Transcription:
Parents Guide to Navigating Puberty

Bill Klaproth (Host):   So puberty and adolescence can be a difficult phase. It can also be a difficult time for a parent to navigate as well. Let’s talk about kids and puberty and adolescence and how parents can navigate this time with Dr. Lynn Wirth, a pediatrician with WakeMed Children’s. This is WakeMed Voices, a podcast from WakeMed Health and Hospitals. I'm Bill Klaproth. Dr. Wirth, thank you for your time. So we talked about puberty and adolescence. Can you first draw the distinction between the two and then how do parents navigate this time?

Lynn Wirth, MD (Guest):   So puberty is really the physical changes that the body goes through. I think what we’re really talking about here is adolescence, which is really more the timeframe of that period of a child’s life. Navigating that time period really starts long before in setting up family structure and good healthy habits so that as a child enters this time in their life that they have some baseline skills and awareness to sort of deal with all the changes that happen in their body with puberty.

Host:   So the work begins before adolescence. You mentioned setting up a structure. Can you go more into that? What is the work or the structure we need to do before adolescence?

Dr. Wirth:   Well, I think it has to do with having good physical healthy habits. So this is very basic, but good nutrition, regular meals, good sleep habits, making sure that children get enough sleep, exercise—whatever that is for an individual whether that’s time outside, whether it’s structured activities, whatever it is. So a good healthy physical body. Then having a strong family structure is really important, especially as children approach this sort of turbulence that happens with adolescence. So having regular family meals where people can sit down and communicate with each other and talk about what’s going on in their life and their family. So staying connected as a family. I've often heard that the project of parenting is really giving your children roots and then giving them wings. So the part that happens before they even enter adolescence is really giving them those roots, those things that they can fall back on when things get a little turbulent. Then the wings are—The process of adolescence is really the process of finding out who you are in the world. What am I going to do with my life? How do I fit into this greater scheme? That’s the wings. So as a parent you give your children the roots, and then as they go through adolescence they get their wings.

Host:   I love that. Roots and wings. That’s so darn good. So darn good.

Dr. Wirth:   I didn’t make it up. I read it somewhere.

Host:   That’s okay. I'm giving you credit anyway. That’s okay. So I love what you said. So first it starts with good physical healthy habits—nutrition, sleep, exercise—and then a strong family structure. So pay attention to having regular family meals together and staying connected. I love what you said about roots and rings. The roots are kind of the time period before adolescence and then the wings which is the period after adolescence. That’s such an easy and great way to look at it. So as we’re talking about puberty and adolescence, school and social media now certainly presents added challenges and issues. Help us navigate through school and social media when it comes to adolescence.

Dr. Wirth:   Well, again, I think it comes back to parents staying connected with their children and talking to them. Some of that is in the early adolescence when the children are very concrete really staying closely connected with teachers to understand what’s going on in the classroom so that the parents know how to help their children academically. The social part is a little harder because you do want to have your children start forming that network outside the family. The problem nowadays with social media is that much of that network is virtual, and especially right now in the middle of the pandemic. Much of our social network is virtual. People can say and do things that they probably wouldn’t normally say and do face to face with someone. So that’s where social media becomes a little bit touchy.

So I encourage parents in early adolescence in the very young, very still concrete children to really stay in control of that process. That’s sort of in a physical way. Physical and laptops really should be in a shared space in the home and not in the bedroom. I even would put limits on smartphone use. That it be in a shared space so that parents can pick up on cues if something is going on or something is upsetting a child, that they can intervene. They can still early on have some parental controls on those laptops and smartphones so that children can't get themselves too deep into places where they really shouldn’t be or situations that they really shouldn’t be involved in.

Host:   Those are really good thoughts and ideas Dr. Wirth. You're really providing us with useful information. I just want to ask you about coping skills, which I think may be in short supply these days. How do parents help adolescence learn to cope with stress and how to make decisions?

Dr. Wirth:   That the task of adolescence is going from a place where your parents make all of your decisions for you to being an adult where you have to make those decisions on your own. So the task of adolescence is really that process.

Host:   I love it. Going back to the roots again.

Dr. Wirth:   I think it starts early on with parents, again, really being involved in talking with their children. Perhaps even sort of role playing some decisions. What are you going to do if…? Young people are going to be put into situations. Someone’s going to offer them cigarettes. Someone’s going to offer them a vape. Someone’s going to offer them a substance that a parent might not want them using. The process of sitting down and saying, “Well, let’s talk about what you're going to do if this happens. How are you going to handle that? What skills are you going to draw on?” It’s very simplistic to just say no—and I think someone could do that—but I think the real skill is helping the children sort of think through that process before it happens. So parents have to look at their situation and their social group. What are the things that are the risks? What do I want to keep my child from being involved in? Then roleplay with that. I think that’s how you start the process. Of course if you give the child the framework then they can use those skills going forward with things that you might not have thought of that they're going to be offered or involved in. They can use those skills and make good decisions. Again, it starts with that really good base of family support and those roots that you’ve given them all through their childhood.

Host:   I love it. Going back to the roots again. Roots and wings. So I think what you were just talking about is such an important framework for developing coping skills and learning how to make good decisions. So thank you for sharing that with us. I want to ask you a few other things as well, some other important topics and touch points such as vocational awareness, school and study skills, and again establishing those good health habits that you mentioned before.

Dr. Wirth:   Well if I start with the last one, with establishing good health habits, I think a lot of times that parents are role models. Our children will—It’s do as I say not as I do. They're going to watch what we do as parents. So as parents we really need to establish those habits ourselves. So when I talk about good nutrition, it’s not just you eat your vegetables. It’s we all eat our vegetables. With exercise, it’s not go out and get your exercise. It’s let’s go take a bike ride or let’s go for a walk. So you establish those things in childhood as things that you do together as a family. Our children see what they see and then they internalize that. So those sort of health habits start from setting a good example.

Study skills are a little more difficult because every child is a little bit different learner, but I think it’s important to create a space in the house. Not just a physical space but a psychological space where it’s okay to turn off the stimulation, turn off the television, turn off the radio. Make a physical space where studies can happen. Then also make it okay for the children to ask questions. If you don’t know the answer as a parent—and many of us don’t know the answers to calculus or whatever—teaching children who do I go to to answer this question. So it’s not just about learning the multiplication tables per se or whatever. It’s I as a parent don’t know the answer to this. How are we going to find this? That’s what we want our children to learn. It’s not just the rote memory. It’s if I don’t know the answer to a question, how am I going to get that answer? So teaching that skill as well is really important, especially for children going into adolescence when they're going to start to take courses and classes that are way beyond what most of us have any interest in personally.

Host:   So it sounds like what you're saying is use your personal resources, figure it out. You have the resources to figure this out on your own, and you’re going to need these skills as you become an adult.

Dr. Wirth:   Right. Because we all have to figure out answers to things all day long, and we have to figure out how we’re going to do that.

Host:   Well Dr. Wirth, this has really been fascinating and interesting and enlightening. So thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it.

Dr. Wirth:   You are very welcome. Thank you.

Host:   That’s Dr. Lynn Worth and visit wakemed.org/childrens to get connected with Dr. Wirth or another provider. If you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and check out the full podcast library for topics of interest to you. I'm Bill Klaproth with WakeMed Voices brought to you by WakeMed Health and Hospitals in Raleigh, North Carolina. Thanks for listening.