The school, in view of the Holyoke Range and surrounded by farmland in Western Massachusetts, is a chapter of my life that’s been open for decades, unresolved and sneaking around inside of me. I left before the end of my first year because I got sick, and nobody could figure out why. Because I was so miserable, the time between telling my parents I couldn’t stay and the day they picked me up felt like eternity. But looking back, it was quite sudden.

In my haste, I left on the light in my dorm room, Dakin D203. The boy I was having a little affair with sent an email to tell me how unkind that was. “I have to walk past and see the light on and feel that feeling and then remember that you’re gone,” he wrote, or something along those lines, and that’s been my relationship with Hampshire ever since: I was there, I lived that, and then I left and forgot to turn off the light.

@thefruitspurPt 2?

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I went back to visit my friends the next year, 25 pounds lighter and humbled by both my illness (later diagnosed as Celiac Disease, a whole other story) and the reality that I was just another Hampshire dropout. Everything felt wrong that week except the hour I snuck into a the classroom of Eric Schocket, one of the greatest ever to teach, and watched how he lit up when he saw me. He asked me questions like he had when I was his student and treated me like I was smart, a rare experience at the time. I left back to Michigan the next day and haven’t returned.

Since then, I’ve dreamt about Hampshire almost weekly, about Schocket, who died young, and Michael Lesy, who, based on a recent interview, is still out there being gloriously Michael Lesy in the way that changed the trajectory of my life.

In some of these dreams, it’s early Spring and I’m sneaking toward that one boy’s dorm room at night, through pass-though co-ed bathrooms and up a flight of stairs. I never arrive, though, because these dreams jump around, sending me to the sheep fields or a library table or a Halloween party where I’m the only one not on drugs.

Sometimes I’m back in Chem Lab with the unwashed girl who told our research group about the time her sister died of a preventable disease because her family doesn’t believe in Western medicine. She tells us it’s sad, but there’s beauty in death, even in the death of a little girl, because it makes you appreciate life. The night I heard that story I pushed my eyes closed and forgot it, something I’ve had to do every time I’ve accidentally remembered it since.

In one of these dreams, it’s the end of the semester and I’ve forgotten to attend Lesy’s class for weeks and missed a number of assignments, something I simply wouldn’t have done in real life. His classes were rare in tone and intimidating and I often had to sleep for hours afterward just to process all I’d learned and heard. I never skipped them.

As I enter his classroom in these dreams, I know he won’t say anything, he’ll just look up at me and maybe sniff his nose. He’ll look back down at the paper he’s holding, something written by my classmate Eula Biss, and he’ll mark it with an A, even though Hampshire doesn’t give grades.

Biss, great work, he’ll say. I will feel inadequate and bumpkin-like in that dream, knowing what comes next for Eula: an award-winning writing career including a best-selling book that I loved and never stopped thinking about. I know her future in this dream, but somehow not my own.

Then I’ll wander off, past the girls in vintage clothes who were in punk bands in high school in New York, the ones who know my shirt is from Abercrombie but wouldn’t want to embarrass me by saying that in public. Or, even more likely, wouldn’t even see me. Past the boy who played drums in a Hard Core band whose heart I treated recklessly. Past girls playing catch topless, their underarm hair aglow, and the boys trying to impress them by playing the didgeridoo. Past Saga, the cafeteria where I once argued with a stubborn boy who told me, “You’ll die alone, Josie” while we ate pizza and stared out at the impossibly orange and red leaves and giant snowflakes and melting ice and then, eventually, green daffodil shoots.

And then that’s it. That’s the dream, or something like that.

I try not to talk about my dreams because dreams aren’t interesting. None of them. But today I learned they’re selling Hampshire’s properties to get out of hock: the dorms, the mods, the farm and everything else, and these dreams are all there will be for me.

I’ll never go back. It’s done, and it won’t be resolved. It will hang there like a light left on by accident, and I guess that’ll have to be enough.

-

Joanna Schroeder is a writer and editor who recently co-authored the book Talk To Your Boys.

If you’re curious how the work Christopher and I are doing applies to everyone - not just parents of boys - you’ll probably love this conversation. Amazingly, despite the seriousness of the topic, we laughed a lot throughout!

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Onto our question of the week:

One of the most enduring images of 2025 is that of the “Man vs. Bear” debate. Forced to choose between being alone in the woods with a man or a bear, the majority of women chose the bear. Men everywhere were shocked and horrified.

(Note: Don’t worry, this isn’t actually about Man vs. Bear!)

What makes Man vs. Bear such a potent thought experiment is also what makes it challenging to explain to tweens and teens: It’s not about the bear or the man. It’s not even about being lost in the woods. It’s about how women react. Logic is not supposed be part of the question.

If you’re confused or overwhelmed by Man vs. Bear, imagine being a 13 year-old and trying to get it! So, instead of Man vs. Bear (or as a follow-up to), I give you This Guy vs. ‘Girl On A Trail’.

(content note: lots of swear words, but your teen has heard them before, I promise!)

One Question To Ask Your Teens and Grown Kids This Week:

When is it OK to greet a stranger, and who do we owe a ‘hi’ to in return?

@j_cappola_fitcoach @j_cappola_fitcoach ♬ Be My Baby - The Ronettes

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This bearded guy says all women should say hi to all men on trails who say hi to them. The man who responded (colorfully!) explains that women don’t owe this bearded man anything — especially alone on a trail!

Watch this with your kid, then talk about it! Here are a few questions to get you started:

1. Why do you think women (and some men) are so angry about this man insisting women should smile at him while hiking alone on a trail?

2. What was your gut feeling when he said that?

   

3. What do you think about an adult man referring to an adult woman he doesn’t know as a “girl”?

4. Is there something objectively wrong with him saying ‘hi’ to a woman who is alone on a trail?

   

5. What can you imagine what the man may have felt when a woman passed him and didn’t say ‘hi’ back?

6. What can you imagine how the woman may have felt in that situation?

7. What might her feelings have been based on (i.e. intuition, bad past experiences, something in his body language, etc?)

8. Can you guess why she didn’t want to say ‘hi’ back? What might she have been afraid will happen — from minor to very serious?

   

9. What might be a better way for this man to handle those feelings of rejection or “awkwardness”?

10. Do all people owe everyone a ‘hi’? If so, what else do we owe them?

11. Can you relate to the second guy, the one who did the response? Do you agree, disagree or both? Were his anger and/or insults justified?

12. Is all discomfort bad or an indication you should ignore someone? When might it better to push through discomfort to say “hi” back to someone?
    

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Remember: the key here is to discuss these questions without judgment and share your own perspectives, too. In Talk To Your Boys, we call these “No Wrong Answers” exercises and we have them throughout each chapter.

After years of research for our book, we learned that practicing empathy is one of the most important jobs of parents of tweens and teens. Asking questions where we imagine how someone might feel may seem silly, after all, we cannot know how that person felt, right?

But empathy exercises are not about finding the “right” answer, they’re about developing a child’s ability to step outside of themselves and imagine how another person feels. And the more they practice using empathy and rational judgment, the more naturally these types of thinking become to our kids!

As always, remind your kid that they don’t have to be perfect and that they can tell you anything, anytime. And then do your best to be the safe place for them to share all their feelings.

Liked this? Read more Questions of the Week!

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About the author: Joanna Schroeder is a writer, speaker and co-author of the USA Today National Bestselling book Talk To Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow Into Confident, Caring Young Men. Christopher and Joanna are available for book talks, workshops and media appearances now. Please email TTYBbook@gmail.com for availability.

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A year or so ago, a woman who was living in her car recorded a video of two apparent church staffers inside the offices of Second Reformed Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan. This week, that video went viral — in a big way. Just one of the TikToks featuring her video had more than 1 million views in less than 24 hours.

In the video, she holds the camera and begs two women in the office to be allowed to sleep in her car in the church parking lot.

The church staff are steely-gazed and cold, and appear to threaten to go to the police. One holds a phone pointed at the unhoused woman.

The moment I saw this video gaining speed, I knew it was going to be bad. Why? I grew up in West Michigan, where this was filmed, and recognized the cold, heartless glare on the pastor or church staffer’s face as she filmed the woman back.

I texted the video to my cousin, herself a pastor who runs a large hunger program out of her church, and we agreed: this is bad on so many levels. Bad for the woman being told to leave, bad for the church in question, and bad for American Christianity overall.

People show up on clergy and church doorsteps all the time in various states of need: moms with hungry kids, people down on their luck, or victims of abuse looking for shelter, yes. But also people who are heavily intoxicated, serial manipulators, criminals, and those in the throes of serious addiction.

Clergy in high-needs areas tend to be among the most equipped for situations like this. Most are helpful, either directly or by referring people out, but one cannot help but remember some of the major fails in this area, like when Joel Osteen’s mega-church in Houston refused to allow in evacuees during a massive storm in 2017. It was only after fervent, persistent criticism on social media (and then TV news) that they finally opened their doors.

I don’t know how the Kalamazoo situation escalated to the point of these women glaring at someone in need and threatening to call police, but it got there, and now I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s a huge red flag for our country.

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How Americans became more religiously divided than ever before:

1. The hypocrisy of MAGA churches

Throughout the government shutdown, which began on October 1st and officially became the longest government shutdown in history on November 5th (and then continued after for another week), MAGA Christians found themselves being called hypocrites and labeled as “bad Christians” time and again on social media. Soon enough, this sentiment showed up in the mainstream media, too. After all, Jesus commanded that his followers care for “the least of these” — those who are most in need.

But influencer-style pastors like Josh Howerton, with his shiny face and perpetually rolled-up shirt sleeves, insists there’s nothing Christian about asking the government to provide care for those “least”, insisting it’s the responsibility of churches and other non-profits to care for the needy.

In response, people turned to see if the churches were, in fact, feeding the poor, while the government was shut down. What they found in some churches was startling, and soon enough, churches found themselves being publicly called-out.

Another startling trend? They proudly tell their congregants how to vote. And that’s the reason so many are attracted to it — it gives MAGA politicians almost limitless power, positioning their candidates and policies as not just important for the nation — but also key to saving your soul.

2. The American Dream gasping its last desperate breaths

The middle class has been disappearing in the USA for decades, and fewer families can afford to buy a home right now than any time in recent U.S. history. The cost of college, even at a quality in-state public institution, has risen dramatically, even when adjusted for inflation.

The Education Data Initiative notes that “After adjusting for currency inflation, college tuition has increased 197.4% since 1963.” The EDI also notes that the cost of tuition has risen 36% just in the last 15 years. A college education is quickly becoming something only the wealthy can dream about.

How will people pull themselves up from their proverbial bootstraps without this critical rung on the socioeconomic ladder?

Now, the majority of us can imagine ourselves — or our kids — being the ones in need in the future, with no real systems to help get people out of endless cycles of financial despair. Worse, when we look to the party in charge, we don’t see people who want to help solve these problems, we see wealthy people passing policies that benefit the ultra-wealthy the most.

3. Proud Christian Nationalists holding some of the most powerful positions in the USA

We’re also terrified at the rise in Christian Nationalism (a movement that is very separate from Christianity itself) that insists the government should be overtly and expressly Christian, and that the USA should be an official Christian nation. These people even argue that “separation of Church and State” doesn’t mean what we think it does, and that an official Christian designation is totally Constitutional.

For the Christians reading this and feeling unconcerned because they fit in with the majority, please remember that Christian Nationalism also tends to be anti-Catholic, anti-Episcopalian and anti-Mormon (among others!). On social media, some Christian Nationalists go so far as to speak openly against Martin Luther — not Civil Rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King (though they don’t like him, either) — the one who believed the Bible should be able to be read by all Christians, not just the very few who could access and translate the holy texts.

This sounds wild, but Christian Nationalists are no longer a fringe group, they are now the group in power of the federal government. They aren’t MAGA wing-nuts, they are MAGA core.

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4. ICE abducting people on camera and Christian Nationalists cheering it on

Our timelines are full of images of children being ripped from their parents’ arms by ICE and male agents driving toddler children away in their parents’ cars while fully dressed in tactical gear, the child screaming in the back seat.

Of course there’s also news that civilians are posing as ICE agents in order to commit violent crimes. This works well for criminals, as ICE agents are not required to show ID or badges at any point in their interactions with the public.

As of October 16th, more than 170 U.S. citizens were detained and held against their will by ICE. Many were moved from facility to facility while their families try to find them to get them released — including minor children who’ve been separated from their families.

The suffering we see daily in our news feeds of the targeted populations brings a deep sense of unrest and insecurity. We cannot help but see the current leadership, primarily people who consider themselves Christians and patriots, as heartless monsters who will eventually turn against the rest of us unless we fall in line.

The result? Viral ‘tests’ of church compassion

With the people in charge insisting that non-profits and churches should be the ones caring for people in need, it’s natural for people to want to know how — and if — this will work. All over social media, people are devising tests of this system.

In the most famous example, a woman called churches asking for baby formula, as she couldn’t afford to feed her hungry baby. According to the woman, she was turned down again and again. The one Kentucky church that agreed to supply her with formula went viral and was flooded with praise for passing the test.

@tmz⛪A Kentucky woman went viral after testing how churches respond to families asking for baby formula. Out of 42 churches, only 9 offered help — but the experiment sparked $75K in donations for one small church. 🎥: TikTok @nikalie.monroe ✏️: @taliablochh

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Compassion tests create false binaries — but we can still learn from them

As noted above, we don’t know what preceded the women of Second Reformed to threaten cops on someone who wanted to park their car in the parking lot overnight, but that’s almost beside the point. It’s not them asking her to leave that triggers so much rage, it’s the coldness of the women in the video.

We cannot help but think, The government is telling us to turn to churches for support — but this is what happens when someone does! Rejection, shame and a call to the cops. In essence, what’s on everyone’s minds as they watch videos like this is simply:

If not the government and not the church, who? Who will save us when this all inevitably falls apart?

Christian Nationalism is currently the #1 threat to American Christianity

Not only is Christian Nationalism is openly anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant, it is also fundamentally sexist toward women insisting that women belong at home raising children. It also insists that men, as head of the household, are superior to their wives. This, they say, is in the Bible — which they believe should be at the core of all governing principals in the United States.

On top of all of that, Christian Nationalist candidates and officials keep ignoring all of the President’s links between its administration and child predators like Jeffrey Epstein while declaring that theirs is the party of moral superiority. They insist that they are the party that best reflects Christian values.

The result? The good work being done by millions of Christians in this country will be overshadowed and Christians, in general, will become maligned.

As Christian Nationalism grows deeper roots into our Federal government, the more they twist around our institutions, the more people will push back against it. Sometimes, that backlash may land at the feet of Christians who do not deserve the scorn. And churches need to be prepared.

Christianity has become just another play in the MAGA handbook, and only fellow Christians can take it back.

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About the author: Joanna Schroeder is a writer, media critic and co-author of the USA Today National Bestselling book Talk To Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow Into Confident, Caring Young Men.

Today we’re talking about healthy ways to handle anger with the help of a clip from Josh Johnson, comedian and co-host of The Daily Show. So send this clip to your kid or invite them to sit next to you as you watch.

Hint: Don’t make a big deal out of it, just say something like, “I just watched the funniest clip, come here when you have a sec, I need to show you.”

One Question To Ask Your Kids This Week:

When is it OK to get angry?

As parents raising teens and young adult sons ourselves, Christopher (my co-author) and I know exactly how touchy the issue of anger can be with tweens and teens. Teen anger is a whole different beast than the tantrums most little kids have.

In some ways this is good. It gives us ample opportunities to guide our kids through healthy, constructive ways to manage anger. In other ways, it can be intimidating and sometimes even scary.

I thought about this when this clip from Josh Johnson showed up on my timeline this week:

In this clip, a man freaks out at a McDonald’s employee because his burger didn’t have a pickle. The easy joke, the one most people would make, is about what a pathetic loser you’d have to be to get so angry about a pickle.

But Johnson doesn’t do that. Instead, he says (and this is mostly paraphrased so parents know what bits to focus on):

“Everybody has their limit. You wish your limit would come when it makes sense. You want your limit to come when something actually happens,” but sometimes people try to be strong. They try to push it down … “and then,” he says, “they go to McDonald’s.”

“All the injustice of the world comes out, all at once, in this McDonalds … [Whereas], if you had snapped 15 minutes ago when you were at home, everyone would get it. Someone might have even hugged you. But now they’re just calling the police.”

Doesn’t sound funny, but Johnson makes it funny. His delivery is truly magical.

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Watch this with your kid, then talk about it! Here are a few questions to get you started:

1. Have you ever seen someone snap like this? Have you ever felt this?

2. When are the times you feel like you can’t break down when you wish you could?

   

3. Why do you think so many men get into situations like this? What have men learned about anger vs. sadness, grief, shame, loss, etc?

4. Lots of women in the comments mention that they’ve cried in moments like this, over things like a missing pickle on a burger. Why don’t we hear that from men?

   

5. When women do this, they’re often called “Karens”. Do you feel like it’s different when women snap — or is it pretty much the same, both in motivation and in how people perceive them?

6. How might race and class make these situations different? For example, what changes for the person who snaps if they are a person of color? How might society view that differently than if it’s a white person? What if they’re dressed like they’re rich vs. if they look like they’re poor?

   

7. What’s the best way to react as a bystander when someone else is getting heated? How can you tell when it’s safe to step in vs. better to stay away, cause a distraction or call 911?

8. Who are the people you can talk to so you don’t lose it in a McDonalds (or at a friend’s house, at school, etc) and end up going viral on TikTok for a meltdown — or just pushing away friends who care about you?

9. What tools do you use when you start to feel overwhelmed? Who do you talk to? Who can you trust?

The key here is to discuss these questions without judgment and share your own perspectives, too. In Talk To Your Boys, we call these “No Wrong Answers” exercises and we have them throughout each chapter.

Buy or Download Talk To Your Boys

In TTYB, we also share expert advice on how to guide your teens through anger, how to help them manage it, and a few exercises to practice together.

A few simple things to try first: box breathing, going for a run, or listening to music that helps you feel calm.

Most importantly, stress to your child that anger is natural. Everyone gets angry and they’re allowed to be pissed off sometimes!

The key is how you express your anger — and losing it on someone else, especially when you’re insulting, destructive or intimidating will never solve the problem. It’ll only make them (and you!) feel worse in the end.

As always, remind your kid that they don’t have to be perfect and that they can tell you anything, anytime. And then do your best to be the safe place for them to share all their feelings.

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About the author: Joanna Schroeder is a writer, speaker and co-author of the USA Today National Bestselling book Talk To Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow Into Confident, Caring Young Men. Christopher and Joanna are available for book talks, workshops and media appearances now. Please email TTYBbook@gmail.com for availability.

Also, please note that this is a series I’ll be doing every week. It is free for now, but will likely be paywalled for subscribers somewhere down the line, for paid subs only.

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This content serves as a supplement to our book, an additional conversation that fits within the framework of Talk To Your Boys (and is not an excerpt from the book). While these conversations are easier once you’ve read the book — especially Chapter One, Communication — these conversations are designed to be helpful for anyone.

Now, onto this week’s talk.

One Question To Ask Your Kid This Week:

What’s the difference between “edgy” and “hurtful” when it comes to jokes?

Adolescents are hard-wired to push back against society’s norms (and those of their families!) so we shouldn’t be surprised when “potty talk” jokes turn into dark humor as they grow up.

Dark humor can be a healthy way to deal with real trauma or fear, but our kids aren’t born knowing when a joke crosses the line. What makes this even more challenging is that society doesn’t agree on where that line lies. Even people who share the same values or politics often disagree — and that’s OK!

The best plan is to give kids a system for evaluating if a joke, meme or video fits their own values system. Even more importantly, as parents, educators and caregivers, we must serve as a safe place for our kids to discuss potentially offensive jokes or content as they arise. Not one where they’ll be harshly judged or threatened with having their devices taken away.

Because Halloween has just passed, I have a grotesque (but useful) example you can bring up with your kid if you want to get started with something relevant: The Erika Kirk “Grieving Widow” and the Paul Pelosi costumes that have gone viral on social media.

Download Talk To Your Boys now!

Some background:

First, Paul Pelosi was attacked with a hammer by a home intruder who intended to kidnap and torture Pelosi’s wife, Nancy Pelosi, then serving as Speaker of the House. Mr. Pelosi, who was 82 years old at the time of the attack, sustained major injuries, including a fractured skull. The attacker was sentenced to life in prison in 2024.

Second, Erika Kirk is the widow of Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in September of this year. She quickly replaced her late husband as CEO and chair of the board at his highly influential non-profit, Turning Point USA. TPUSA is often credited as one of the major reasons Trump won the 2020 election.

The relevant part of this “joke” is that she was recently seen hugging VP Vance in what some believe is an overly intimate way. She was wearing leather pants and a white tee shirt.

Here are the two “joke” images to discuss:

First, a Paul Pelosi attack “joke” costumes shared by Donald Trump Jr.:

Second, the Erika Kirk grieving widow “joke” costume:

Of course, this is a conversation to have with an older child who is mature enough to handle discussions of real-life violence or any child who spends time on the open internet or who uses unsupervised social media (which is already full of violence and inappropriate content).

Try saying something like, “I read an article that mentioned these two fake costumes and I wonder if you’ve seen them and what you think?”

Questions to ask:

• Are these jokes funny, hurtful or somewhere in between?

• Are they equally offensive/funny or are they different? How and why?

• Who do you think made these memes?

• What do you think may have been their goal?

• Do you think a valid political point is being made in either of these jokes?

• If so, is that joke worth offending or hurting the people who may be negatively affected by it?

There are a wide array of “right” answers here, so don’t make it a quiz. It’s a non-judgmental conversation designed to help kids learn how to analyze what they see and make well thought-out choices based on their own ethics and values.

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Listen to your kid’s perspective and then share yours — including why. Your “why” will likely include things like imagining how the targets of these jokes might feel, how other survivors of violence might experience them, etc. You may also want to discuss why political humor is often offensive/edgy and talk about how to know if that humor is therapeutic or helpful — and when it’s not.

Other talking points:

• Is every joke equally OK for everyone?

• Are there times when something is offensive coming from you or me, but maybe not coming from someone else?

• Is that fair? If not, does fairness matter here? (Think jokes about disability, race, weight, violence, etc.)

Hopefully this prompt inspires a great conversation with your kids this week.

If you liked this, you’ll love our book, Talk To Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow Into Confident, Caring Young Men. We have a whole chapter on Ethics & Values with lots of examples for conversations like this one — as well as 15 other crucial conversations.

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Joanna Schroeder is a writer, speaker and co-author of the USA Today National Bestselling book Talk To Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow Into Confident, Caring Young Men. Christopher and Joanna are available for book talks, workshops and media appearances now. Please email TTYBbook@gmail.com for availability.

“Wazzzzzuppppppppppp…” the voice in the sample (being played in the background of a video) said. I couldn’t help but smile.

“Boden,” I said to my son, who is just turning 18, “Do you know where that voice comes from?”

“TikTok,” he replied.

“Yes, I know,” I said, laughing. “But the original voice?”

He did not. I tried to explain how this one beer commercial swept the entire nation — and eventually the world. He was not impressed. He is, after all, a teen in the age of TikTok. They’re used to trends sweeping the world. But nothing from today can compare to this one.

“Watch this,” I said.

”Honey!” I called upstairs to my husband, who was working in bed and hadn’t heard the conversation. “Wazzuuuuup!”

“WAZZZUPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP,” my husband shouted back.

I turned to my son, “That commercial came out in 1999 and probably hasn’t been on the air as long as you’ve been alive.”

“WHOA,” he replied.

I pulled up the video on YouTube, ready to cringe at how dated it would feel. Not all of the things I remember being amazing and iconic have impressed my children. One time I tried playing a Dave Matthews Band song for this same son, describing it as our “college make-out anthem” only for him to hear the flute intro and say, deadpan, “Is this Ron Burgundy?”

Cold. Ice cold.

The deeper reason Wazzup stirs a sense of longing in our chests

Even all these years later, “Wazzup?” holds up. Aside from how funny Charles Stone III (a director whose 1998 short film, True., was the inspiration for this ad) and his real-life friends are, it goes deeper. You cannot help but notice the beautiful intimacy of these adult men. It’s almost startling.

Despite the fact that my son couldn’t figure out how the other guys joined the call (“Mom, how’d he merge calls just by picking up that other phone?”) he loved it. Who wouldn’t? It speaks to a time when guys just chilled. They watched football, called each other on the phone, and just chilled. They weren’t in competition, they weren’t scrolling their phones, they were simply existing — together. It’s a portrait of healthy, pre-smartphone masculinity.

Watching it again, I realized why it made my chest ache. Our boys don’t really have this anymore. The comments below the video on YouTube confirmed that for me.

The male loneliness crisis has been happening for five years — likely, even longer. As parents of boys, it was a major motivating force behind the book Christopher and I wrote, Talk To Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow into Confident, Caring Young Men. We want boys to have friends, but these days, they need to learn a whole new set of social skills in order for this to happen.

How 21st Century men lost their friends

Men used to have all sorts of friends. They had work friends, friends that they served alongside during any given war, and friends from childhood during the time when people stayed in the communities where they grew up.

After that, men had friends they met up with at the bar, for bowling league or on poker nights. Men they met in the park to play chess with every Saturday afternoon, men from the VFW or the Elks Club.

Emotional intimacy, for these men, came from their wives who were waiting at home for them, desperate for adult conversation. Without wives, these men would have had nobody to confide in or to ask for help. Without their wives, men had nobody to tell them that they were OK.

As we gained more economic freedom, fewer women needed a man to pay the bills. That meant the average age of first-time brides went up year after year and women’s isolation at home went down.

These are all good things!

The problem? Conversations with boys and young men about girls and women didn’t change. If a little boy has a friend who was a girl, parents continue to ask, “Is that your girlfriend?” As these boys grow older, the only framework they had for relationships with girls is romantic.

@byjoannaschroederteaching boys to be good to girls & see them as equals starts with making sure they have friends who are girls. also, your son will someday have a woman boss - will he know how to handle that? #friendship #boymom #feministmom #feminist #healthykids #raisingmen #equality

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In other words, just as women became less interested in long-term commitment with men, men became more desperate for commitment from women.

To make matters worse, the Manosphere (and its toxic older brother, the Pick Up Artists) tell guys that the only real measures of a man’s value are the number of women he’d slept with and quality of girls they could pick up at bars.

There is no room for female friends in that equation. Worse, friendships with other men evolved into nothing more than “wingmen” and/or competition for the dwindling resource of women who were willing to put up with the games those men had been taught to play.

Too many men only have their dads for support

This comment, above, struck me hardest. “Use to call my pops and do this… man the good old days. RIP Pops,” this user wrote.

It reminded me of a conversation I had last year with a friend’s husband. As we sat on a park bench, watching his boys playing with my daughter on the playground, he told me he was glad I was writing Talk To Your Boys. He wanted something better for his boys.

“I don’t have any close guy friends, really,” he told me. “None that I can just call from the car like I used to with my dad, at least. Now that he’s gone, I really only have my wife for that kind of stuff.”

I looked over at his wife, my beautiful friend who runs two businesses alongside him while they raise their three sons together, and I realized that even with the best wife in the world, a man needs friends.

We all do. We all need friends we can pick up the phone and just call. Even if it’s only to say “wazzupppppp?”.

Joanna Schroeder is a writer, media critic and co-author of the USA Today national bestselling book, Talk To Your Boys (Workman).

(Note: My profound apologies to Charles Stone III and anyone who had to listen to me say “wazzup” over and over again in the audio version of this article. It’s embarrassing but unavoidable.)

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This week, Christopher and I had a ton of fun joining Jennifer Fink on a Substack Live for her to talk about our new book, Talk To Your Boys, which is available now! We covered a TON of stuff: the sweetness of boys, the effects of prescriptive gender on our kids, and (yes) Charlie Kirk’s death.

I wanted to share a question that popped up in Jennifer’s comments because it’s one Christopher and I are asked frequently.

(Also, you can click here to ask Joanna and Christopher a question of your own - scroll down to the bottom once you click in…)

Real mom question:

“I try my best to listen to my teenage boys, but it gets really tough sometimes when they start spouting political views that are anathema to what I believe. I blame YouTube and its ugly algorithms. :( Any advice?” — Emily

Here’s what I shared:

There are SO many people going through it — you are far from alone!

First, ask if he'd show you some of his favorite things to watch hosted by people who share his opinions.

You’ll need to be prepared to be annoyed, triggered or even outraged, so own your feelings up front.

Try saying something like, "Hey, I know we disagree on a lot, but I really am curious about the people you watch and wonder if I could see more of their videos because it's clear you really respect them. I’m going to give objectivity my best shot if you’re willing to do the same for me.”

We have found this all works better when you work hard to authentically adjust your goals. You're not trying to change their minds or their politics, you're trying to understand how and why they got there and what needs are being met by the people influencing them. It's possible that your sons are drawn in by the idea of being protective or helpful, or they may be dealing with some hurt, rejection or fears and these influencers are addressing those feelings.

Once we know what resonates with them, we can try to find ways to connect with that part or to try to show ways in which your beliefs system may also connect with him.

Beyond that, it's all about modeling empathy without shame. If they take an offensive stance, you could try keeping calm and asking them to zoom out and think more globally about the issue.

Try replying, "I hear you're saying [and then repeat what you think you're hearing], but the way I see that, it feels like it could be really hurtful to some people. Do you see what I mean?"

There are literally dozens of scripts in our book to help with all of this, because these frustrations are being felt everywhere — especially in the wake of September 10th. Not just because Charlie Kirk was assassinated, but because a young man opened fire at Evergreen High School on the same day, reportedly motivated by hate-based extremist influences.

Despite how high our emotions are running, we have to resist the temptation to show any sort of disgust toward our kids, and in turbulent times, it can be hard not to feel disgusted by some people's political perspectives.

But, as Dr. John Duffy says, disgust from parents does enormous damage to a child’s relationship with their parents and can seriously affect a kid's self-esteem.

Order Talk To Your Boys now!

A few notes from this week:

Jordan Reid of Ramshackle Glam fame will be joining me tomorrow, September 18th, at Zibby’s Bookshop in Santa Monica for a Q&A, reading and signing of Talk To Your Boys! Please join us if you’re around!

Livestream Joanna and Jordan’s conversation here, 6pm to 7pm PST Thursday!

If you’re feeling listless, anxious or aimless during these turbulent times, I highly recommend picking up one of Jordan’s activity books. Research shows that writing about our feelings and experiences can help us process them — and doing activities like coloring and puzzles can be a healthy distraction from the news.

Check out The Big Activity Book For Anxious People and The Everybody Gets Anxious Activity Book for kids, tweens and teens. We have this one here at home, and my daughter LOVES it.

Finally, I’m going to write more about launch week over the weekend, but Zibby invited us to join her and the other authors on the Zibby’s Most Anticipated List for a party and signing at her shop on Saturday. Because, YES, Talk To Your Boys made her list!!

We just got some of the photos back from the photographer and they are SO FUN. What a day!

Learn more about Joanna and Christopher’s work at on our website!

Fast-forward to today, and not only do I have a great co-author in Christopher Pepper — Talk to Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow into Confident, Caring Young Men is just two weeks away from hitting stores!

This is one of the only dreams I’ve had throughout my life and it’s wild to imagine that it’s about to come true.

The wildest part? I’ve had to learn how to ask for favors in order to launch this book.

Why I’m bad at asking for help

Researching and writing this book were hard, but they’re also two of my favorite things to do. What challenges me most is asking people for help.

There’s a vulnerability in asking for help. You open yourself up to rejection, judgement and even mockery when you reach out. You risk people saying you’re asking for too much, or asking for it too often.

I know a lot of you reading this can relate to a terror of being seen as “too much”. Some of us burn brightly, we take up a lot of space, and we don’t naturally conform to what people expect from us. As we grow up, we learn to balance who we are inside with what is more palatable to the general public.

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Promoting this book has been an exercise in learning how to let myself burn brightly again. Even harder, I had to risk rejection by asking for favors. As my friend Lisa Marie told me in a “come to Jesus” conversation when I was freaking out, promoting this book is now my job and lots of people want to help.

The good news is, I love having a job and working hard. And this is one job I’ll be doing for years to come — because I believe in Talk To Your Boys. I believe it will help parents because all of the research and interviews taught me more than I could have imagined.

So here I go.

Please help us make our book a success! Here’s what you can do:

Buy our book!

You can buy at your favorite local bookstore, from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and even Walmart! You can buy it from my Bookshop, too, and find a list of books that I recommend alongside ours, too!

Follow us on social media and share our posts!

Follow Talk To Your Boys on Instagram and share our promos when they come up so your own followers know our book exists!

Follow Joanna on TikTok and Christopher on Instagram and Teen Health Today on Substack. Share our posts whenever you feel moved to do so.

@byjoannaschroederparents: boys need deep, emotional connection just as much as girls do #talktoyourboys

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Tell your friends!

If you have friends raising boys, please tell them about our book. Share that it is easy to read and designed so you can pick it up and start any chapter when you need it. No need to read it cover-to-cover. Tell them that it’s full of scripts, questions and prompts to help you have even the hardest conversations.

If you have friends or family who work in the media, a bookstore or have any other meaningful connections, please share the news of our book. We believe that the insights from the experts in our book can help boys and young men live healthier lives, which could, in turn, help the world.

Attend one of our events!

Mark your calendar for September 10th in San Francisco, when we will be launching our book at the iconic store, Book Passage (in the Ferry Building)!

And for September 18th in Santa Monica, where we will make our SoCal debut at the gorgeous Zibby’s Book Shop on Montana (promo image above!)

Get tickets to the Zibby’s event here! Tickets are FREE but they need to have a headcount. My amazing friend (author of the bestselling “Big Activity Books” series) will be in conversation with me about the book. As a mom of a teen boy and author focused on emotional honesty and well-being, it will be a super fun conversation.

Above all, thank you so much for supporting us and being so encouraging. We are so excited for all of you to finally hold this book in your hands!

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Joanna Schroeder is co-author of the book Talk To Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow into Confident, Caring Young Men, available to order now. ˆThe New York Times, The Boston Globe, Esquire, Redbook and more. She serves as Managing Editor of YourTango’s Experts program and has three children of her own.

I could write 20 pages on this, but I will try to be succinct: Facial recognition AI is already VERY accurate and currently cacheing images posted online.

Here are a few reasons you should NOT post photos of children publicly (including on NextDoor or a community safety page on Facebook, etc):

1. You could be exposing that child's location to child predators, potential stalkers, a dangerous family member, etc.

You don't know that child's family history or who may be trying to find them (a stranger who found the child online or at school/in a park, an abusive parent who lost custody, etc).

Using facial recognition along with the info YOU are providing, a child could become a victim of a crime.

EXAMPLE of a post I see regularly on ND and other community pages with a photo of kids, including their faces:

"I just saw these four little boys riding their bikes and knocking over trash cans in the North Shore Bay Club. I know they live here, but I don't know their parents."

You just PUBLICLY named the neighborhood where these little boys live and/or hang out. Are you certain this won't put one of them in danger - now or in the future?

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2. You could be wrong.

You also just accused all four of the boys of being destructive (was it really all four? Are you sure they knocked the can down on purpose? Was it more than one can? etc.)

Do you know how inaccurate eyewitness testimony/recall is? Decades of research (in reputable journals, replicated again and again) has proven that we often misremember or misinterpret things we've seen, even when we are confident about them. Here's just one of many, many sources on this: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29716454/

3. These photos follow these children via facial recognition FOR LIFE, literally.

So, now you've accused them of breaking the law/rules/being destructive. 10 years or so down the line, this could affect their chance of getting into the college, getting a job, getting a promotion, getting an elevated rank in the military, etc.

EXAMPLE OF FACIAL RECOGNITION ACCURACY: (1953 to 2025)

If you don't believe me about how well facial recognition works, here's an example:

My dad was born in the 1940s. I found a photo of him from age 7 or 8 at his home and took a pic of the photo with my phone. I had a folder on my phone for photos of my dad (who is now in his late 70s) and my phone used facial recognition to categorize it.

Despite the photo being 60+ years ago, Google Photos used AI facial recognition to recognize that it was my dad, placing it in the GRAMPS folder with all of the photos I've taken of him since ~2015.

So, yes, the photo you post of a little kid who is 9 or 12 years old WILL follow them for life.

Now that we all understand, I hope we can agree to STOP posting photos of children's faces without consent.

I refuse to believe anyone posting for the "safety" of the kids in public or semi-public online settings actually cares about the safety of kids if they include photos of their faces.

If you feel you must post publicly about the behavior of children, please obscure their faces using the “markup” feature on your phone or simply crop the photo so as to remove their faces.

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Joanna Schroeder is co-author of the book Talk To Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow into Confident, Caring Young Men, available to order now. ˆThe New York Times, The Boston Globe, Esquire, Redbook and more. She serves as Managing Editor of YourTango’s Experts program and has three children of her own.

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When I was young, I was sure my opinions were right. As you can imagine, I led a pretty high-conflict life as a result. .

I think it’s fair to say that being “often wrong, but never in doubt” is a cultural tradition in my Dutch-American family, where dinners can go on for hours as we debate the merits of one idea over another. To us, testing someone’s stance by trying to poke holes in it is intellectual “play”. It’s not an insult. It’s just conversation.

It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I realized this was not normal to most others, that it pushed a lot of people away. My life-long friend Martha always loved to brag about being the only person who has never been in a fight with me.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve practiced keeping (some of) my opinions to myself. But every opportunity to take a stance leaves me wondering: When is it right to stay quiet?

Is taking a strong stance (and never relenting) a form of bullying that pushes important people away, or do people leave because they can’t “hang” with the rhetorical big dogs? And does letting someone’s problematic opinion go unchecked make us complicit in the harm done by that opinion?

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The early stages of an answer came to me during a deep conversation with my grandfather. He was turning 90, so my cousin, Amanda, and I traveled to bitter and icy Iowa to surprise him. Ever the stoic, he surprised us back with long, teary conversions about his past: his hopes and dreams, disappointments, fears and regrets. Did he love my grandmother well enough? Was he too harsh with his boys, our fathers, when they were young?

Amanda and I held onto one another, not knowing if we should reassure him that it wasn’t worth worrying about or if we should just listen. We opted for the latter.

One admission that stands out most to me today, 10+ years later, is that he felt he no longer knew for sure that he was right. Sure, there were obvious things that were very clear to him. But what about situations that require more nuance?

This may seem obvious to some of you reading this, but our grandpa was a radical and black and white are primary colors for most radicals. Rarely do they see grey.

I can say that almost all of our grandpa’s social and political choices have stood the test of time, despite how unpopular they were when he made them. This man spent 85 years doing what he thought was right, including but not limited to:

• Refusing to commit acts of violence due to his religious beliefs

• Service with the Society of Friends (including caring for people with Leprosy in the 1930s and 40s and arranging healthcare for children with physical disabilities)

• Early and fervent advocacy for racial equality

• Offering sliding-scale counseling to gay men who were often kicked out of other therapy offices — especially if the didn’t want to “change” being gay, as early as the 1970s

• Standing up for the dignity of LGBTQ folks during the 1970s, 80s and beyond

• Establishing and running one of the earliest dignity-based supportive living communities for adults with intellectual disabilities

Yes, he was ahead of his time. He was also stubborn as a mule. He’d raised his sons as stoics, with harsh critique and firm back pats instead of hugs. When he took a stance, he never backed down.

But, he told us, once he hit 80 and everyone around him started “keeling over”, he was no longer terminally committed to his “rightness”. His ideals didn’t budge – he left a position of authority over LGBT rights in his 80s, for instance – but he no longer felt a need to argue people into dust, like he’d done his whole life.

These days, it feels like everyone is dead-set on arguing other people into the ground. It’s become our culture, especially online. As Andrew Bird sings in the song Sisyphus, “History forgets the moderates” and, it turns out, so does social media. Nobody clicks on that nuanced take, Thoughtful, balanced observations rarely go viral. “I’d rather flail like a mortal than fail like a god,” Bird sings, and, most of the time, so would I.

But what about real life? What about in our everyday, human relationships? When should we take a stance — and when should we approach one another with radical nuance?

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In the last few weeks, people in the USA have watched our already contentious world become dramatically more high-stakes. Four people were shot in a politically-motivated assassination attempt, two of whom are dead. The President got into a very public verbal battle with his former friend and advisor and people in highly elevated positions took sides. A bill passed that cut millions of people off from their healthcare but allowed people to write off 100% of their private jet expenses.

Massive protests drawing crowds of hundreds of thousands gathered and, in some cases, were met with armored vehicles, non-lethal bullets and tear gas. People burned flags while others laid flowers at the feet of the National Guard occupying Los Angeles while musicians from generations-old Mariachi families played their instruments in the background.

Self-proclaimed Christians left public comments all over social media praising “Alligator Alcatraz”, signing their names to comments like, “I can’t wait for those alligators to get their first meal!” As if delighting in the suffering of other human beings isn’t in direct opposition of the teachings of Jesus.

America seems, on the surface, more torn apart than ever — and in many ways, it is. But something unites us: our willingness to fight for what’s right. The problem is, we’ve lost sight of what’s right in favor of partisanship. We believe that the leaders of our sides are doing what is objectively right, too often following them blindly.

You’ve heard this from a thousand people before me, but too many people have joined cults instead of political movements. Yes, I think one side does this more than another, but just today I saw this tweet from a leftist political group and was shocked into silence:

I’m with Sunny (whoever that is) on this. If you don’t think an internment center is legal, ethical or constitutional, you should wish for it to be closed — not wish for someone you hate to be in it. It’s painful, but it’s true.

In order to stand on any moral high ground, we have to stay true to what we believe, even when we have to apply it to people we hate or people who are evil. This take won’t make you go viral or land you on the morning talk shows, but it feels like the only good answer.

Ultimately, dehumanizing anybody is the biggest step toward losing our own humanity.

I wish I had an answer for this question, but I don’t. Still, I will ask it: How can we bring this nation back together? Because being torn apart has only led to more suffering, specifically among those who are the most disenfranchised.

This isn’t a rhetorical question. I genuinely want to know what you all think we should do next. Because we cannot continue this way.

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Note: Our book, Talk To Your Boys, is now available for preorder anywhere you love to buy books! Visit Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop or our author page at Hachette to pre-order.

And, if you aren’t already, please follow my co-author, Christopher Pepper on Substack. He’s brilliant and (unlike yours truly) writes every week with something reasonable, informative and compelling!

But before I can, I need to tell you what’s been happening since I last wrote one of those.

Basically, I co-wrote a whole-ass book with Christopher Pepper and it is now available for pre-order at basically every store! You can hit up Bookshop, Amazon, or B&N — or you can walk into your local indie and ask them to order it for you! Yes, it’s on their list and they can do it!

What critics are saying about Talk To Your Boys

Ok so there’s only one critic so far, and the critic in question is my (a.k.a. Mimi). But! She read it all in just one day and texted me the next morning, calling it “great” and sharing that the book “is very well stated and organized in order to be helpful” and “will be very useful for many parents and situations”.

If you don’t see that as truly glowing praise, you don’t have a Dutch mother.

So, the review is in: Talk To Your Boys gets 5 out of 5 stars from 100% of the critics. Specifically, this one, who, right now is probably reading this and annoyed that I’m talking about her so much. Unlike her only daughter, she is more on the shy, serious side. But look how cute she is!

In other news:

I listened to an episode of my boss’s podcast, Getting Open, and loved it so much I wrote a detailed article sharing all of the advice this guy offered that moved me. It was a TRULY fantastic episode and I recommend everyone who has kids watch it. Here’s my (not short) synopsis: 13 Ways To Become The Exact Parent Your Child Needs, Even When They're Struggling.

I watched The Four Seasons and LOVED IT just like the rest of you

I loved the original film by Alan Alda, who is my time machine boyfriend, so I was a little guarded about watching this despite it starring Tina Fey, Steve Carrell and Kerri Kenney (and other favorites).

But it’s GREAT. It’s clear Alan Alda had some influence over the series in addition to playing Kerri’s character, Anne’s, dad.

It is a love story to long-term relationships and a true representation of adulthood in various forms. There are no bad guys, just people doing their best.

Christopher and I gave a book talk to a bunch of teachers at a conference

Not much to say here except that now I know I can give a talk (yay) and that people seem to find us interesting!

My friend Jordan joined Substack and is already killing it

My friend Jordan joined Substack and is already way better than me at it. She is somehow already in the top 10 in parenting and personal narrative (or something like that).

If you don’t already follow her and Ramshackle Glam, please do. She is a truly beautiful writer, is so sweet and funny, and is my IRL friend.

I got an Oura Ring

So far I like this thing better than my FitBit, which was constantly interrupting my life with notifications like “Your ‘Who Gives A Crap’ Toilet Paper Order Has Shipped!” and overall just stressing me out, telling me to stand up or sit down or go swimming or to ride a bike or something.

I don’t know if the Oura Ring is helping me at all, but I do enjoy being free of the FitBit. Ivan and the kids also got me a special Blancpain X Swatch watch for my birthday, and I definitely love that thing for telling time more than the FitBit. The FitBit could literally never.

I will report back once I start doing actual physical activity again so that I can look at the Oura stats without shame.

I started HRT for perimenopause

Before I started, I had only heard ONE friend (my sister in big mouth-ery, Alyssa Royse) talk about HRT and perimenopause. The moment she did, I knew HRT was in my future.

I’ve been in peri for at least three years. The moment of realization was marked by my mother (pictured above) walking into my house and finding me holding two boxes of Amy’s frozen dinners on my face. “Uh-oh,” was all she said.

A year later, while conducting an interview for YourTango’s Relationship Fitness Summit, Dr. Laura Berman (Yes, Oprah’s fave) caught me fanning myself with my hands and turning red.

“Are you having a hot flash right now?” she asked.

“I guess so!” I replied.

She told me that fanning myself was activating my sympathetic nervous system which was only making it worse. In other words, when the heat strikes it can make you feel panicky, and if you react in a frantic manner, you reinforce to your body and brain that this is a frantic moment that deserves a lot more stress hormones.

Instead, she told me to take deep breaths in, hold at the top for a moment, and breathe out long, slow breaths. And when Dr. Laura Berman tells you to do something, trust me, you do it.

And it worked. I continued using this technique until my hot flashes eased off as the HRT kicked in.

Before I started the HRT, I texted my Wonder Twin (who shall remain nameless unless she decides to out herself here) asking what she thought. She replied, and I quote, “I’m already on esty, testy and progesty and I love it.”

And so I started the esty and the progesty in December and added the testy last week.

Life on HRT

So far, so good. My brain is able to think without having to climb through a bunch of fog and smog and whatever else was slowing it down in there. I can sleep through the night, I don’t feel like every muscle in my body aches and my energy is returning to normal-ish after a year or more of feeling like I was walking through mashed potatoes.

And don’t worry about the cancer risk. It turns out the original study that said women shouldn’t take HRT was WRONG. Not just wrong, but VERY wrong and the advice may have put a whole generation (Generation X, specifically) at greater risk for a number of conditions! These days, HRT (when prescribed with Progesterone and balanced by a physician or qualified NP during perimenopause) can lower your risk of a number of cancers as well as osteoporosis and possibly even dementia!

For more info:

Read Women Have Been Misled About Menopause in The New York Times and follow Dr. Mary Claire Haver, an OBGYN who is on a mission to get people the care they deserve during their menopause journey.

I survived having a job, three kids and writing (and editing) a book!

I don’t think “surviving” is celebrated enough. Yes, we wrote a book and that’s awesome. It is the thing that makes us seem special. But we both did this while working regular jobs and raising our children — some of whom have gone through VERY needy phases in this time!

Yes, my house is trashed (everyone says that, but I really mean it) and I look tired, but I did all of that and I survived. I also somehow managed not to alienate my husband (who has been a hero through the actual writing process) or any of my children (as far as I know).

This means I’ve been working 8+ hours every single day, 6 to 7 days a week. When I’m not working, I’m cleaning or otherwise caring for the home, dog or kids. Today, while texting Ivan (who is also working too much), he mentioned “fun”…

“Fun? What’s that? Never heard of it,” I replied. He agreed, fun has sadly become a foreign concept.

First, let’s celebrate surviving. Whether or not you wrote a book, you survived. If it felt hard and you did it anyway, YAY YOU.

My hope is that the next phase of my life, during book promotion and press, I can start having more fun — and I hope you can, too. I want to see my friends again, get back to working out five days a week, and taking vacations where I don’t sit at a desk all day. Imagine that!

Yes, universe, I’m ready for both success and fun. So let’s get started…

P.S. If you haven’t yet, please pre-order our book!

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I’m glad I went back after she briefed me. Everything you’ve heard about it is true, the miniseries is fantastic. But, like so many of my colleagues covering boys, I didn’t want to write about it.

As you likely know, Christopher Pepper and I just finished writing Talk To Your Boys, a conversation guide for parents and caregivers of adolescent boys (available for pre-order now), so the problems caused by boys and young men are nothing new to me. I’ve also been writing and speaking about some of the scariest trends among tween and teen boys for years, covering painful and uncomfortable topics.

That’s probably why I wasn’t shocked by the accusations leveled against Jamie — or how he became dangerous. We hear it every day … but it’s not the whole story.

What Adolescence gets right about teenage boys

The internet will become your child’s primary teacher — if you let let it

I was surprised at how exactly right they got the lives of many young people today: the hopelessness too many working and middle class kids experience at school, the inadequacy of their resources, the ways in which some boys — even ones with hard-working, positive male role models at home — can find themselves lured into a mindset that makes them believe they are victims all while encouraging to victimize others.

While parents know that dangers lurk in the vast online sea, too often we focus on the wrong threats at the wrong time. Exposure to adult sexual material, violent material, and kidnappers are a real threat to our kids’ well-being, but mostly at younger ages. Older kids may see this material, but feel well-prepared to handle it or have already been exposed and somewhat desensitized (which is also a bad thing, but a discussion for another day).

What worries those of us who are watching these spaces and seeing the effects of online exposure on adolescent boys are the people selling illicit substances on social media, using sexual material (real or AI-generated) as blackmail, and ideological predators — the adults who target young people online with the intention of indoctrinating them into hate-based mentality.

Ideological predators don’t reach our kids by telling them to hate somebody. They don’t peddle racism like a Klansmen or sexism like some piggish slob in a dirty undershirt who demands his wife bring him a beer and a TV dinner. They sell their ideology using empowerment and preying on the sadness, loneliness and fear adolescent boys often experience.

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‘Red Pill’ and the 80/20 Myth

The writers and director clearly also understand the role of “red pill” propaganda. They use the 80/20 myth to illustrate the ways in which propaganda and misinformation can cause people to make bad choices.`

If you don’t know the 80/20 myth, it is based on “data” collected and reported by a dating app that implies 80% of women want to date only 20% of men.

Yes, the 80/20 rule comes from an app — not a research organization like Pew, not a graduate student working on a thesis, and not even from an advertising firm doing surveys. It isn’t peer-reviewed and it’s never been replicated. It is in-app data.

It doesn’t even come from a wide variety of dating apps — just one. That’s why it’s so tragic to see these numbers used to explain why so many boys and young men feel hopeless — including by a noteworthy professor at a well-respected institution who went viral spreading it —without any sort of caveat.

In a post on Medium, Lexie Janson sums up most of my critiques of the 80/20 myth:

1. Tinder is full of bots. Heck, the issue is big enough that a google search of “tinder bots” will give you pages after pages of “how to spot a bot” or “how to report a bot”.

2. A lot of men swipe on every woman without looking. — There is an actual study that has calculated that men swipe on 61% of women. I know men that swipe on everyone, and there are whole reddit threads about this phenomenon.

3. Tinder is also full of… let’s call it professional accounts. This involves dating coaches, prostitutes (male and female) and more.

4. Those stats only mention “women swiping on men” it does not include LGBTQ+ (Before you grab that pitchfork — Think of bisexuals for example).

I’ve been hollering about this “stat” for more than a year (and probably driving Christopher nuts with my annoyance at the people who cite it — some of whom are important influencers in this space!), so you can imagine the shout I let out when I heard it said by a boy in Adolescence.

YES! I thought. VALIDATION! This myth is out there and doing actual harm.

Jamie’s parents are good people who raised a seemingly bad kid

Most importantly, the creators of Adolescence got it right when they made Jamie’s parents good people. Average, normal, good people who raised a child that may actually be a monster. While this type of contrast is rare, it does happen.

While a troubled childhood raises the risk of a child growing into a troubled adult, not all dangerous boys and men come from dangerous situations and that is the point the creators of Adolescence say they wanted to drive home.

Need a real life example?

Remember Dylan Klebold, who, along with another boy from a seemingly normal home, who committed 1999 Columbine massacre? By all accounts, he had a good mom (Sue Klebold) who did everything she believed possible to raise a good man. After her son’s horrific actions ended the lives of 12 students and one teacher (and set a horrifying precedence for school shootings that has spanned three decades — and counting), she tried to figure out where she failed. She wanted other parents to understand what happened, so we could help prevent our kids from turning into killers.

Boys and young men are angry at (and likely afraid of) girls and women

If you’re a Generation X woman, like I am, you may laugh at the notion that girls and women hold power over men in our patriarchal society, but I’m going to ask you to pause that reaction for just a moment to understand one thing: Gen Z and younger boys often believe their female peers hold all of the social power.

This may be due to girls’ earlier sexual and emotional development, but it’s also due to what they’re told online: That girls and women use our allure to “control” them. These perspectives are shared by the manosphere, who urge our boys to take back this power by sleeping with a ton of women, but marrying a woman who has a low “body count”.

This mentality isn’t new. For generations, patriarchal society has forced women and girls to be the “sexual gatekeepers” in our society. We are assigned the task of being attractive to boys and men, but not so attractive that we tempt them. In addition, “No means no” sex education taught a generation or more of boys that their job was to see how far they could get with a girl — their only obligation being to stop when told to stop.

We now know that “No means no” is better than nothing, but it puts the responsibility on girls to stop people from doing more harm, after some may already have been done. “Yes means yes” education empowers everyone to help prevent assault (or simply making someone uncomfortable) from happening in the first place. In essence, "Yes means yes” just means to ask someone how they feel before you do the thing, and waiting until you receive a freely-given, enthusiastic “yes” before proceeding.

What does this have to do with Adolescence? After generations of teaching boys that they should push a girl as far as they can, and making girls the only thing that stops them from “scoring” (attention, a date, a kiss, a sext, sex).

Under this model, when boys don’t get what they want, who gets the blame? Women and girls.

Because of this, too many boys and men (and even some women) believe that that if girls and women would just say “yes” to sex with more men (see above, the 80/20 myth), men would be happier, healthier and, ultimately, nicer to women.

In Adolescence, this is modeled in episode three, when Jamie can’t decide if his alleged victim was too sexual (he saw a topless photo she’d sent another boy) or not sexual enough (she didn’t want to be sexual with him). That confusion is, ultimately, why she was killed.

This is what happens when we teach men and boys that their self-worth should come from how many women they’ve hooked up with and how much power an individual man is able to hold over the girls and women in his life.

I still believe in the goodness of boys

It may surprise you to learn that I do still believe in the goodness of boys, especially given that, in the last 10+ years writing about raising boys, masculinity and gender, things have continued to be dark for this segment of our population.

Yes, innocent-looking boys can be capable of horrific crimes. But in my time doing this work, I’ve learned that most boys are on their way to being wonderful adults, and nearly all boys want to become men who feel good about themselves and make the world better for others. the problem is that many boys don’t know how to do it — or even what goodness looks like out in the real world.

What is goodness? Is it their dad, grandpa or uncle who is a provider and loving family man? Their wild older cousin who parties, sleeps until noon and seems to have a dream of a life? Or is it the guy online who drives $250,000 cars, dates women with impossible curves, and has 2 million followers on TikTok?

This is what makes them vulnerable: their desire to feel important, their need to feel a sense of control in an out-of-control world (and during a relatively powerless stage of life), and/or their drive toward being a hero.

A few things you can do now, as a parent or caregiver

I wish I could tell you exactly what to do here to prevent your son from becoming a monster, but I can’t. We wrote Talk To Your Boys to give you tools for helping that process along — but it comes down to looking at your unique kid and seeing where he might be vulnerable, and staying aware of the ways he may be influenced online.

All of that comes down to talking and keeping him close. As Dr. Stan Tatkin told us while we writing our book, tween and teen boys are like “high octane cats” and they can feel hard to contain. That’s why talking to them is often best done on the move — while playing ping-pong or pool, on a hike or a neighborhood run, or while sketching or strumming guitars together.

No matter how we do it, we must talk to our boys — thoughtfully and with intention — on a regular basis. It’s the only way to know how to counteract the scary stuff that might be reaching them online.

Also read: 26 Questions To Ask Your Son Instead Of 'How Was Your Day?'

Pre-order Talk To Your Boys here.

PS: Here’s a great counter to the Manopshere’s message about what women want, from a man for young men. For older boys, it’s good to watch this (or parts of it together). For everyone else, take some time to understand the messages our boys ill inevitably be inundated with online:

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Joanna Schroeder is a writer, editor and media critic whose work focuses on raising healthy boys. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Vox and more. In addition to writing a newsletter (“Zooming Out”) about parenting, relationships, and family equity, Schroeder is the co-author (with Christopher Pepper) of the forthcoming book Talk To Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Boys Grow into a Confident and Caring Young Man.

At YourTango, we often called her “Our Darling Helen” or “Our Girl Helen”. She was just that type of person. She drew you close.

I first met Helen via Zoom, as one does these days. I thought I knew what to expect because we’d emailed back and forth many times over the years: someone academic, serious and stoic. Someone who would give me some info and hurry on her way — after all, I was just a little editor at YourTango and she was a famed brilliant researcher. But, boy, was I wrong.

Instead, she was laughing when she logged in. Her computer was acting up or Zoom was doing something weird and together we rolled our eyes at the challenges of technology and the expectations that have arisen around it like the pressure to look cute, to always be brilliant, to have the room behind you appear tidy. I felt like we were friends from moment one, which was staggering for me.

Despite the fact that we never got to hang out in person and I truly barely knew her, Helen’s influence on me was massive. She was interested in what I was writing and how my research was going, excited to hear how I was getting along with my book agent, what I’d heard from my publisher and more. This shouldn’t have been shocking to me — we were on the same writing and publishing schedule for my first book and for what turned out to be her last one — but at that time I still felt like an imposter: the black sheep, the bimbo, the dummy who had somehow fooled the publishing industry. But I was none of those things to Helen. I was a smart kid, a clever kid, as she often reminded me when we spoke.

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Growing up, I struggled with grades and was generally considered unserious by the adults in my life. I dropped out of college (twice!) before finally fighting my way into UCLA. Since starting my career, I’ve been driven to undo all the stereotypes and misunderstandings I believed the world had about me, sometimes working myself to exhaustion to prove that I deserve my seat at the table. Talking to Helen about our work and respective books helped change all that for me. She never questioned if I was the right person for the job. She told me she was grateful for me, excited for me, and happy I was doing the work that I do. 

@yourtangoWait - men do WHAT faster than women?? Don’t miss the latest episode of our podcast, ‘Open Relationships: Transforming Together’ for more on love, relationships, dating, and marriage from Dr. Helen Fisher.

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Her delight every time we saw each other across a screen made me feel valuable. Her belief in my skills, talents, and my intellect made me feel valid. The way she’d say “JOANNA!” when we got on a call lit up my heart. Even from thousands of miles away, it felt like Helen saw me.

Most importantly, Helen’s dedication to living the exact life she wanted, building the exact career she dreamed of, and experiencing true love the exact way it worked for her (see below about hers and John’s living arrangements!) showed me how life can look and will continue to inspire me.

She was the person I needed, even in such a small way, at that point in my life, and I will miss her tremendously. Thinking of not being able to talk to her about our book when it comes out (and hear all about hers!) breaks my heart, but I will always be grateful that she arrived into my life when she did.

We do love you so, dear Helen. You have changed me for the better and I’ll always be grateful. 

Here’s an excerpt from her obit in the New York Times:

Helen E. Fisher, a biological anthropologist who went looking for love in the brain circuitry of people who were besotted as well as people who were rejected […] died on Saturday at her husband’s home in the Bronx. She was 79.

John Tierney, her husband, said the cause was endometrial cancer. Dr. Fisher split her time between her husband’s apartment and hers in Manhattan.

…

She submitted the manuscript for her forthcoming book, tentatively titled “Thinking Four Ways: How to Reach Anyone With Neuroscience,” five days before her death, her husband said.

“After she sent it in to her editor at Knopf,” Mr. Tierney wrote in an email, “she cheerfully told me: ‘My work is done. I’ve had a magical life and accomplished more than I ever expected. I’m ready to die.’”

What a dream of a life.

P.S. If you know me at all, you’ll know how much I loved the last part. Helen showed us that we — especially women — don’t have to choose between work and magic. Your work can be part of the magic of your life. Some of us love what we do, and Helen was at the top of that list.

Also read our tribute on YourTango: A Love Letter To Helen Fisher

What do you do when a kid’s learning situation, whether it’s school, a team, a club or an activity, starts to become problematic?

This is one of those questions that divides generations. If you were Generation X or a Boomer, you probably had no choice in any situation, even if was abusive or you were the target of harassment. Bad coach? Suck it up? Cruddy school? Too bad, that’s life.

Generation Z had it very different — possibly too different — often pulled from from any situation that seemed less-than-conducive to their comfort. We did this because we, their parents, felt so utterly unprotected, and we didn’t want the same for our kids.

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How do we protect kids from needless suffering without conditioning them to believe all struggle is needless?

If the situation is abusive, you want to model for kids that they have a right to set boundaries, speak up, ask for help and leave the situation, should it be necessary.

While I don’t have hard-and-fast rules beyond that, here are a few questions I’ve learned to ask myself when I’m struggling to guide one of my kids through an uncomfortable or frustrating situation. This advice came from therapists, coaches, teachers and other experts during my 16 years raising active kids (including an NCAA track athlete and a high school pitcher) and are far from the only ways to help.

When kids are struggling on a team or another committed activity, ask yourself:

1. What are they learning by staying on this team? What are the learning if we leave?

Are they learning to stand up for themselves, adjust bad situations to become better, fight through adversity to overcome a challenge and find creative solutions? Or are they learning that crappy people can treat you crappy and you just have to deal with it?

I can’t answer that for you, that’s between you, a co-parent and your kid and dependent upon the situation.

2. What would I say to my boss in that sort of situation?

Obviously, the boss is a stand-in for the coach. What would help me move forward with my boss and what would set me back? How would I speak to my boss and what would get me fired? Start from there and build outward.

3. What can my kid control and what can they not?

Find what your kid has control over and chase those things — hard.

For instance: attitude, language, posture, confidence and work ethic. Extra throwing into the net in the back yard, hitting the gym (when age-appropriate) or forming a rehearsal group?

A few other ideas: showing up early and leaving late, helping coach/teacher clean up after practice, watching highlight videos or other related media during their down time.

Side note: You’ll be amazed how often a kid doesn’t notice their bad or aggressive attitude until they start to see it as something they can control.

4. Whose opinions can my kid influence and whose seem unmovable?

With what people CAN they control outcomes and recognition — and with whom is their effort irrelevant?

This is key: Once your kid is trying their hardest, they can't control what people think of them. This lesson and practice will set your kid so far ahead in the job market and life.

The goal is not to make a kid immune to others’ opinions. Other people’s opinions are a huge part of being a social creature! It’s about helping your kid feel empowered by choosing whose opinions matter most and whose are not actually about him or her in the first place.

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5. What bad habits are you teaching your kid?

Are you talking negatively about the coach, kids or program? We all know how easy it is to make a list of what others are doing wrong, but under normal (i.e. not abusive/extreme situations) it’s almost never the best choice.

The experts we talked to for our book said that we have to model for our kids the attitudes we want THEM to have while they are on the field (or on stage, etc).

So: What do we want them focused on? Talk to your kid about that.

Remember this: blaming others (including the coach) when things go wrong teaches your kid to think about what others are doing wrong during crunch time, rather than what they can control. It pulls them out of the moment, ultimately disempowering them when they need their gumption the most.

If your kid gets in the car pissed off, say, "I totally hear your frustration. I totally get it. But let’s think about what is in YOUR control so you don’t have to feel stuck in the crud all day?"

When he’s complaining about game or featured player time, resist saying, “Those kids aren’t as good as you are, they must be teacher’s pets.”

Instead, ask, "What are some of the traits of the guys who always end up playing? Are any of those things we could work on?"

The most empowering, powerful thing you can do is see your role in something, claim it, and make a plan for changing what is getting in your way.

(Again, please remember: This is not advice about abusive or exploitative situations! No victim of abuse can “control” an abuser’s choice to do harm.)

6. How can I empower my kid to talk directly to the person in charge?

Nearly every coach and professional ball player (as well as many teachers) agree: ask the coach or teacher for a time you can have a quick conversation.

It can look like this:
"Hey coach, do you have a minute to talk about what I can improve on after practice or tomorrow?"

If your kid is younger than, say, 7th grade, you go with to talk to the coach or teacher, but your kid asks the coach the big questions. If your kid is in high school, let the kid start the convo. You only show up if there's a real problem and your kid needs support.

Remind your kid that they should probably steer away from talking about what they believe they “deserve” and focus on asking where they can grow and making sure the coach or teacher understands that they wants more opportunities.

Are these hard and fast rules? Absolutely not.

They are just a few lessons I’ve learned talking to pro ball players, coaches, college scouts, teachers and parents of successful athletes and they will need to be adjusted to your child, their age and development, and the activities they’re enjoying.

Let me know other tips in the comments!

Also read: Bat Boy Sure Has A Lot To Say

Like this? You’ll probably love what my co-author, Christopher Pepper, writes, too! Learn more about our book, Talk To Your Boys, due October 2025 from Workman.

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But don’t worry, the book is nearly finished and Christopher and I will be sharing more peeks into or research soon. But for now? Gerbils. Gerbils, Neal Brennan and Jake Johnson.

Let me introduce the players in this little story:

1. Neil Brennan. A comedy writer best known for co-creating Chappelle’s Show, Brennan became a household name years later with a groundbreaking Netflix special called 3 Mics where he stood at three different mics for three different purposes: one-liners, narrative comedy (typical stand-up stuff), and sometimes-painful confessions about his own mental health and past traumas.

   Now he has a podcast called Blocks, where he interviews entertainers and comedians about their mental and emotional blocks. It’s lovely and raw and so funny.

2. Jake Johnson. You know him as Nick Miller from New Girl and slobbish Spider-Man in Into The Spider-Verse (the best superhero film ever made), and many other little passion projects. He is, as they used to say, an actor’s actor and one of the funniest guys to ever be on TV. Like, Rob Reiner-level funny.

Back to the gerbils.

“We don’t know each other well,” says Brennan, introducing Johnson on Blocks, “but we know each other, I think. I get it,” he tells Johnson, who laughs.

“Same,” Johnson replies. “I didn’t know you, but I felt like, oh you’re one of my guys.”

We all have those moments — or I hope we do — where you meet someone and your little brain waves start to sync with their little brain waves; jokes flow freely and you both hate all the same people in the room. It’s magical and often a little dysfunctional.

Then Brennan says something sort of heart-stopping to Johnson:

“It doesn’t look like it’s easy to be you.”

When Johnson asks why, Brennan points at his head, running his finger in a circle at the temple. “Because of the fuck*n gerbils upstairs.”

Johnson laughs.

“I know a gerbil head when I see it,” Brennan says, laughing, too.

Don’t get it?

This isn’t derogatory commentary about being crazy, as much as this looks like that old gesture. In fact, it undermines an old story about people like us being nuts, while recognizing the work we’re always doing up there.

Have you ever tried to sleep in the same room as a hamster or a gerbil? It’s not a cute little furball snoring teeny snores from the corner. It’s nearly incessant clatter as they run on a wheel, stopping only to tap tap tap on the little metal ball at the bottom of a drip waterer.

Sometimes, when they stop running, centrifugal force hurls their bodies to the top of the wheel and then down again. It’s violent and embarrassing, but gerbils don’t mind. Gerbils court chaos, even when you’re trying to sleep in the same room.

When a '“gerbil head” spots another gerbil head in the wild, it can be magical, but we don’t always look how you might expect (stained clothing and bad haircuts).

In reality, we often look like one of them. The other ones. The ones who hop on single-speed bikes and ride into town with a basket, which they fill with fresh bakery bread and a hardcover novel, and then ride back to a house that looks like a Nancy Meyers movie.

So how will you know a fellow gerbil head? They have chaos in the eyes. They don’t rest, even when the body is still.

They may appear to pay attention, but they’re actually doing math — a math so complicated, it doesn’t even involve numbers

It’s a math of feelings, regrets, and plans for the future. A calculation of the time it will take to get home, if they can make that meeting and whether they really want to attend that meeting at all. Who called that meeting in the first place? Oh yeah, I did. The variables in this math stand for their boss, their spouse, the special ed teacher who didn’t show up for that IEP meeting, the boy who really seemed to love them but changed his number after Daytona Beach spring break 1997, and the guy who walked past them on the treadmill this morning who may or may not have heard them fart.

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On top of all of that, they’re probably also wondering if they remembered to buy laundry soap, how long it would take to dash over and get yet another matcha, and when they last changed their tampon.

Gerbils.

Instead of smiling sweetly when the boss or the school principal makes an announcement, the gerbil head will open their mouth and say something so utterly chaotic, so pleasantly deranged, you know you’ve met one of your people. One of our people.

If I’ve ever grabbed onto you and let you in on a secret after barely knowing you, you’re probably one of us. If I’ve ever DMd you during a meeting asking you to look at my face and tell me if my neck waddle is worse than usual, it’s because I know you’ve already got the chaos, too. I want you to join mine. I know you can handle the job of totaling the increased drape of my neck flesh while also listening for your turn to present the quarterly sales numbers.

If you’ve got gerbils in the head, come over here to our side of the room. Leave the Chip and Joanna Gaines-types over there with their clean countertops and matching socks.

Because you’re not alone. We, too, just thought of the perfect opening for that awful chapter we’ve been refusing to write or realized what ingredient has been missing from that one recipe. We are repeating the words in our heads again and again, hanging onto them until we can take out our phones, open the notes app and jot that little thing down.

And, like you, we’ll never write it down. That’s because the gerbils don’t stop for the Notes app. The gerbils don’t stop for anything.

I can’t speak for you, but my gerbils aren’t mental illness — they’re not even dysfunctional (necessarily). They’re what make us possible. That spinning … it’s not always easy, but it’s also not a sign that we’re broken or unlovable or too much to handle. This is who we are, and, frankly, I’m into it.

Also read: I Used To Be A Girl Who Wrote Poems That Boys Saved

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You send a book to a stranger and hope to get a book from a totally different stranger. Like the chain letters of our childhoods, you have to pass it on in order for it to work for you.

I followed my friend Fisher’s instructions, copying and pasting the invite into my stories and sending my favorite book to a woman named Sara, the friend from whom Fisher initially received the invitation.

When my friends Katie and Joe asked to participate, I gave them the same instructions, and they each sent a book to Fisher; an Enneagram book from Katie and a biography of a Monty Python actor from Joe. They weren’t allowed to know anything about Fisher, so they just had to send something they liked.

Yes, it’s juvenile. Yes, it’s naive. But I think that’s the beauty of it.

In return, I received one book, Katie has gotten two, and Joe has gotten zero.

Joe and I discussed this worst-case scenario early on: that we’d send a book to a stranger and get nothing in return. We concluded that, as far as bad outcomes go, sending your favorite book to someone you don’t know is a pretty good one.

Both of the books Katie has received have been historical romances, books with long-haired women in Regency-era dresses looking out at an ocean or a forest or something like that. This is a good compliment to her bookshelves because she, like me, has stockpiled psychology, self-help, and social justice books as if some sort of global self-actualization crisis is about to occur and we want to be prepared for it.

When we both decided to try the chain letter, we agreed that neither of us needs more books, but that we see no reason to stop buying and borrowing them. The other night we wondered, via text, if this is hopeful or foolish on each of our parts.

I think we landed on “hopeful”.

When I look at my piles and stacks, or at photos of hers, I see pages of promises waiting to be fanned out on laps and folded over in our hands. Passages waiting to be underlined, held to the light, then photographed and texted to a friend or a sister: OMG READ THIS! or This rly hits home.

These books are like lottery tickets. Each one promises a path to a different life, a different way of seeing things.

You don’t buy the lottery ticket because you believe you’ll win $53,000,000. You buy it so you can lie in bed at night and dream about what it might feel like to write one check and pay off your entire mortgage — and maybe your parents’ mortgage, too.

You buy the ticket so you can dream, but it’s more than that. It’s almost an act of rebellion.

After all, we know we’re more likely to be killed by a falling coconut or struck by lightning than we are to win … but we also don’t stand beneath the coconut palms when the wind comes up or linger in an open field with an umbrella as the electrical storm rolls in.

Because sometimes lightning does strike, and where do you want to be when that happens?

And so we buy another ticket, buy another book. 150 or so pages of a dream sitting next to our beds, pages that let us believe we can be better, happier versions of ourselves: better parents, better partners, better with money or better with words. Or simply a ticket into someone else’s journey, fictional or not — a journey that leaves us feeling less alone.

Sometimes the dream is worth the cost of the ticket. Sometimes the dream is the ticket itself.

As grown-up as I want to be someday, I hope I never become so cynical that I miss the chance to win.

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How about that same day when one of those giant, flammable makeshift bombs flew right into one of the most important buildings full of elected officials and many of the people essential to the running of our nation, right in the center of Washington DC?

Remember when a group of brave passengers figured out the fate of their hijacked plane and took over, attempted to regain control and then died as heroes who prevented hundreds — if not thousands — more murders?

You remember all of this. You remember how it felt that day.

You know what I mean when I say, “Let’s roll” and how it silences a room.

Of course you do.

It was 9/11/2001.

Maybe you lost someone you loved that day. Maybe you lost people in the years that followed from the cluster of diseases that killed first responders and the folks who worked to recover bodies and clear the area in the months after the attacks.

Maybe you know that deaths from 9/11-related diseases will outnumber the total number of deaths on that horrific day.

Osama bin Ladin did that. We remember.

But you know who doesn’t remember? Our kids.

That’s because Gen-Z wasn’t born yet, or they were too young to remember.

That’s why I wasn’t all that surprised to learn that a portion of a manifesto written by one of the worst terroristic mass murderers in modern history, Osama bin Ladin, recently went viral on TikTok. People shared it as commentary on what’s happening in the Middle East right now.

I’m not here to litigate the Israel/Palestine issue. If you think it’s simple, you and I live on different planets. It’s thousands of years old with all sorts of bad guys and all sorts of suffering innocents. But one thing I hope we can all agree on is that there is no world where children deserve to be killed or where rape should be considered a normal consequence of war.

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Now that this is out of the way, let’s get into it.

I believe this message went viral because it’s likely the first time this generation has heard an in-depth critique of US foreign policy.

The folks who shared this probably don’t even know the name ‘Al Qaeda’ or how US soldiers fought alongside Taliban predecessors in Afghanistan against the Soviets.

Their hearts are (likely) in the right place — they see the suffering of innocent people while they’re using social media. They see the bombings of hospitals, the suffering of children, the desperation of people dying of thirst and lack of food or medical care. They see the faces of people taken hostage, including small children, whose families don’t even know if they’re alive. They understand how bad it is.

They’re lost because nobody is teaching them accurate history of this conflict — most adults don’t really know. So when people online make it seem simple, they mobilize others.

Because nobody wants to sit in a feeling of ignorance or helplessness.

This is an opportunity to invite our kids into conversations about media literacy.

Yes, that sounds hard and boring. But what happens when we leave kids to learn about stuff like this from the internet?

What happens is that a bunch of teenagers and people in their 20s go around sharing the words of a man who killed thousands because he wanted to destroy the United States.

We have to remind them that their frustrations over this conflict are natural and normal — but that it is a conflict that has been happening for literally thousands of years and anyone who has a “simple answer” or points a finger at a single person or entity is over-simplifying the past.

We have to remind them that our frustrations and heartbreak are never a justification for abandoning our values or our morality.

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We have to remind them that even Hitler and Stalin and Mussolini said things that made sense sometimes, things that were compelling and felt like they might be solutions to whatever challenges the world was facing during their rise. If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have risen to power.

Anyone can seem sane and insightful when you edit their horrific crimes out of history.

They should seek out educated people who are not mass murdering terrorists saying thoughtful things. Remind them that we won’t always agree with all of the nuanced, ethical analysis we encounter on this subject, but that it is worth listening to diverse perspectives in order to understand.

One good rule to follow:

If you can’t accurately express the positions of both sides of an issue, you don’t have enough knowledge to speak publicly about it until you do.

It is our job as parents to take opportunities like this one — the fresh popularization of Osama bin Ladin of all people — to teach and reinforce media literacy, digital responsibility, and your own family’s values.

These may be the most important lessons we teach them.

Here are a few short take-aways to start with. If you have more ideas, please share them in the comments.

1. Never take anything you find online at its word. Investigate investigate investigate.

2. You may be pressured to speak up about something or told you’ll regret being silent. And this may be true.

   But you’ll regret sharing hate-based ideas even more if you don’t dig deep into the issue first.

3. Find new heroes. They’re all around us. Look for the people who stand by their ethics while also refusing to dehumanize anyone.

4. It hurts. I know. It’s supposed to. But don’t let it turn off your heart (or your brain).

And if it does seem like a child is intentionally sharing extremist, anti-democracy or hate-based ideology, it’s their parent’s job to intervene and even find a professional to mediate conversations with them.

*Cover image is a still from the embedded video about Father Mychal Judge

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Joanna Schroeder is a writer, editor and media critic. She is co-author of the forthcoming book, Talk To Your Boys: 27 Crucial Conversations To Have With Your Teenage Sons and co-host of the iHeartRadio podcast Open Relationships: Transforming Together. For more, visit her LinkTree.

I don’t know what “CIF” stands for, and I don’t ask because I don’t care. I earned three varsity letters for a letterman’s jacket in high school, but they were for Band, Forensics (theater) and competitive Klompen dance, which only exists in my hometown and looks like this:

In other words, I was pranked by the universe when I was given two very athletic children. Possibly three … it’s too early to tell with this last one.

My oldest is a NCAA track & field athlete and our middle eats-sleeps-breathes baseball — a sport that we actively discouraged him playing when he was little due to the four times per week schedule and the fact that I found it painfully boring. Soccer? Sure. Basketball? Absolutely. Surfing? Please do (they did not). Lacrosse? Why not. Baseball? No, sir.

Some kids rebel by listening to Speed Metal or forming a fight club that meets in the woods behind the grocery store. This child rebelled by finding a Little League coach and asking if he could play. What were we going to do, say no?

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In that scenario, becoming a baseball fan is unavoidable. You can hate what your kid does or you can show up. I suggest showing up.

The truth is, baseball is boring — until you really start paying attention. Then it becomes stressful.

When you’re at bat, all the pressure is on you. The only real comparison is a soccer player with a penalty kick or a basketball player with a free throw. The stands get quiet and you know your team is relying on you.

Pitchers have it even worse; a fact I did not fully appreciate until my son started pitching.

Yes, your team has to do their part and play defense and your catcher needs to stop the ball and throw it to the right person at the right time, should the opportunity arise. Both of these factors will win or lose a game.

But at the end of a lost game, it’s rare to hear, “That catcher sure had a bad day,” or “outfield was just not on their game” — even if the catcher did have a bad day and the outfield was a mess.

The pitcher is right in front of you. Their success or failure is measured at 80 MPH, in a little box, and with just two words: “strike” and “ball”. This child’s pitching career has not been good for my nerves, which were already frayed just by the nature of who I am.

He’s been pitching for four years and I still have to remind myself to breathe when he’s on the mound. If his dad’s at the game, I’ll take the opportunity to sneak away to the restroom or ask unnecessary questions of the moms volunteering in the snack shack. It’s just too stressful to watch sometimes. Luckily, my kid is learning to tune out the world and focus on his pitches.

Today, however, was different.

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I don’t see myself as a particularly talented person, but one of my gifts as a mom is to see every kid as someone’s little baby. Even now that they have patchy mustaches and foul mouths, I see these JV players the way I see my own grown sons: as tall babies. Sometimes I’ll accidentally embarrass my kid by saying, “Look at all these tall babies!” when his friends are hanging out.

I’m the mom who will shout-out a great catch and applaud a good hit for a kid on the other team. Sometimes I say, “Look at that lil cutie, what a good catch” even though the lil cutie in question has a driver’s license and can bench 215. Cute lil guy out there working so hard. Lil sweetie.

When kids pop off unnecessarily on the field, it’s easy to see the frustration inside them and it hurts my heart. Pressure from a parent or the way in which they’re mimicking a coach’s aggression become clear in their bad moments.

One time, when my son was pitching in Pony, a batter got so mad he threw his bat in the general direction of my son.

The kid got removed from the game and every time he would’ve been up in the lineup, they called an “out”. In other words, he screwed over his whole team and we won.

Even though it could’ve been a dangerous situation and I probably should’ve been angry at the kid, I’d been watching what was happening with the ousted batter before he had his tantrum. His dad was one of the coaches and his big brother — who was around 16 or 17 years old — was coaching from third base. When the ousted kid would come up to bat, the brother said things like, “Don’t puss out!” or “Jesus, Mikey, relax!” and his dad would be even more aggressive with, “What is WRONG with you? I said shorten up!” and the like.

So when the bat was thrown, I shrugged. Of course he threw a bat. I couldn’t even be mad. The adults in the room had created that situation.

But today was different.

Today I watched my son get up to pitch, loose and relaxed. Three easy strikes and the first batter was out. Second batter was the same. Due to an error in the field, our team gave up one run in my son’s first inning on the mound. The game seemed to be going well.

When he was back up, it looked like he might have more of same, striking the first batter out easily.

That’s when the other team’s dugout started getting rowdy — and not normal rowdy. As my son would raise his knee to start his pitch, the dugout would yell “WAIT” or “STOP” or shout to throw him off.

For those who don’t follow high school baseball, this is generally not allowed. I don’t know if that’s a rule or if it’s just an agreement, but I’ve never heard such a thing. Parents looked around at each other and at the ump who, for whatever reason, stayed quiet. The boys on the other side just got wilder.

As someone who is currently co-writing a book about teenage boys, I often love these situations. It’s like being placed in the middle of a social experiment. Who over there is the leader? What’s the coach doing? What are the parents doing? Is it the whole team, or just a few who happen to be very loud? I identified a clear ringleader standing at the door of the dugout.

I could see my son taking lots of deep breaths in, but not letting any of them out.

I exhaled, long and steady, all the way out, while looking at him. “Exhale,” I said in a voice too quiet for him to hear but that I hoped he’d sense. Sometimes, when I do this, the calmness inside me seems to spread to him and he’ll let out a long, measured breath. Not this time. His pitches only got worse. One was even wild — which his pitches never are these days.

They’d gotten to him.

When kids pop off unnecessarily on the field, it’s easy to see the frustration inside them and it hurts my heart. Pressure from a parent or the way in which they’re mimicking a coach’s aggression becomes clear in their bad moments. I scanned my memory and tried to pinpoint the position he’d been playing this game and came up with nothing. He was riding the bench.

The ump stopped the game about ten pitches too late and told the boys to knock it off. Bases were loaded and their players had reached a frenzy with stomping, bats hit against benches, hissing, name-calling and loud laughter.

After the admonishment, when my son would go to pitch, the ringleader would mockingly say “Shhhh! Everyone be quiet!” and laugh. His friends would laugh and then they’d be silent. Somehow this was worse.

Finally, my son struck another player out and a pop fly was caught. The inning ended — but three runs had been scored by the other team.

As if scripted for tension and abject misery, my son was the first up to bat in the next inning. I moved to stand in the shade, about 15 feet behind home plate. I could see the dugout, and this ringleader, better.

I thought I would find a compassionate place inside myself to name the behavior of this boy as insecurity or the product of a bully coach, but I couldn’t. A moment before, I’d told my son “they heckle the people they’re scared of”, but I wasn’t sure I meant it.

So I studied this boy’s face, his sneer, his laser focus on my son, and for the first time in my life, I looked at a child — someone’s baby — and felt zero empathy. And believe me, I tried.

What was I missing?

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For context, 99% of the boys I have interacted with since 2005 have been an absolute delight. Sure, there are some holy terrors, a good number of goons, some stoners, a few players, punks, scrubs, posers, and ass-kissers. But every one of those boys has shown me something lovely or vulnerable about himself as well: humor, intelligence, sweetness, creativity, fear, insecurity or simply the jittery self-awareness that comes with wondering if everyone knows you’re a fraud.

I watched this boy’s eyes meet my son’s near home plate, where my son was taking practice swings. He stared the same way he had been while my son was pitching, eyes locked, one side of his mouth curled in a sneer. “Mad-dogging”, as we call it.

My son lowered his bat, turned toward the punk and they locked eyes.

Usually in a moment like this, there’s a laugh and a guy will look away. An unspoken, “Aw man, I was just playin’!”

Not this time.

Instead, things got quiet. It was like watching animals square off; one ever-so-slightly lifting its lip to show a millimeter of teeth. In that moment, you know the other animal will cower or walk away — if not, you plan for blood.

But these aren’t dogs, they’re boys. Tall babies just learning to drive, not able to vote, and, in that moment, operating almost entirely from the amygdala. They need a coach or another mentor to step in. On this day, nobody did.

The ringleader stopped smiling, stepped back and crossed his arms. He was quiet.

If this were a movie, my son would’ve hit a home run, his team would’ve fought their way back from the deficit to win the game — and the kid would’ve learned a big lesson.

Instead, my kid RBI’d on a weak line drive that was dropped on an error and our boys lost 4-5. The ringleader and his howling followers were only marginally less obnoxious through the final inning, and when they won, they ran out to the pitcher as if they’d won the World Series, yipping and howling like a pack of coyotes.

After our boys cleaned up the field and pulled tarps over the mound, my son stepped from the dugout, giant bag across his ever-widening teenage back, quiet and annoyed.

“That’s baseball,” I said, bumping my shoulder against my tall baby’s arm, now over 6’4”. He grunted a reply and we walked toward the car.

As we got close, I spotted the kid walking with his own mother. I nudged my son and said, “There he is”, nodding in the kid’s direction.

“Who?” my son asked, looking at the kid, genuinely confused.

“That’s the heckler!” I said, laughing. “How don’t you know that!?”

“Oh,” my son said with half a smile, “Guess I never got a good look at him.”

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Also read: Stop Blaming Women For Adult Men’s Loneliness

Joanna Schroeder is a writer, editor and media critic. She is co-author of the forthcoming book, Talk To Your Boys: 27 Crucial Conversations To Have With Your Teenage Sons and co-host of the iHeartRadio podcast Open Relationships: Transforming Together. For more, visit her LinkTree.