00:19 Dr Justin Coulson introduces the Q&A

02:02 Q1 Anger management

10:52 Q2 Controlling screen time

16:51 Q3 Keeping bedroom clean

21:18 Q4 Choosing not to drink & identity

24:23 Q5 Alcohol standards & split homes

30:42 Q6 How to bring up issues without being critical

36:06 Q7 8 y/o on screen time

36:59 Q8 Overcoming generational trauma

42:07 Q9 What to do when lacking strong male role models

44:15 Q10 Neurotypical children - learning at school

51:26 Q11 Do we share our past mistakes with our kids?

53:53 Q12 Sport + the boy code

56:11 Q13 What if they don’t want to spend time with you?

58:11 Q14 'Fitting in' at school & choosing good friends

01:00:36 Q15 How to talk about pornography & masturbation

01:11:19 Q16 Brain science in boys & girls

01:11:41 Q17 Teenage son feels they don't love him enough

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When our boys grow up, it hurts. The heartbreaking grief that comes as our sons grow up and don’t need us anymore is not spoken of often enough. At the same time, there is an incredible joy that comes from watching them fall in love and take steps to begin their own life. In this important conversation, Dr Justin Coulson and Mia Freedman talk about our boys growing up, how to teach them good principles, and how to let go of them when the time is right.

• 00:18 Dr Justin Coulson introduces Mia Freedman
• 01:54 What is masculinity to Mia?
• 04:47 Do boys really believe they aren't as good?
• 07:00 Misrepresenting feminism
• 09:25 The biggest issues for boys and parents
• 13:59 The pool metaphor
• 19:43 Don't shame them
• 21:40 Responding to inapproriate behaviour without shame
• 26:52 Teaching them good principles
• 31:56 Be the best boy in the room
• 32:47 Parental grief
• 39:19 Final message

Mia Freedman is the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of the Mamamia Women’s Media Company in Australia.

Mamamia has an audience of more than six and a half million women every month and is also the largest women’s podcast network in the world, with over 173 million listens and 46 different shows. She is also the founder of Lady Startup. An education-based community supporting female-founded small businesses, helping them launch and grow through online courses, podcasts, and social media.

Mamamia’s core purpose as a business is to make the world a better place for women and girls. Before founding Mamamia as a blog in her lounge room in 2007 and becoming one of Australia’s best-known digital entrepreneurs, Mia was a magazine editor, national newspaper columnist, radio presenter, and TV host. She was named one of Australia’s 100 Most Influential Women by the Financial Review and is a former chair of the federal government’s Body Image Advisory Board.

She is an ambassador for Rize Up, a charity supporting women and children fleeing domestic violence, and Share The Dignity, which supports women and girls facing poverty and homelessness. Mia is the author of four books including the best-selling Work, Strife, Balance and she hosts two award-winning podcasts, Mamamia Outloud and No Filter, Australia’s leading interview podcast. Mia has three children, two dogs, and runs the Mamamia Women’s Media Company with her husband, Jason Lavigne, who is the CEO.

The wheels of her bus fall off regularly.

• Mia Freedman - website
• Mamamia

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It’s easy to convince ourselves they our boys are not the ones participating in sexist jokes or watching pornography with their mates at school, because they have such good manners around us. But perhaps that is not the full truth. In this engaging conversation, Bec Sparrow and Dr Justin Coulson discuss how to help our boys develop their identity and morality, recognize good relationships, and set healthy boundaries with their friends.

• 00:19 Dr Justin introduces Bec Sparrow
• 01:39 The biggest challenge parents face with boys
• 05:33 Parental obliviousness to kids’ behaviour 
• 10:43 Conversations about sex
• 16:24 Boys vs girls friendships
• 21:26 ‘Ruminating’
• 23:48 Red flags 
• 27:04 Green flags
• 29:38 Personal boundaries
• 35:27 Consent
• 40:34 Peer pressure and being a 'simp'
• 44:56 Male inappropriate bonding
• 52:01 Developing values and identity
• 54:48 Belief leads to identity
• 57:42 3 quick tips
• 1:00:08 What’s something you wish everyone knew about you?

Over the past 25 years Rebecca Sparrow has earned a living as a travel writer, a television publicist, a marketing executive, a magazine editor, a TV scriptwriter, a radio producer, a newspaper columnist and as an author.

She is the author of three best-selling novels The Girl Most Likely, The Year Nick McGowan Came to Stay and Joel and Cat Set The Story Straight (co-authored with Nick Earls).

Aside from writing books Rebecca has written for Mamamia, co-hosted two seasons of the award-winning health and happiness podcast The Well with Robin Bailey and played Agony Aunt to teenagers across the country on the Ask Me Anything podcast. She also talks to thousands of school students (and their parents!) every year about friendship, resilience, giving back and how to have a more positive experience online. Rebecca is an ambassador for The Pyjama Foundation and Suncorp’s #TeamGirls initiative. In 2018 she was invited to sit on the Queensland Government’s Anti-Bullying Taskforce.

Rebecca lives in Brisbane with her husband Brad, her three kids and two labradoodles (one of whom is INCREDIBLY naughty).

Rebecca Sparrow - website

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Many boys are taught from a young age that they must be ‘tough’ and hide their emotions. In this conversation, Dr Justin Coulson and Professor Marc Brackett discuss how parents can give their boys ‘permission to feel’ all of their emotions. Marc Brackett also shares with us how to increase our emotional intelligence and become a better emotion coach for our boys.

• 00:19 Dr Justin introduces Marc Brackett
• 01:29 Establishing the gender of this conversation
• 02:12 Boys and their emotions
• 05:19 Expression of emotions is a nurture not nature issue
• 09:41 How to change the culture?
• 13:25 Effects of masking emotions
• 15:22 Willingness to demonstrate empathy
• 18:05 Nurturing our boys’ emotions
• 24:05 Permission to feel all emotions
• 26:40 Theory vs in-practice
• 29:10 Justin shares an incident - naming your emotions
• 32:20 Deactivating parental emotions
• 35:40 Emotion regulation
• 37:14 Final message

Marc Brackett, Ph.D., is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor in the Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine at Yale University. His grant-funded research focuses on the role of emotions in learning, decision making, creativity, relationship quality, wellbeing, performance, and organizational climate; the measurement of emotional intelligence; and the influence of emotional intelligence training on key life outcomes.

Marc has published over 150 scholarly articles, received numerous awards, and is featured regularly in popular media outlets such as the New York Times, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, and The Today Show. He also is on the board of directors for the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL).

Marc is the lead developer of RULER, a systemic, evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning that has been adopted by over 3,000 public, charter, and independent pre-school through high schools across the United States and in other countries, including Australia, China, England, Italy, Mexico, and Spain. Research shows that RULER boosts academic performance, decreases bullying, enriches classroom climates, reduces teacher stress and burnout, and enhances teacher instructional practices.

Marc regularly consults with large companies on best practices for integrating the principles of emotional intelligence into training and product design. He is co-founder of Oji Life Lab, a corporate learning firm that develops innovative digital learning systems for emotional intelligence.

Marc speaks to tens of thousands of people each year and has been the keynote speaker at over 500 conferences around the world, including the White House, U.S. Departments of Education, Justice, and Defense, the Surgeon General’s office, the New York Times, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as dozens of education conferences.

Marc is the author of Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help our Kids, Ourselves, and our Society Thrive, published by Celadon (Macmillan), which has been translated into 20 languages.

• Mood Meter App
• Permission to Feel | Professor Marc Brackett

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The ‘man box’ is the set of beliefs that society has defined as what it means to be a ‘real man’. When men try to step outside this, they are pushed back into the box of how they should think and behave. Matt Tyler, passionate about this topic, shares with Dr Justin Coulson in this conversation how to undo ‘toxic masculinity’, gender stereotypes, and break down ‘man box’ behaviour. The astounding life outcome statistics that result from living in the man box will blow you away.

• 00:19 Dr Justin Coulson introduces Matt Tyler
• 01:11 Matt’s backstory
• 02:31 The Men’s Project
• 05:27 The Man Box
• 13:42 The Man Box in Australia 
• 14:18 Perceived social pressures 
• 16:24 Personal endorsement of man box themes
• 18:30 Endorsement vs beliefs
• 21:20 Life outcomes of living in the man box 
• 22:14 Sexually harrassing women
• 24:50 Physical violence
• 27:55 Australian boys in the Man Box
• 29:20 Four adolescent man box sub pillars
• 29:27 Constant effort and bravado
• 30:03 Emotional restriction
• 30:37 Heterosexism
• 35:43 Social teasing
• 37:41 Impact on society from the Man Box
• 42:06 How can parents overcome the Man Box?
• 49:43 Other concrete strategies

Jesuit Social Services

Matt Tyler is the executive director of The Men’s Project at Jesuit Social Services working with a team committed to providing leadership on the reduction of violence and other harmful behaviours prevalent among boys and men. A particularly important part of this work is broadening the definition of what it means to be a man by translating findings from The Men’s Project’s Man Box research into practice. 

Matt brings to his role over 10 years of experience across the private, public, academic and community sectors. Prior to joining Jesuit Social Services he worked as a fellow for Harvard’s Government Performance Lab, focused on child protection, and he has also worked on projects related to family violence and mental health. He is trained as an economist with a particular focus on statistics, holding a Master of Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School and Honours in Economics from Monash University.

• The Men’s Project
• The Man Box
• The Man Box and Language
• Modelling Respect and Equality Program – a case study

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Boys are absolutely capable of emotional vulnerability. But they are often more comfortable opening up within close friendships than without. Here Michelle Mitchell and Dr Justin Coulson dive into the topic of connection and communication with our boys. They also cover emotional expressiveness and handling big emotions.

• 00:19 Dr Justin introduces Michelle Mitchell
• 01:33 Introduction to the topic
• 04:00 The hurdles that boys face today
• 09:12 Emotional expressiveness
• 10:33 Boys want us to hear their ‘man voice’
• 14:03 Balancing kindness and limits
• 16:23 We talk to boys differently
• 19:29 We have a lower expectation on boys to behave good
• 20:27 Emotional and physical outlets 
• 23:23 Be clear on your family values
• 26:04 Competitiveness in boys and girls
• 33:28 Big emotions 
• 35:51 Validating statements and empathy
• 41:04 Parents can be needy
• 43:25 Responding to boys when they’re riled up
• 46:33 Setting limits
• 49:53 Building blocks for better communication
• 54:41 Boys and puberty
• 56:54 Final practical tips

Michelle Mitchell is an award-winning speaker, and bestselling parenting author. She has been termed ‘the teenage expert’ by the media and is sought after for her compassionate and grounded advice for parenting tweens and teens. Michelle started her career as a teacher, but soon discovered a special interest in wellbeing. She left teaching in 2000 and founded Youth Excel, a ‘boutique’ health promotion charity which delivered tailor made life skills programs and psychological services to thousands of young people and their families each year.  Today she uses her experience to write and speak in schools, community events and through media.   

• Michelle Mitchell - website
• A Guy's Guide to Puberty | Michelle Mitchell
• The Everyday Resilience Journal | Michelle Mitchell

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During adolescence, boys have an innate need to undergo a ‘rite of passage’ in order to prove themselves and become a ‘man’. If we don’t provide this challenge for them, they seek it out themselves. In this conversation, Dr Justin Coulson and Dr Arne Rubinstein discuss together the transition from boy to man and the key role that parental respect and acknowledgement plays in boys' growth.

• 00:20 Dr Justin introduces Dr Arne Rubinstein
• 01:29 Dr Arne’s backstory
• 06:41 Rites of passage
• 11:28 Boys to men psychology
• 14:59 Raising a teenager before they become a teenager
• 20:13 Dad’s role and single mums
• 23:03 Rites of passage through time
• 26:10 Rites of passage now
• 30:19 Parents need to grow with their boys
• 33:09 Parental grief 
• 38:01 Adolescent attitude
• 42:20 Creating your own 'rite of passage'
• 45:20 Final message

Founder & CEO, The Rites of Passage Institute.

Dr. Arne Rubinstein is an internationally recognised expert on Childhood Development and Rites of Passage. His programs have been attended by over 250,000 people in more than 20 countries around the world and are now a part of over 50 schools around Australia.

Dr Arne is a medical doctor and specialised first in Family Medicine and then spent 15 years in Emergency Medicine until he moved full time creating Rites of Passage programs for parents and their children.

He is the author of the best-seller The Making of Men and has won multiple awards for his work including being nominated in 2008 for Australian of the Year for his groundbreaking work with youth, providing much-needed answers and tools to support a generation of young men and women be happy and motivated about life.

Dr Arne is the proud father of two wonderful young men and a mentor to many others.

• 7 Strategies To Build Healthy Relationships With Your Sons.pdf
• How to Parent Teenagers.pdf

• The Rites of Passage Institute
• The Rites of Passage Experience
• The Making of Men | Dr Arne Rubinstein

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Don’t worry alone. That is key. Too often we put on a mask and try to pretend everything is ok because we don’t have the emotional muscle to tell the truth. In this conversation, Dr Justin Coulson and Gus Worland discuss suicide prevention, vulnerability, and how to stay mentally fit.

• 00:19 Dr Justin introduces Gus Worland
• 01:05 Gus’s backstory
• 06:25 How did Gus get into suicide prevention?
• 12:35 Dr Justin shares the story of his Uncle 
• 15:53 What protective factors bolster mental health?
• 20:24 Parents don’t have to know everything
• 23:28 How to help boys fight the pressure to fit in?
• 27:57 Parents are too busy
• 29:30 The masculine expectations on year 10 boys
• 34:32 ManUp’s influence on Gus’ relationship with his son
• 37:55 Two key messages from Gus
• 41:17 Dr Justin’s experience with blowing up

Founder of Gotcha4Life Foundation

Family man. Friend. Sports fan. Founder. Australian radio host and TV personality Gus Worland is the driving force behind mental fitness charity Gotcha4Life.

Gus set up the not-for-profit foundation in 2017 to help people develop the emotional muscle, resilience and social connections needed to build mental fitness and prevent suicide.

A compassionate bloke, Gus wears his heart on his sleeve.

But that heart was shattered the day news arrived that Angus - his friend, mentor and father figure - had taken his life. Angus seemed to have it all – a beautiful family, home, great job, the respect and friendship of many. But he had something else too. Inner worries that were eating away at him. And he never told anyone about it. The stigma around mental health stops too many from reaching out and asking for help when life throws challenges our way.

Gus was driven to action. In 2016, he hosted three- part documentary series Man Up, lifting the lid on the relationship between masculinity, social isolation, mental health and suicide.

The attention it received created awareness – but Gus knew more was needed. ‘It is time for action- time to draw a line in the sand to engage, educate and empower people about mental fitness.’

Gotcha4Life was founded.

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Pornography, Sex, Honour, Consent. The big conversations we need to have with our boys. In this discussion with Dr Justin Coulson and Glen Gerreyn, they discuss the importance of making pre-decisions of what kind of man you want to be in each of these areas and the damage that can come from getting it wrong.

• 00:18 Dr Justin introduces Glen Gerreyn
• 01:34 Glen’s backstory
• 06:52 Glen’s speaking history and purpose
• 10:38 Dr Justin’s anecdote with his daughter
• 12:42 Inappropriate behaviour
• 14:05 Raising a man of honour | Conversations
• 16:23 Dr Justin shares a second anecdote
• 18:12 Raising a man of honour | Role modelling
• 21:06 Talking about sex and consent
• 25:50 A uni-focused brain
• 28:30 Dr Justin's summary of key points
• 30:22 Consequences of not talking about sex (rape)
• 32:45 Pornography
• 38:02 Desensitisation
• 41:02 A message of hope

For the past twelve years Glen has made speaking and writing his career. Collectively he has spoken to over 500,000 people around the world. He works with children and parents, high school students, employees and business leaders, sporting groups and community organisations. In 2012 he received international accreditation as a Certified Speaking Professional (CSP). He's spoken at world famous TEDx events, appeared on the Today Show and Can of Worms, ABC national radio, and written blos for mamamia.com. He's written four books – Gifted for Greatness, Men of Honour, Oxygen 102, Get Your Hopes Up.

Glen lives in Sydney's leafy North Shore with his beautiful wife, three daughters and son.

• The HopeFull Institute
• Men of Honour | Glen Gerreyn

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Screens are like ice cream! We can’t expect our boys to exhibit perfect self-control around technology, just like we don’t always have perfect self-control around sweets. Therefore as parents, we have a responsibility to set healthy boundaries for them to guide their technology use. In this conversation, Dr Justin Coulson and Brad Marshall tackle the big topic of ‘gaming’ and screen usage for boys.

• 00:18 Dr Justin introduces Brad Marshall
• 02:46 Defining internet addiction and gaming disorder
• 08:27 When should a parent be worried about screen use?
• 11:06 The main reason boys are drawn into games
• 19:25 The parent struggle
• 21:45 What can parents do?
• 26:05 Using a collaborative approach
• 32:02 How much screen time?
• 38:03 Good content vs bad content
• 42:12 Scenarios from other parents 
• 44:14 Scenario 1 | Gaming and online gambling
• 47:09 Scenario 2 | Rules not changing their habits
• 50:54 Scenario 3 | “They need technology for homework”
• 57:07 Scenario 4 | Can we expect our boys to self-regulate?
• 59:48 Key principles 

The Unplugged Psychologist ~ Psychologist and Director of the Internet Addiction Clinic @ Kidspace

I’m Brad Marshall, The Unplugged Psychologist. I’m the Director of the Internet Addiction Clinic @ Kidspace where I have helped hundreds of families struggling with internet, screen and gaming addiction. I provide parents with practical and concrete strategies to manage and maintain their children’s technology diet.

Born and raised in Australia, I have been working with children, adolescents and families since 2006. After completing my undergraduate studies at Macquarie University, I accepted a position in the U.S.A. treating children and adolescents experiencing extreme behavioural difficulties. I then returned to Australia to complete my Masters qualification at the University of Sydney, and more recently a Masters of Research and as a PhD Candidate at Macquarie University studying treatment pathways for children suffering from Internet Gaming Disorder. 

I specialise in treatment of young people experiencing excessive internet use or ‘Internet Addiction’; and related disorders. In my clinic, I routinely help families find a balance between healthy screen time and problematic overuse. 

My parenting book, ‘The Tech Diet for your Child & Teen; The 7 step plan to regain your kid’s childhood (and your Family’s Sanity)’ has now been published worldwide, by HarperCollins. ‘The Tech Diet for your Child & Teen’ provides real-life strategies that any parent can implement to create a healthy balance and put your kids’ development first. Based on solid psychological research explaining why screen addiction is so powerful, my jargon-free advice gives a clear plan for parents who have had enough and are serious about changing the way their kids use and interact with technology.

I am an accomplished and well respected presenter and invited guest speaker, providing professional development to teachers and health professionals, and running seminars for parents, school students and teachers. I also run seminars and workshops in the corporate space, presenting and speaking to staff about the benefits of healthy internet use at home and in the family, and to be productive and balanced when at work. For more information on this or to book a presentation, please get in touch, 

I have been interviewed for my opinion on a scope of mental health issues across the media; including providing consultation for Channel 7’s Sunday Night Program, Channel 9’s The Today Show, and Channel 9’s A Current Affair. I have also been quoted in and interviewed for a multitude of news and newspaper articles. I am an active member of Network for Internet Investigation and Research Australian.

• The Unplugged Psychologist
• Parenting Video Series
• The Tech Diet for Your Child & Teen | Brad Marshall

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