s what’s so incredible. That’s why we’re not surprised. There was a woman named Marcia Herman-Giddens who. was a, I kind of think about what her exact credential is. I think she was a nurse practitioner who then got her doctorate and she was operating out of Duke University running pediatric clinics. She was the very first person to publish data. It was in 1997. looked at 17,000 girls and that was the study that showed the average age of first puberty or onset of puberty average. had moved from 11 to 10, but even in that very early study, when she pulled out kids by race, which now, Debbie, probably looks like it’s socioeconomic status and zip code and not race, but when she did that, she had already found a subset that were entering puberty as young as eight on average. So this is not new data at all.

Debbie:
Yeah. I mean, eight is like third grade. Is that right?

Vanessa Bennett:
Yeah. And for a lot of kids, second grade.

Vanessa Bennett:
Yeah. So like I was coaching little girls in second grade who were clearly beginning puberty. And for people who don’t know, when I say that female puberty starts, first sign of physical expression of female puberty is our breast buds. And anyone who’s had breast buds knows those suckers poke out of anything, right? Like you could be wearing like a suit of armor and you could see the breast buds. so I had these awesome little girls running around my gym classes in their, you know, dry fit t-shirts and a bunch of them had breast buds and they were carefree and fabulous. So people think, God, it’s so terrible. I’m going to start crying. It’s like, no, they’re fine. They’re happy. They’re joyful. It’s when the world starts projecting their stuff and sexualizing kids who are starting puberty is when the worries and concerns and the work really needs to happen.

Cara Natterson:
I mean, we must add those breast buds can be very uncomfortable for some kids. Those dry fit shirts, ouch, for some kids against their breast buds. Boys and girls. That’s right. That’s right. And this is gender agnostic. yes, yes.

Vanessa Bennett:
Right. And if you get a dodge ball, if you get a dodge ball to the breast buds, is no fun. Yeah.

Debbie:
That’s very visceral, I can feel that. Right. So, And in terms of, just ask, I don’t know if you have data on this or not, but is there any information about neurodivergence and puberty in terms of how neurodivergence would affect the onset of puberty, if it does at all? Just curious.

Cara Natterson:
So there, was just this weekend reading a study that’s looking at the onset. There isn’t a lot of data. In fact, if any listeners here have data, please send it our way. You can find us at lessawkward.com, because we’re really searching for that. What we know is that the experience of going through puberty is different when your brain processes information differently and when the impact of the sex hormones, estrogen and testosterone in particular, looks different in a brain. I will say, Debbie, and this is your entire world and how you, know, sort of this is your sandbox. So I am now a visitor in your sandbox with this sentence. But I don’t believe that in 10 years from now, we will even be, I hope we won’t be using terms like neurodivergence because I believe there are so many different brain types and the more we study brains and the more we see the way the brain develops and the more we understand the way kids think and learn, the more different types there are, there’s more appreciation there is. So even that question about neurodivergence is going to be very hard to answer through data unless we narrow the specific types of neurodivergence that we’re looking at. I’ll give you one example. There’s a lot of emerging data about ADHD and puberty. That data specifically looks at executive function and decision-making and what we know about developing brains, what we know about the impact of sex hormones, and what we know about kids who are diagnosed with ADHD. But that’s one corner of this universe. I would personally love a million more studies and I would love to think about brains on a wider continuum because I think that’s really where kids are.

Debbie:
Yeah. I mean, there is no normal. There’s no average. There’s no typical. And it’s just interesting because the term neural divergent wasn’t even a thing. It wasn’t even used in most people’s vocabulary when I started the show almost 10 years ago. And so it’s just fascinating to see how we’re evolving. But I couldn’t agree with you more that we’re still measuring up against some kind of standard of normal, which we know doesn’t exist.

Cara Natterson:
Thank you. That’s right. Correct. Hallelujah. Yes.

Debbie:
Okay, so the paperback edition of This is So Awkward, Modern Puberty Explained, I think came out earlier this fall, and congratulations. It’s exciting to move into, you know, to go hard covered a paperback, and I’m just wondering, it is a chance to get in there and make some tweaks, and what, if anything, did you change for this edition?

Vanessa Bennett:
So we had to update the book in, this is the year 2025, at the point where there were major changes made via executive order from the federal government and the president about aspects of young people’s health and access to resources. There were major changes to federal agencies who perform studies about young people who offer resources and health services to young people and families. So the hardest part about updating the book was recognizing that many of the sites and sources that we link back to in the book that are things like the Youth Risk Behavior Survey that we and many people in our field rely on for national data about young people’s behaviors may not be accessible, right? So someone may look up the link and realize it’s not live, it’s been taken down, or it’s been taken down and put back up, but we cannot guarantee the integrity of what was put back up and that aspects that we may refer to with reference to sexual behavior, gender identity, sexual orientation, and so on and so forth may no longer be in the studies themselves. So that was really the most complicated part of updating the book was just honestly like a wide scale recognition of that. And there were some new studies and some new data that came out since we wrote the book and we were able to point to some of those, including a study that came out after the pandemic but hadn’t yet been published when we wrote our book about girls earlier puberty. Sorry, let me take that again. About girls earlier first periods, there was data that had them moving earlier than we had based on the other research we cited. but a lot of it, Debbie was about recognizing stuff that was no longer available or maybe the integrity of which had been compromised.

Debbie:
The whole energy in this conversation just dropped because that’s the wrong direction that we want to be going in. And I’m wondering, you you guys are out in the world, you’re talking to lots of communities. What is the response from the educators and other people you interact with? they, you know, I would imagine they need your resources even more than ever. Are they feeling kind of like they’re at sea now?

Cara Natterson:
You know, I think it’s such a good question and I think we have a little bit of a biased audience. We have a group of people who are looking for good information and who come and find us and say, wow, you’re science-based and you’ll explain the data and you, know, everything you say, you’re willing to correct or update if the data shifts and the thinking changes or we have a better scientific explanation. And that’s a wonderful audience to have, but. It leaves out, I think, a large swath of people who are just confused. And we invite and welcome the people who are confused because it’s confusing out there. It’s confusing when you’re getting your health and wellness information from an influencer who has no credential at all, no history with data, no ability to parse the information. You know, I think what I sense is in the in the inner circle of people who come and hear us speak and email us and DM us, we get a lot of love and gratitude. In the second wider circle, when people discover us, we get a lot of, wow, there’s actually science still out there. There’s actually real information that I can share. This is so cool. And then in the furthest ring are people who say, yes, but, yes, but, haven’t you read this article that this food does this, that this shot does this? And we welcome them all, Debbie, because the information we share, first of all, we share only what’s based in science, and second of all, we are welcoming conversation. That is how people learn. That is how we teach our children, right? monologue and lecture them all the time we get into conversation with them. that’s the group that, you know, as I’m projecting into 2026, I’m most excited to engage with are people who sort of aren’t in our inner circle.

Debbie:
I’m just wondering if you could share a little bit about what drives you. I mean, you’re clearly both so passionate about doing this work. And, you know, you know, you guys listeners definitely check out their Instagram account. It’s so good. I like I’m I don’t spend a lot of time on Instagram, but I scroll when I come across your videos and things I always stop because I always learn something but you’re also so committed to what you’re doing, like it matters. 

Cara Natterson:
You were gonna say funny Debbie.

Debbie:
And hilarious, I wasn’t finished. No, but I just wonder if you could both share kind of, know, what’s really at stake, you know, without your voice out there and what is really driving you.

Vanessa Bennett:
I remember when I first started Dynamo Girl and I was doing my first pilot class of 10 girls. This is now well over a decade ago. And it was in the age of scalability, right? Everyone wanted to know how were you going to scale your business? And I met with someone and she said, you know, when do you measure your work as success? Like, is it a hundred kids? Is it a hundred thousand kids that you coach? And I looked at her. And I said, you know what, honestly, if I change the trajectory of one child, if I make one child feel more self-confident, more empowered, honestly, I think that’s enough. I mean, I’m happy to say that in our work, we’ve gone on to impact the lives of like thousands and thousands of kids and thousands and thousands of families. And, but I really believe that when we impact children’s lives, when we educate their adults and we give kids really good science-based empathic information, which is our goal in our school curriculum, that like that is a lifelong change. And when you change a kid’s life, you then change the communities in which they live. You change the trajectory of when they go to college and when they begin their own families. And I know it sounds grandiose and I don’t know, ridiculous, but like, I really believe that the future of this country could be altered by the work of folks like you and folks like us who really believe in the value of kids and what they truly need and what role trusted adults can play. Like, we could find ourselves in a totally different reality if we can get kids the information, the support, the education that they deserve. So, You know, just small, just small dreams, Debbie, just like, just like little hopes about changing the future of this country by giving people and honestly the world. mean, you, you are abroad. You see the impact of what other systems and other ways of doing things. You are in the capital of excellent sex education. Um, you know, the Dutch are our model and you see the impact on an entire society when things are done different.

Cara Natterson:
You know, it’s a version of what Vanessa said, which is that information is power. Education is power. We know that if you give kids or anyone accurate information about just about anything, they tend to make the safer and healthier choices, the choices that will return for them down the road. you teach kids about substance use, they tend to choose to delay substance use. If you teach kids about sex, they tend to delay sex. Why is the delay important? Because the older they are when they engage in these behaviors, the more developed their brains, the better choices they can make for themselves. So it’s true with everything. And I think that just, if we are… a reliable information source and we can help educate people and they can make better choices for themselves because they’re informed. That’s amazing. And you know, the doctor in me was trained to do that one to one in an office and it’s there’s nothing like that sitting across from a kid or a parent and having that conversation until you get in front of a microphone and you could do that many to one or one to many and then you’re suddenly like, wow, I can share this nugget that might be useful to so many more people at once. you know, it’s what Vanessa said.

Debbie:
Yeah, it is. I don’t think that was ridiculous or too grand. do believe that changing one person, like we know the ripple effect of what impacting one person and one family can have. So I’m right there with you. So I guess I’m kind of, wrote down, as I have so many notes here, but I wrote down perfect storm and I circled it multiple times. And I’m just thinking about this challenge that a lot of parents of neurodivergent kids have where their prefrontal cortex is developing more slowly, that asynchronous development. And then you add hormones into the mix and then the neurodivergence and it’s just kind of this big perfect storm of trying to navigate, you know, lack of impulse control, like all of the things. And so I’m just wondering if you have any kind of general guidance or maybe some hard-won wisdom best practices for parents who are in this stage, because it can feel like playing whack-a-mole. Like, where do we even start?

Vanessa Bennett:
Yeah, mean, one thing that we think a lot about with kids entering puberty earlier is that they look a lot older. Many of them look a lot older than they are chronologically. They’re still late bloopers. They’re still kids who look much younger than they are chronologically. But for the most part, adults of our generation look at kids and assume they are older than they actually are because they’re hitting puberty earlier. And then when you layer on top of that, all of the aspects of neurodiversity that might make kids act what adults perceive as younger, right? They may be more impulsive. Their prefrontal cord disease are, you know, taking longer to develop, which impacts executive functioning, decision-making. That then creates the chasm as a greater distance from how they appear to how they behave. It’s really hard on the kids. And so one of the things we really like to advise parents is to help name for their own kids that like, Hey kiddo, you actually look older to some people than they expect, right? They, they might think you’re 15 when really you’re 12. And so sometimes they might treat you or expect of you to act a certain way because of how you look and giving kids language and tools. to A, not personalize it, right? Not to feel awful when someone’s like, you know, why are you acting X way or Y way? But also giving them, if possible, if they have a neurodivergence that allows them to express this back to other people, hey, you may not know this, but I’m actually 12. Or you may not know this, right? Giving them the language not just about their neurodiversity, but also about how they’re younger than people might expect them to be. just, sometimes we as parents have to step in like, Hey, I don’t know if you know this, my kid, know they look older, but they’re actually a lot younger and they have a neurodiversity. so their behavior may be not what you would expect a kid to be who looks this way. And it’s not easy. I’m not saying it’s easy, but for parents, of all kids, but particularly parents of neurodiverse kids, you are in a role of advocating for your kid and teaching them how to advocate for themselves over a long stretch of time. And this is a place where I think that’s a great skill to build over time. It’s not easy, but I think it can be really valuable.

Cara Natterson:
And I think it’s worth saying the opposite is also true. As many kids as there are who look older than one would expect them to look, there are lots of kids who look younger, right? There are lots of kids who come to puberty later than the average. In fact, half, right? And the latest bloomers, late bloomers are just the last two and a half percent. Early bloomers are just the first two and a half percent. So there are kids who are really late to the game. who are offended when someone treats them like they’re 12 and they’re 15. And that’s hard too. The last thing I will say is to the framing of your question, Debbie, because the prefrontal cortex is somewhere between 15 and 20 years behind the limbic system in terms of maturation, the limbic system with. all of its little organs inside the brain will send and receive messages very quickly and efficiently starting when a kid is about 10, 11, 12. The prefrontal cortex will not get there until they are close to 30. Because of that delta, independent of your brain type, you need to give your brain time. to allow the prefrontal cortex to do its thing. It exists, it is there, kids have them. They just need to give that part of their brain time to process a signal and send out its own signal so that it can do its job, which is literally to counterbalance the emotional limbic system.

Debbie:
Yeah. Yeah, I always say that time is on our side. And now as the parent of a 21-year-old and I’m starting to see the fruits of so many years of labor, I’m like, OK. We saw some movement here. This is great. But it’s a very long game that we’re playing here. Yeah. I wanted to pivot to also just ask a question about boys. I’m just wondering, I was just listening to an interview with Scott Galloway, with Kara Swisher about his new book on boys. And of course there’s just more and more information out there about boys being, the word indoctrinated came to mind, maybe that’s not the right word, but really are feeling a bit lost and are gravitating towards people who may not be the influences that we would want for them. And again, with this prefrontal cortex that’s not developed and then this culture of wanting to be what a boy or a man looks like. I’m just wondering your thoughts on that and how parents of boys can kind of navigate this time.

Cara Natterson:
Yeah, I mean, look, we all own some responsibility for where we have landed, because for whatever reason, as a society, we made conversations about changing bodies and changing feelings and all those things a zero sum game. And the more effective we became at communicating with girls, about owning these conversations, owning their bodies, talking about periods, talking about moods, talking about feelings. Somehow, the better we did at that, the worse we did at talking to boys about the same thing. And so there has been a growing gap between the empowerment of girls and essentially the sort of I wouldn’t say disempowerment, but the overlooking of the very similar boy experience. mean, it doesn’t matter what your gender is. Your body’s changing, your brain is changing, your place in the world is changing. This is confusing, and you deserve to have someone talk to you about what is happening, why it is happening, and how to handle it. And I think that’s how boys ended up sitting in this gap. You know, they’ve got testosterone coursing through their bodies and their brains, that testosterone. I’m still waiting for the science to show us that testosterone makes boys quiet. I deeply believe it. We know it makes kids feel rage, but the flip side of that coin is this very common phenomenon that we see with our boys, which is going silent. But so much of that is also that we say, he’s just a boy. this is just what he will do. And we almost encourage that retreat and that withdrawal. So I, my hat is off to Scott Galloway, to Christopher Pepper and Joanna Schroeder, to Ruth Whitman, to all the people who are writing about boys right now.

Vanessa Bennett:
To you who wrote Decoding Boys, Cara, which you always forget to mention, but it’s an extraordinarily wonderful book about teen boys. So I’m gonna put you in that category also. But yeah, mean, think Debbie, it’s like, just actually just filmed a reel about this because it was so moved by it. So I, my son, is away at college and he and a group of his friends fostered a rescue dog and got the dog sort of stronger and ready for adoption. And when he first told us that they were gonna do this, I will admit to being deeply skeptical about their ability to take on this responsibility. And I have to tell you, these young men were so loving, so caring, so nurturing. They had a feeding schedule. They had an exercise schedule. They had a visitation schedule so that the dog wouldn’t get scared or overwhelmed. They organized play dates. And then it was time to give the dog up for adoption and they were devastated and also knew this was what was best for the dog. So for people who think that boys do not have the capacity to be loving, caring, nurturing human beings, it’s not true. We just have to give them the opportunity to do it. I that’s what Scott Galloway talks about. I think that’s what a lot of these amazing people do. We’re so busy being afraid of what they are being exposed to that we’re forgetting to give them lots and lots of opportunities to forge a new path and to be a different version. And to Cara’s point, that starts with not just like, it’s a fait accompli that my son has gone quiet and I leave him behind a closed door for the next four years. No. Figure out a way to talk to him, figure out a way to connect with him, figure out a way to teach him those skills of love and care because they’re in him. He just needs help developing and bringing them out.

Debbie:
Yeah, that’s great. Thank you. Okay, so I know, just so you know, I’m all over the place. I’m just fessing up because I really wanted to just kind of explore a bunch of different topics with you, but I’m gonna bring it home. First of all, you mentioned at the very beginning that you have developed a curriculum and that really piqued my interest. Would you tell us a little bit about that?

Cara Natterson:
Sure, I mean, it comes down to our book, This Is So Awkward, when we launched that book two years ago, hardcover version, we went all over the US and spoke at many, many, many schools, at this point, countless schools. And what we found was that the feedback we were getting was, This is so great. I wish my kids had a version of this because they either don’t get health and sex ed or they get it but it’s old and it’s anemic or it’s cringy. you know, both Vanessa and I had taught this class in schools, in workshops for years and we knew it to be true. We knew it was old and cringy. so we looked, no, not what we taught, but we looked at each other and we thought, well, what are we doing? We have the framing for this class, so let’s just do it. So what we did, Debbie, is we created a curriculum that is actually tethered to the US state standards for health and sex education. We have a 50 tab spreadsheet looking at every single state, which is… somewhat reflective of sort of a world average, if you will. There are states that have no requirements. There are states that have stringent requirements. There are states that have surprising requirements, and we know them all. And then what we did is we went in and we said, what’s the lowest common denominator? What does the government think everyone needs to know? And then now let’s layer on our expertise. What do we know they need to know? And we built a curriculum. launched a year ago with middle school, which is fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth grade. launched school about a month ago and we are about to launch kindergarten through third so we will have a K-12 school-based curriculum and it is truly designed for educators with any amount of training. If you have never taught this class and you are a substitute teacher and this is handed to you, we’ve got you, we can get you there and if you are a seasoned health and sex educator who has been doing this for 25 years. We have built something that we hope you will find novel, engaging, and point you to all sorts of interesting resources that you never knew existed.

Debbie:
So where can listeners learn more about that? Sounds amazing.

Vanessa Bennett:
So our website is lessawkward.com. The curriculum is called That Health Class with a little eyebrow raise, maybe a little wink. So if you go to lessawkward.com and go to the curriculum tab, it will take you right to our curriculum. And then we created a parent hub, which is like the companion to the curriculum. So… I’m sure you hear all the time, Debbie, I’d never learned that. I wish I’d learned that. So it has a health and sex ed crash course for parents and trusted adults, which mirrors the curriculum in the school-based curriculum. so ultimately, there will be 100 lessons in the school-based curriculum, and there will be 100 lessons in the parent curriculum. And then it has a library of all our other stuff and an AI chatbot and all of that. So it’s really, really, really exciting. We feel so lucky. We’re in seven states now, and it’s just incredible to feel trusted by these school communities. And, you know, it’s incredible. I hope someday we can come to the Netherlands and meet the folks doing that work, the world-class work of health and sex education there, because it would be incredible to learn from the from the gold standard.

Debbie:
Yeah, wow. Well, congratulations. I mean, that sounds amazing. And you guys are so busy. I’m like, we just created this, you know, 100 lessons.

Cara Natterson:
Debbie, we’re going to sleep soon. Let’s just, we promise.

Vanessa Bennett:
We’re gonna hibernate soon. But you know how it feels when you are on a mission and you believe in the work you do and you understand the meaning and purpose of what you’re doing. It feels really hard to take a break, because there’s always more to do. We are learning to take a break, but in the meantime, it’s really thrilling to feel like we get to impact kids and families’ lives.

Debbie:
Yeah, it’s amazing. And I just, because my brain went there when you said that a lot of adults and the parents never learned this stuff, I’ve been watching Sex Education on Netflix and that is quite the education. I’m like, wow. So it just, that show is constantly bringing up stuff that I never learned, never knew. And I can just imagine how helpful your resources are to just thousands and thousands of parents.

Cara Natterson:
The best.

Vanessa Bennett:
Yeah, I mean, those shows are a great opportunity to pause and just if you’re watching it with a teen or tween and just saying, whoa, did you know that? I didn’t know that. Or do you think that’s true? I mean, media is an amazing way to get into conversation with kids or with your co-parent or fellow adults or friends. Like, there’s always something new and surprising to be learned.

Debbie:
Yeah, for sure. Okay, this is my last question and feel free to say pass, but I’m just curious, like in terms of what you’re doing right now, because you are, talking to so many communities and you’re out in the world doing this work. What is the thing that you’re both most excited about? Like the thing that the be in your bonnet, if you will, that you’re really trying to share?

Vanessa Bennett:
I mean, I will say with the current climate as it is, the biggest challenge and opportunity for us is to figure out ways to deliver information that can get to as many people as possible, that is still science-based, that is still inclusive, and that can still reach as many people and communities as possible. And so we are trying to be both creative and sensitive to the parameters and challenges that raises while still furthering our mission of getting good information to lots and lots of people.

Cara Natterson:
Yeah. And I would say the bee in our bonnet is probably the most basic set of truths that we started with all those years ago when we first partnered. they include things like information has power. They include things like every adult is going to mess this up so many different ways. Great. Fine. Take the do over. Just get back into conversation. Get back on the bike with your kid over and over and over again. that kids are works in progress. Their brains are in the middle of development. Their emotions are shifting and changing. They’re waking up in new bodies every single day. These are exceptionally basic concepts and everything we talk about and everything we do harkens back to these concepts over and over over again. They will never be boring to us because at the end of the day, If you just keep getting into conversations with the kids in your lives, you’ll get so much from them. Forget that they’ll get so much from you. It is the most magnificent, most fulfilling thing. That’s what energizes us. We get to experience it not just in our work world, but we get to practice at home too. And it pays off in spades.

Debbie:
So good. You guys are so inspiring. And I’m going to name the book again. It’s This is So Awkward Modern Puberty Explained. again, listeners, it’s so much like I think puberty, you think, it’s about the birds and the bees and it’s about life. It’s about the whole life of tweens and teens and this this journey that we’re on with with our kids. So I really encourage listeners to go check out your Instagram and all the places I will have links in the show notes. So Thank you so much for following my little squirrel brain today and for this wonderful conversation. I so appreciate both of you.

Vanessa Bennett:
Thanks for having us back, Debbie. It’s always a joy.

Cara Natterson:
Thank you.