Telling kids to “suck it up” doesn’t translate into resilient, emotionally healthy kids. But in one of our recent viral videos on our @less.awkward Instagram account, many commenters still espouse that very approach – kids are soft these days; they have toughen up; you’re raising snowflakes; you’re kid isn’t going to be able to cope in the real world… This episode explores the research showing why suck it up parenting doesn’t work nearly as well as empathic parenting. 

Show Notes:

Join our LESS AWKWARD MEMBERSHIP 

Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code AWKWARD to receive UP TO $300 off air purifiers

Go to Quince.com/awkward for free shipping and 365-day returns

To celebrate Phyla’s exciting new launch, we’re offering 25% off your first order. Go to phyla.com and enter the code "puberty" at checkout.

IG Reel referenced in episode 

Order our book This Is So Awkward

Check out all our speaking and curriculum at www.lessawkward.com and our super comfy products at www.myoomla.com

To bring us to your school or community email [email protected]

To submit listener questions email [email protected]

Watch the full episode on Youtube!

Produced by Peoples Media

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s a tremendous list of stressors bearing down on teen girls – body image struggles, mental health issues, and academic pressures just to name a few. The key to supporting them is finding ways into connection and conversation. Licensed Clinical Social Worker Cathy Cassani Adams leverages decades of clinical, academic, and personal experience to advise adults on how to reach teen girls.

Show Notes:

Join our LESS AWKWARD MEMBERSHIP 

Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code AWKWARD to receive UP TO $300 off air purifiers

Go to Quince.com/awkward for free shipping and 365-day returns

To celebrate Phyla’s exciting new launch, we’re offering 25% off your first order. Go to phyla.com and enter the code "puberty" at checkout.

Restoring Our Girls

Order our book This Is So Awkward

Check out all our speaking and curriculum at www.lessawkward.com and our super comfy products at www.myoomla.com

To bring us to your school or community email [email protected]

To submit listener questions email [email protected]

Watch the full episode on Youtube!

Produced by Peoples Media

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ask a bunch of 6th graders to define “popularity,” and you’ll get as many answers as kids. It’s hard to define – for tweens, teens, and even adults – but popularity can have powerful impacts on friendships and well-being. This episode explores the types of popularity: being well-liked vs powerful. We cover the connection between popularity and social control, intimidation, even bullying. While the topic might transport us back to our middle school days, popularity in both its good and bad forms persists well into adulthood.

Show Notes:

Join our LESS AWKWARD MEMBERSHIP 

Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code AWKWARD to receive UP TO $300 off air purifiers

Go to Quince.com/awkward for free shipping and 365-day returns

To celebrate Phyla’s exciting new launch, we’re offering 25% off your first order. Go to phyla.com and enter the code "puberty" at checkout.

Order our book This Is So Awkward

Check out all our speaking and curriculum at www.lessawkward.com and our super comfy products at www.myoomla.com

To bring us to your school or community email [email protected]

To submit listener questions email [email protected]

Watch the full episode on Youtube!

Produced by Peoples Media

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

She grew up in the rural south, not knowing that her period pain – so intense it sidelined her each month – wasn’t typical. It was only when Dr. Loretta Duggan was in her training in Family and Adolescent Medicine that she put a name on it and got treatment. Now she runs a practice in her home state of Georgia, providing care to adolescents and young adults with joyful delivery of health information and open lines of communication. Our wide ranging conversation covers everything from menstrual health as a vital sign to hormonal therapy to STI prevention, it all boils down to this: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Show Notes:

Join our LESS AWKWARD MEMBERSHIP 

Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code AWKWARD to receive UP TO $300 off air purifiers

Go to Quince.com/awkward for free shipping and 365-day returns

To celebrate Phyla’s exciting new launch, we’re offering 25% off your first order. Go to phyla.com and enter the code "puberty" at checkout.

Get $25 off any Gabb smartphone GABB.com/AWKWARD

HER Health

Dr. Loretta Duggan

Order our book This Is So Awkward

Check out all our speaking and curriculum at www.lessawkward.com and our super comfy products at www.myoomla.com

To bring us to your school or community email [email protected]

To submit listener questions email [email protected]

Watch the full episode on Youtube!

Produced by Peoples Media

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Australia has just banned social media for kids under the age of 16. This prompts so MANY many questions including: What counts as social media? How will the ban work? Who’s responsible for implementation? Should we have a similar ban in the US? And perhaps most importantly, we explore what is the data (if any) sitting at the root of the ban, including what would be the ideal basis on which to write and enact laws. 

Show Notes:

Join our LESS AWKWARD MEMBERSHIP 

Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code AWKWARD to receive UP TO $300 off air purifiers

Get 10 FREE meals at HelloFresh.com/FREEAWKWARD

Go to Quince.com/awkward for free shipping and 365-day returns

To celebrate Phyla’s exciting new launch, we’re offering 25% off your first order. Go to phyla.com and enter the code "puberty" at checkout.

Get $25 off any Gabb smartphone GABB.com/AWKWARD

Windows of developmental sensitivity to social media

Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule ("COPPA") | Federal Trade Commission

US state age assurance laws for social media – AVPA

What Jonathan Haidt Gets Right… and Wrong

Order our book This Is So Awkward

Check out all our speaking and curriculum at www.lessawkward.com and our super comfy products at www.myoomla.com

To bring us to your school or community email [email protected]

To submit listener questions email [email protected]

Watch the full episode on Youtube!

Produced by Peoples Media

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the last few decades, cultural conversations around sexism have gotten more – not less – complicated. From social media and pervasive beauty culture to slut shaming and toxic masculinity, there’s a lot to manage for kids and adults supporting them. Jo-Ann Finkelstein, clinical psychologist and author of Sex & Sensibility, offers framework and guidance for all of these complex topics.

Show Notes:

Join our LESS AWKWARD MEMBERSHIP 

Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code AWKWARD to receive UP TO $300 off air purifiers

Get 10 FREE meals at HelloFresh.com/FREEAWKWARD

Go to Quince.com/awkward for free shipping and 365-day returns

To celebrate Phyla’s exciting new launch, we’re offering 25% off your first order. Go to phyla.com and enter the code "puberty" at checkout.

Get $25 off any Gabb smartphone GABB.com/AWKWARD

Order our book This Is So Awkward

Check out all our speaking and curriculum at www.lessawkward.com and our super comfy products at www.myoomla.com

To bring us to your school or community email [email protected]

To submit listener questions email [email protected]

Watch the full episode on Youtube!

Produced by Peoples Media

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Consent conversations can – and should – start early. So early that they begin around topics that have absolutely nothing to do with sex. We offer ways to apply the lessons of consent to a bunch of different topics in kids’ lives and start a conversation that will happen many different times in many different ways throughout a kid’s life.

Show Notes:

Join our LESS AWKWARD MEMBERSHIP 

Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code AWKWARD to receive UP TO $300 off air purifiers

Get 10 FREE meals at HelloFresh.com/FREEAWKWARD

Go to Quince.com/awkward for free shipping and 365-day returns

Get $25 off any Gabb smartphone GABB.com/AWKWARD

BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: visit PhylaBiotics.com and get 60% off their serum, and the entire 3-step system for only $48. Use the code PUBERTY60.

Order our book This Is So Awkward

Check out all our speaking and curriculum at www.lessawkward.com and our super comfy products at www.myoomla.com

To bring us to your school or community email [email protected]

To submit listener questions email [email protected]

Watch the full episode on Youtube!

Produced by Peoples Media

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our two mothers have, between them, more than 100 years of parenting experience. They share it all – including lots of lessons learned while raising the two of us and what they love most about being grandparents. And if you’re wondering, the answer is yes, we absolutely ask them about how they talked to us about puberty, sex, teenagers, and all the rest of it. Enjoy this love-filled episode! 

Show Notes:

Join our LESS AWKWARD MEMBERSHIP 

Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code AWKWARD to receive UP TO $300 off air purifiers

Get 10 FREE meals at HelloFresh.com/FREEAWKWARD

Go to Quince.com/awkward for free shipping and 365-day returns

Get $25 off any Gabb smartphone GABB.com/AWKWARD

BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: visit PhylaBiotics.com and get 60% off their serum, and the entire 3-step system for only $48. Use the code PUBERTY60.

Order our book This Is So Awkward

Check out all our speaking and curriculum at www.lessawkward.com and our super comfy products at www.myoomla.com

To bring us to your school or community email [email protected]

To submit listener questions email [email protected]

Watch the full episode on Youtube!

Produced by Peoples Media

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kid’s organizational skills (or lack thereof) can be a huge source of tension and frustration for adults. But executive functioning are skills that can be learned over time – we just have to be patient with brains in progress and dominant limbic systems. And certain challenges, like procrastination, are actually much more complex than they initially seem. Psychologist and executive functioning expert, Dr. Tori Cordiano, joins us back on the podcast.

Show Notes:

Join our LESS AWKWARD MEMBERSHIP 

Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code AWKWARD to receive UP TO $300 off air purifiers

Get 10 FREE meals at HelloFresh.com/FREEAWKWARD

Go to Quince.com/awkward for free shipping and 365-day returns

BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: visit PhylaBiotics.com and get 60% off their serum, and the entire 3-step system for only $48. Use the code PUBERTY60.

Get $25 off any Gabb smartphone GABB.com/AWKWARD

Dr. Tori Cordiano 

Order our book This Is So Awkward

Check out all our speaking and curriculum at www.lessawkward.com and our super comfy products at www.myoomla.com

To bring us to your school or community email [email protected]

To submit listener questions email [email protected]

Watch the full episode on Youtube!

Produced by Peoples Media

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When it comes to college, getting in is only the beginning. The much longer journey includes twists and turns about handling independence, making new friends, managing academic rigor, experiencing loneliness, facing rejection, and finding community. We’re joined by college-life guru and social media megastar Harlan Cohen, who shares his heartfelt guidance for supporting kids through these bumpy times.

Show Notes:

Join our LESS AWKWARD MEMBERSHIP 

Go to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code AWKWARD to receive UP TO $300 off air purifiers

Get 10 FREE meals at HelloFresh.com/FREEAWKWARD

Go to Quince.com/awkward for free shipping and 365-day returns

Get 25% off your first order of Phyla, when you visit PhylaBiotics.com and use the code PUBERTY at checkout!

Get $25 off any Gabb smartphone GABB.com/AWKWARD

Year 13 For Parents on Facebook

Best First Year

Order our book This Is So Awkward

Check out all our speaking and curriculum at www.lessawkward.com and our super comfy products at www.myoomla.com

To bring us to your school or community email [email protected]

To submit listener questions email [email protected]

Watch the full episode on Youtube!

Produced by Peoples Media

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices