You are listening to Feeding the Mouth That Bight You with Ashley Parrish and Jessica Pfeiffer.

A weekly podcast guide on parenting teens and launching them into the world.

As always, we are joined by psychologist and author, Dr. Ken Wilgus.

Hey, everyone, and welcome back on today's episode.

We will be discussing hormones and teenagers. Okay, Ashley, I have a house full

of teenagers. I have three teenagers, two are girls and one's a boy and an extra kid that's a little

younger. So there are a lot of dramatic outbursts in my house. And I would love to say that

there is something wrong

with these people because some of it doesn't seem natural. But I do remember being a kid and being

a teenager and the way that that felt. And my hormones, my reactions were way out of control.

And so, you know, I'd love to hear from you, Dr. Ken, about how much of this crazy moodiness, the anger, the sullenness, the drama is really should be blamed on hormones.

And how much of it is just issues with my own kids.

Well, it's important to me that we're talking about this because, as you know, in the Feeding the

mouth that Bight You book, one of the things that I mentioned is that it was an old kind of lazy

cause description to say, oh, well, hormones cause teenagers to become these surly and whatever, because that's not

really true.

However, I want to be careful that we not imply that hormones aren't a significant influence

in teenagers' lives and a significant part of what you're seeing.

So hormones absolutely play an important role in the drama that you're talking about, for example.

And I think it's important that we do not under-emphasize that.

Right. I remember, Jessica, like you said, I remember being a teenager and just having all of these

emotions and some outbursts. I remember having these outbursts. Now,

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