You are listening to Feeding the Mouth That Bites 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 continue with part two of hormones and teenagers.

Ashley, I tell you, when my son started sixth grade, he was in football, and we had a parent

rotation on the football practice pickup. So you would put like five or six boys in your car

and take them home after practice. I know where this is going. I had Fridays and I'll tell you why

I remembered it because Charlie and I would play rock paper scissors on who was going to pick up those

boys because the car smelled like nothing you've ever smelled before. It was unbelievable. These sixth

grade boys, football practice, all their gear, I mean,

you would gag just to think about it before they even got their car. So boys have their own share

of trials and tribulations in the teen years that involve their hormones. Dr. Ken, what is going on with these boys? Tell us from a male

perspective. I think it's fascinating. So we've talked about that hormones and the changes that

happen in teenagers need to kind of be embraced in two ways. One about this is is part of your adulthood, and therefore it's something to celebrate.

But the other part is this is part of your womanness, and in this case, this is part of

your becoming a man.

And I got to say that testosterone is an increasingly misunderstood hormone, especially in a culture that I think doesn't really know what to do with man, with mailness.

There tends to be quite a bit now a concern about toxicity in males, which really comes down to anything that is aggressive or overly sexual in a kind of just non-relational way.

And I think I've talked with a lot of boys that are very self-conscious about this and therefore kind of don't understand what's happening.

So testosterone is the bigger thing you're talking about.

I mean, there's like 10 times the

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