Dr. Sheryl (00:00):

I think parents don’t need to become therapists. They just need to get a little bit more really specific education, just the way they do around physical stuff. There’s certain sort of first aid stuff that we have the knowledge of, but that doesn’t make us doctors and nurses, but we do need to know enough to go, oh, it’s time to go to the er. Or I think I can go to urgent care. This can wait until Monday morning and go to the pediatrician. Right? We got to know we have some scaling. We have to know, and that’s the way I think of mental health and truly, I don’t know that parents feel like they’ve got much information, if any, around that. If you compared it to the physical stuff, we have to know.

Dr. Sarah (00:41):

If you are parenting a child between the ages of 6 and 12, you might feel like you’re in a bit of a no man’s land. They’re not toddlers anymore, but they’re not quite teens either. They’re still sweet and cuddly one moment and then slamming doors and rolling their eyes the next. And while there is an overwhelming amount of parenting advice for the early years and a growing body of support for raising teens this middle stage, it often gets overlooked. But the truth is these years are critical and there’s so much happening beneath the surface, socially, emotionally, even biologically that can shape the trajectory of your child’s development. So joining me today to unpack all of this is licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Sheryl Ziegler. Dr. Ziegler has more than two decades of experience treating tweens, teens, and their families. She’s the host of the PodCouch podcast and is the author of the new book, The Crucial Years: The Essential Guide to Mental Health and Modern Puberty In Middle Childhood.

(01:41):

Together we’ll talk about why kids today are hitting puberty younger than ever, how to support their emotional development, what Eric Erikson’s theory of the stages of development can teach us about self-esteem in the middle years, and why adjusting your parenting strategies during this time is not just helpful but essential. So whether you’re currently raising a child in this age group or you’re just looking ahead, this episode is full of eye-opening insights and really useful actionable tools that can help you feel more confident, more connected, and more prepared to support your child through this incredibly important phase.

(02:16):

Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist and mom of two. In this podcast, I’ve taken all of my clinical experience, current research on brain science and child psychology and the insights I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights so you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. This is Securely Attached.

(02:47):

Hi, welcome back everybody. Today we have Dr. Sheryl Ziegler here. Thank you so much for joining us.

Dr. Sheryl (02:58):

Thank you so much for having me. I love staring for people maybe that can see it. I love staring at your background. You have a really pretty little couch back there. It looks

Dr. Sarah (03:06):

Pretty. Thank you. And I love yours. It’s so calming. Oh, thank you. It’s so funny how our backgrounds now are the one calling card. This is their personality that we get to show because we are on a computer screen all day.

Dr. Sheryl (03:23):

It is so true, and you do feel like, oh, wow, yeah, I didn’t know that person would like that wallpaper, that color. Sometimes it’s really bright and poppy and sometimes there’s just a bazillion books behind them. I do have a million books to my left, which would be a nice background too, but this was done on purpose. The books shelf can be a little messy too.

Dr. Sarah (03:44):

Yeah, it’s funny. This is a total tangent and then we’ll get into the episode. So I grew up in a school, I’d wear a uniform, but we would wear crazy socks or weird leggings under our skirts, and it was the little tiny glimpses of the personality and it’s like, I feel like this is that. Right? Your background on your zoom backdrop is like we are all in uniform, but we get this one little cubic space to show something about ourselves.

Dr. Sheryl (04:13):

It’s so true. We should do a study on that. Everything I always want to study, I want to study that.

Dr. Sarah (04:19):

Yes. Well, speaking of kids in uniforms, that’s a good segue into talking about the crucial years this middle childhood, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. But before we jump into that, can you share a little bit about your background? Why this particular age was something you were like, we got to write a book about this?

Dr. Sheryl (04:41):

Right, because everyone sits around and says like, oh my gosh, we should write a book about that. But then three years later you’re like, okay, I actually wrote the book about that.

Dr. Sarah (04:52):

Because there’s not a lot of people talking about this specific topic.

Dr. Sheryl (04:55):

Yes, actually there’s truly not that I could find. I couldn’t find any books. I found a textbook, but I didn’t find any trade books about middle childhood, but I didn’t know I was setting out to write a book about middle childhood. Basically when it was the pandemic, of course we all saw this youth mental health crisis, teen mental health crisis. It was all over the headlines. I was seeing kids. I never stopped seeing kids throughout the pandemic and I just felt a calling, of course, I need to do something. I need to be contributing to some solutions to this problem. And in May of 2021 when multiple kinds of organizations including the American Academy of Psychiatry deemed Youth Mental health, a state of emergency.

(05:48):

That was when I really started talking really with my agent. It was like, I want to write something. I need to do something. I did feel like there were already a good enough amount of books about teens and teens get a ton of attention. And then when you’re exploring an idea, you’re just doing a lot of research. And then so adolescents or teens got a lot of attention. Then there was zero to five and manned, do we have a lot of research on zero to five, right? That’s like the marching orders of going to your pediatrician’s office and they know two the month exactly what your kid is supposed to be doing. So there’s sort of a manual already there or a strong guide. And then it was like just everything came together. There was one day where the Daily on the podcast had an episode on, and I think they had on a pediatrician and maybe not an epidemiologist, an endocrinologist, and they started talking about this earlier puberty.

(06:45):

And these endocrinologists were saying, Mike, these young kids are coming into my office 7, 8, 9 years old already showing signs of puberty and this is really an issue. And that sort of started a conversation because when I look back, there’s been research on this actually for decades. So we’ve been tracking earlier puberty for decades, but it was like it had a moment 15 years ago and then it just went away. And so the pandemic really brought it back to the forefront. So when that podcast was sent to me, my agent, Jen said, you’ve been doing this puberty class for 10 years. Why aren’t you writing about this? And then it was like the aha light bulb moment went off and I was like, yes, I have. I created a class called Start With the Talk, and it’s something I did in person, and then when the pandemic happened, I made it an online class and that’s how much I was like, oh no, we can’t have, because actually in April I had already a class scheduled in full and I was like, I can’t just be like, class is canceled.

(07:53):

We’re in a pandemic. I have to do something. So I created exactly what I did in person. I just did it by myself. Everyone’s in mass. It was so strange. But I did do it. And then when we were putting everything together and looking at, of course I wanted to talk about puberty, but I also wanted to talk about mental health. What became striking was, oh my gosh, yes, these forgotten years and nobody talks about that. I wasn’t initially even thinking about, this is where for my practice, I know you have a practice too. These are the age of kids that come in. There are eight, nine, and 10 years old. Yes, the teens get, I love teens and they get lots of attention, but it starts at eight, nine and 10. So that’s how the long story of how it all came together.

Dr. Sarah (08:38):

So I think that’s so important to note. We put a lot of information on these or attention on these bookend ages, and understandably, they’re the ages that make the most noise quite literally, but also sort of developmentally, symbolically like zero to five, the brain is changing so rapidly, they require so much of us. And frankly in the teen years, the brain is starting to go through that construction zone again. They need, they’re are so much more volatile. And then there’s this lull of the middle years of this latency, but it can be a bit of a, what’s the word I’m looking for? Not a red herring, but like a misnomer or it’s like the waters are still, but do not misunderstand that for, oh, I get to sit back and do nothing until they’re a teen because they don’t need me. They need it a lot. But it’s a time when I think we all sort of collectively take a little bit of a breath as parents and that can sometimes backfire a little bit.

Dr. Sheryl (09:58):

Well, so this is the way I’m thinking of it. I agree. If you think about why mean besides that it is zero to four or zero to five is so exhausting and we know that it’s more physically exhausting. There can be of course some mental exhaustion, but I think physical leads the way. But then, so if we say five or six when they are essentially starting kindergarten, so sometimes people will call these the school age years. And so if we’re talking like K through five or K through six, what is happening for a parent is they are taking a breath B, they’re usually kind of going inward and they’re like, oh, back to me. What do I want to do? Do I want to go back to work? Do I want to start that side hustle? Do I want to open up that little cafe I wanted whatever they had been dreaming about for all these years happens or at least the dreaming is happening.

(10:52):

And this isn’t an alarmist book actually. This book is really about two things, two main drivers. One of ’em is we have a mental health shortage. So we have you who need to get help for your kid, you might be waiting a long time. It might not be covered by your insurance, you might not be able to afford it might just have to be online. It’s like a lot of barriers to treatment. So number one, I think parents don’t need to become therapists. They just need to get a little bit more really specific education, just the way they do around physical stuff. None of us are nurses and doctors, but we have to take care of, I think my kid has the flu. Oh my god, did they break their arm? There’s certain sort of first aid stuff that we have the knowledge of, but that doesn’t make us doctors and nurses, but we do need to know enough to go, oh, it’s time to go to the er. Or I think I can go to urgent care. This can wait until Monday morning and go to the pediatrician. We got to know we have some scaling. We have to know.

(11:46):

And that’s the way I think of mental health and truly, I don’t know that parents feel like they’ve got much information, if any, around that. If you compared it to the physical stuff, we have to know the mental stuff. What are some signs of anxiety? What are some signs of bullying versus just somebody’s being mean to your kid? What are some signs of an eating disorder? What are some signs of body image issues? Because I only write in this book what I see on a regular basis. No one-offs, like there’s a random thing and I’m just going to talk about it. No, I had to cut 40,000 words. There are 40,000 words that are cut to what’s in here is the very most important things that I think we have to become that frontline worker type of mentality for our kids.

Dr. Sarah (12:33):

So what are some of the patterns in working with this population? Because I think it is worth pointing out and highlighting something you said too, which is parents are very hyperfocused on parenting the very young and the teenage kids. But I mean in my practice, the vast majority of kids who come to our practice whose parents call and say, I need therapy for my kid, tend to be actually in the six through 12 age. So there’s some, and that’s not to say like, oh, they’re all in crisis necessarily. It’s more I think there’s a good mix of parents starting to be like, Hey, some of these behaviors that I felt were developmentally appropriate at early on are still persisting and I thought they would be done. Is that a sign something’s wrong or there’s so much more of the world these kids are having to interact with at this age having come out of a lot of really family focused time. And that’s really challenging, probably even more so post pandemic where a lot of this group of kids got hit priority significantly from the actual timing of covid. So there’s a very specific cohort right now, but just I think over the ages this developmental period of time is it has actually a time when people start to notice that things are not feeling okay.

Dr. Sheryl (14:09):

Yeah. So it’s great to hear you summarize what you’re seeing in your practice, what your experience is. So what I think, and this is just what I think a difference is, it’s just like anything we have de-stigmatized having issues with teens. It’s almost like if you dare to go to some dinner or happy hour with a bunch of parents of teens and you go, oh, everything’s good at our house, everything’s going smooth sailing. It’s like you’d get side eyed what really? Because it’s like we all expect it. Oh, they’re going to talk back to you. They’re going to do high risk behaviors, all sorts of things. This is when we think at least that they might have sex, they might try drugs, they might go to parties, they might drink all the things. So we’ve got high fears about teens and it’s disgusted. So it’s okay to go in a room and say, oh my God, my kid just gave me so much attitude and blah, blah, blah. And so people will do a lot of me toos, but I think six to 12, they’re still little and cute and they’re losing baby teeth and they still want to hold your hand and they want to cuddle with you. And so I don’t think that a lot of parents are comfortable walking into the dinner and saying, my 8-year-old still tantrums like a five-year-old.

(15:29):

Or my 7-year-old literally doesn’t know how to share, they’re not getting it or this one, those kinds of things. So it’s like a different tone. It’s a quieter tone. It’s more shame I think, because we’re not talking about the reality of what’s actually happening during this stage behind closed doors. So I think people think I’ve got a third grader. Well, if you have a third grade girl, instantly I think, okay, so is she the mean girl or is she being mistreated by the mean girls? This is when mean girl stuff starts and there’s always this relief. Ah, is that for everybody? Yes, we’re going through that. If you have a girl in third grade, there is a very high chance that you are quietly saying to yourself, I thought I had more time. I thought this was at best middle school, but probably high school kind of stuff. So I think that is in part why what you’re saying is a secret that you’re keeping, and I’m keeping people that work with this age range because we’re not talking about it yet, but we will start talking about it and it’s going to be great because now people will be more free to say, yeah, my nine or 10-year-old, whatever it is, has started puberty, has massive mood swings, slammed the door last night. What those things again that I think that right today there’s shame and guilt around sharing with other people.

Dr. Sarah (16:48):

Yeah, and I think it’s so valuable that we are having this conversation as professionals because there is a gatekeeping of the info sometimes and not even intentionally. It’s like there’s no research on it, so we don’t talk about it because a lot of what we do in teaching and disseminating information is like, oh, I read this article or this research study and I’m going to dissect the findings or translate the findings for parents. As you pointed out earlier, there’s a real sort of silence in that genre. So it perpetuates the kind of quietness around it because we don’t actually have a whole lot of data to talk about unless it’s anecdotal or qualitative, which certainly we can weigh in on.

Dr. Sheryl (17:37):

You’re right, it was actually became, at first I was like, wow, this is going to be a challenge. And then it became this fun challenge for me where any of these topics that I talk about, even screen times, I was like, I do not want to put in here any stats that are about kids like 14 and up. That’s not the point. Everybody, we’ve got it. We know. We know, we know. And so my challenge was I will find any bit of information that talks about the effects of screen time on the 8-year-old brain or this, that and the other, but I don’t remember the numbers. I should remember them. But in the book I actually…

Dr. Sarah (18:09):

Go read her book.

Dr. Sheryl (18:11):

Yeah. Go read the book. But in there it was fun. I did write from zero to five. Here are the number of research studies. If you go into PubMed, so those are the published studies. Let’s say I’m making these numbers up. Let’s say there’s 2 million, right? Then you say, go into Pubbed now and put in teenagers, adolescents. There’s two and a half million now put in middle childhood and there’s like 80,000.

(18:35):

That number I kind of remember it’s somewhere, it’s not even a hundred thousand studies. It’s a fraction of the amount. Yet the opportunity in this stage is actually so unique, so exciting to me, so exciting. I mean we all know zero to three, zero to five, that’s life stuff. That’s attachment. I get that they’re all important, but the importance of this stage, so this is where I came from, so I love talking shop with another therapist. So what I base the book around because I think it’s so true is Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development. And so what I thought, and I don’t know if this is what you hear too, when I see the 8, 9, 10 year olds and they come in and their parents are talking about whatever their concerns are, and it could be anything. It could be, oh, they think we have ADHD.

(19:26):

The teacher says they don’t sit still or they don’t have friends. They seem really sad, they’re anxious, that’s fine. They come in for those reasons. But when we start unfolding things, I would say for me the vast majority of the time, there’s an element of a kid seems to have really low, they talk to themselves so poorly, they’re so hard on themselves, they don’t think they’re good at anything. They think they’re not attractive, they’re not smart, they’re not. And so it made sense to me when I go back and look at Erikson stages and it’s like six to 12 is industry versus inferiority. And so the way I break it down in the book is this is the case for let your kids do things. They have to do things so that they know six to 12, what am I good at? Am I good at art?

(20:13):

Am I good at cooking? Can I help around the house? So I don’t mean at all, go put your kid in a class. I mean literally they have to do chores, they have to learn how to make a bed. They have to learn how to do homework on their own. Eventually they have to learn these things. You get six years that you are holding their hand in the beginning and then you say, go fly. I said, I have a 12-year-old, and the other day he didn’t want what I was making for dinner. I was like, they make your own dinner. And he was like, I will. I’m going to do what Gordon Ramsey does. I go, good for you. So he got a pan out and he did something that he says, Gordon Ramsey, he saw it on a YouTube video. This is the age where even in that case, I want my 12-year-old to know if I’m hungry and mom’s not home, I’m competent to make my own dinner. This wasn’t just a snack. I can make my own dinner. I want my kids to know.

Dr. Sarah (21:00):

I also, I’m thinking too for the people who are listening who are like, what is Erikson? What is industriousness versus in… Wait, yeah, what is industry versus infuriority? Go back. Go back. Yes, layout. Because the cool thing I think about development is that it’s not these finite stages, it’s these micro evolutions of one long line. It doesn’t actually look like a line if you graft it out, but each stage feeds into the next stage. So what’s the path from the beginning?

Dr. Sheryl (21:40):

Yes, so that’s so good. I’m so glad you’re asking. When you look at the path, this book is sort of this roadmap to adolescence. When you look at the path right before industry versus inferiority, it’s about attachment. Am I securely attached? Do I feel safe in the world? At the answer to that is either going to be yes, my needs were met when I had a problem, my feelings were attended to, I’m fed, I have housing, I have all these things. So I feel fairly secure in the world. People love me, I love them. I’ve got attachment going. It’s interesting about empathy is just starting, but they see a lot of empathy models that’s healthy. So that happens, great. I feel secure in the world and that I am loved and my needs are taken care of. And then about six, like you said, about six could be six.

(22:32):

Freud I think said seven around that age. You go to your next stage, which is what am I good at? So I know that let’s say on the positive, I am loved and I’m healthy, so now what can I do? Everything’s been done for me up until now. I’m on my own now. So it’s time for me to go to this scary big building and be by myself and open up a book and can I read, okay, well day one maybe I can read three words. How cool at the end of kindergarten I can read a small book, right? Okay. And then now they’re going to keep going. Oh my gosh, now I get dropped off at this practice, my parents used to sit on the sidelines of soccer and when I needed a shoe tied, when I needed water, when I needed a snack, there they were with things in hand to give to me.

(23:17):

Now I get dropped off. I have to remember my water. I have to drink it, I have to eat it. If my shoe laces untied, I should know how to tie my shoe laces. So you can see how that progresses and again, you get sort of five years to form attachments. Then you get another six years-ish to figure out what you’re good at to do things for yourself to be sort of parting already. It’s the beginning of separation. That’s another thing. I think people think of that as well into teen years in college where there’s a real separation. It actually starts at six because they leave you for significant periods of time. And so can I be away from my caregiver and still take care of myself and then do I know what I’m good at? And now I’m going to as they get older, 9, 10, 11, okay, either I know what I’m good at, I don’t, and this is where it starts. How do I compare to my peers? Now that’s the bar. It’s not what mom and dad say, oh, you’re so smart. Or even my teacher now it’s what do my peers think, right?

Dr. Sarah (24:14):

They’re way less paddling. There are a lot harsher of the critics.

Dr. Sheryl (24:22):

Yes, they are very harsh critics of each other and particularly in boys, they also start to get competitive. So strong competition starts in middle childhood, whereas as we all know, zero to five, there’s just a lot of parallel stuff going on. You barely notice what your other four year olds sitting next to you is doing. Can they build a block, 10 high, 20 high? They’re not noticing fast to 10 years old. If you can do 10, I could do 12, right? That’s the observation.

Dr. Sarah (24:52):

Also, not just are they developmentally grappling with what this is the paradigm of this age, like inferiority versus industriousness. Do I see myself as someone who can accomplish and do or can I not? And I feel passive and I feel very done too. And this is the age where I think they’re starting to orient towards peers to figure out that answer to that question. The social hierarchy starts to come online. Their awareness that the social hierarchy comes online, and it’s an important time for them to play with that social hierarchy. I think we’ll definitely should probably get into this too, but when parents do their job in the first five years, which is way more scaffolding, way more supporting, way more helping them get to the finish line. If we don’t stop doing that and keep going with that strategy in this age group, we are actually interfering with a very important playing with and experimenting with the social hierarchy rules and failing at them. And if we get in their way during this period, they’re not going to learn the industriousness. They’re going to learn inferiority, which is a risk that happens a little too often these days, I think.

Dr. Sheryl (26:12):

Yes, right? Because today’s version, we don’t usually say, my kid feels inferior. We say, my kid has low self-esteem, they have low self-worth. They don’t feel like they’re good at anything. And that is exactly what you said. That is the consequence of not allowing them to go out there, try new things, fail at them, succeed at some and do all the other development. One of the things that I did, I had fun with is I listed every age six, seven through 12, and then I took the same categories and put development and just three sentences about what should be happening. Because since we’re so used to that zero to five, and so even for me because it’s so finite, it was like even morality, that’s a category. Their moral development forms at this time, their empathy and care for other people, their sense of being part of a community, like oh, the world doesn’t revolve around me, my class, my team, my school, my neighborhood, my street block.

(27:11):

So what is so incredibly important that this is the hard work I think is today’s parent is programmed to think you have to do everything for your kids. Don’t let them fail. If they fail quickly. Autocorrect, all of these things. I have so many stories of this. I have college parents who are questioning, should I be doing more for my kid? I could do this, this, and this for them. And they’re 22 years old. And so there’s something that we have missed. Actually, I have that in the book too. I went through the history of the messages that parents got. It’s actually funny and then sad to read because if you were raising a kid in the fifties and sixties by kindergarten it was like, get yourself to school. Get yourself home from school. Nobody’s going to be at a bus stop waiting for you.

(28:01):

Walk there, walk home. There were just expectations of five and six year olds that they were self-sufficient and by seven and eight that they were contributors to the household. It wasn’t a chore that you got paid for, it was just part of being a household. So I want people to know that our parenting styles can be on trend or off trend. This is sort of responsive to media pop culture, and I don’t mean social media. This started in the seventies and eighties when women were going back to work and they had more equal rights. This was the turn where all of a sudden it was like the world needs to give you parenting advice because you are going to be working outside of the home. So in the seventies, there were latchkey kids and what it meant to be a latchkey kid, I was one was you got home, you lock the door behind you and you get your meal, do your own homework. Nobody was doing your homework with you. So I am very interested in watching those patterns. And so that’s where we’re at. And I’m really here to say between writing mommy burnout, which was really understanding the history of motherhood and the history of these messages, and then writing about middle childhood and seeing how much we have shifted our expectations of kids, we’ve gone backwards, not forward.

Dr. Sarah (29:18):

And I wonder if it’s like, okay, the pendulum swung a little too far to course correct because in response to, I think a good thing which was parents becoming so much more educated about child development in the early years and attachment and all the things that are I think super important. What I am starting to put together in my head right now as we’re talking is like, okay, this pendulum swung way to the extreme maybe as a result of parents, probably mostly mothers getting inundated with information that was probably really valuable for them to have for the first time of, oh, my ability to attune to and meet the emotional needs of my child. To see them as a whole person, to validate their experience, to let the world revolve around them a little bit in these earlier years in ways that it maybe hadn’t been prioritized so much a long time ago, that was really good, but maybe the piece that was not kind of communicated to get the whole story is that’s really important in the first five years.

(30:27):

And while our attachment relationship, obviously I’m a little biased about how important attachment is on securely attached, but our attachment relationship still needs to be, and I believe the mechanism by which we sort of move through parenting forever, but we need to be kind of tuned into the subtle changes of the developmental needs of our child. We are going to prioritize our attachment security with our child, but we do not need to do it in the same physical way with a 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12-year-old that we do with the baby toddler, four or 5-year-old. We actually need to start pulling back and tolerating the anxiety that comes from separating with them and letting them struggle, fail, figure it out on their own, not being there to pick them up and help them through. We can listen when they want to come and share their struggles with us, but we have to step back more. And I think that’s maybe what got missed is parents finally got really educated about this and they didn’t realize when they needed to shift the strategies to fit the developmental needs of the kid.

Dr. Sheryl (31:46):

Yeah, I love watching you work that through in your head. Yeah, I totally agree. And it’s funny because I think what I’m here to say really based out of the research and the experience is that it isn’t that you are going to stop parenting your kid. It’s just like you’re saying you’re going to shift. And I made stuff up. I created a little chart in the book about the stages of parenting and I just renamed them how I see them. And so I put that in there because that’s not research, that’s just what I observe these stages. But I’m saying that because I do want parents to understand that first and foremost, we do not raise all of our kids the same. How many times do you hear that? How did this happen to my kid? We’ve raised our kids all the same. No, you didn’t.

(32:38):

You’re first, you’re second. If you have a third or a fourth, you do not raise them the same. You are evolving. And if you have a second or a third child, this is the tricky part. Maybe at 3 0 5 you are in the stage of parenting a kid in middle childhood. So that’s one set of demands. It’s higher demand and still high warmth, but higher demand. And then maybe you do have a three-year-old and it’s like, now I got to be attachment focused. Oh, now I got to be independence focused. And it’s hard. It’s hard to do that. And then you might be doing that within minutes. That’s not just, you don’t even get a chunk at 3 0 5 I’m this way and at three 15 I’m this way. It’s like at 3 0 5, I’m two or three different ways.

Dr. Sarah (33:20):

Yes. And this speaks to, I think your other point of maybe there’s also a social commentary here about our hyper attention as a society of teaching mothers how to parent that comes out of maybe this misogynistic view of these women went back to work and now we need to teach them what they need to do to compensate for the fact that they’re not in their kids’ life all the time. And then we sort of accepted that as mothers to be like, oh, yes, it’s my responsibility to actively parent, to compensate for all the things that I am not doing right by being a progressive human being in the world and having multiple roles that I have to juggle, and we carry guilt and we carry fear. I can’t tell you how many parents, moms usually who are like, I am separating from my kid and they’re upset. Am I damaging our attachment relationship? Is this bad? Am I damaging something? And I totally understand the question. It breaks my heart and I’m very confidently able to say, no, this is important and healthy and safe and good, and the way that you separate and reunite is so much more important to focus on than am I messing up cause I’m separating from my kid?

Dr. Sheryl (34:42):

Absolutely. An extension of that too is I talk about tear and repair and I say, but all of our lives, all our lives through, that’s what we do in relationships. There’s a tear. Some tears are smaller or bigger than others. There’s a tear. It’s the repair that we generally aren’t taught. So six to 12, teach your kid model it. You know what, honey, this morning I was rushing. I was running late for work. I snapped at you. I was really impatient and I’m really sorry for that. That’s where a repair is, right? You don’t have to sit around and feel guilty about this all day and tell yourself you’re a terrible mom. No. It’s like, and that’s what I think to myself. I have those mornings, particularly it’s mornings. I have those mornings where everything was rushed or the last words I said to my kid were, oh my gosh, I cannot believe you didn’t do your homework last night. And I’ve got this tone and I’m super annoyed and I will think about it when I’m calm and I’ll be like, I don’t love that I said that. I don’t love how I did that. I can’t wait to see them when I pick ’em out after to school to tell them. I thought about it today, buddy. I was really crappy this morning. It was too much. I’m sorry.

Dr. Sarah (35:54):

It’s so funny is as you’re saying this, I’m having reverie of the fact like, oh my God, one of my favorite parts about parenting in middle childhood is the fact that you can talk to your kids the way you actually talk. Yes. We always say you got to modify your language to be developmentally appropriate. When we’re talking to little kids and explaining what went wrong or repairing or setting an expectation, we kind of have to figure out, I don’t think baby talk is what I’m talking about just, but you need to make sure that they can understand the words you’re saying. So you got to kind of figure that out. Whereas by six to 12, most kids, they’re not adults, don’t talk to them like an adult, but you as an adult can just talk to them the way you talk and you’re like, oh man, this happened.

(36:42):

And their brains can take it. They can really take in the language and process it at the speed, the vocabulary, the tone. It’s just so much easier. I love it. Actually, my son is seven and my daughter is going to be six in a minute, and so I’m like, oh, I’m really done. I’m leaving early childhood kind of okay with that. I’m like, I’m sad. I have my moments of, oh, my babies, but I’m also cool. Easier for me, I think to just communicate with my kids and set solutions and repair and just be a human a little bit more.

Dr. Sheryl (37:21):

I couldn’t agree more. And it’s so cool. So six and seven for you, right? I dunno about you guys, but it’s comes out natural, but it’s like an act. When I saw yesterday, I was having lunch and there was an 18 month old coddling by us and I was like, I love babies. So I was instantly like, right, and I’m doing that whole voice, that’s a full blown act. It’s genuine because I know it makes toddlers and babies smile and I want them to smile at me and I love it. But you’re right, for the first five years, at least four, we were regular voice. And then it’s like, oh, hi, honey. Then it’s like, whoop, quick switch then. So yeah, when they’re six and seven, you start to have this shift where you can just talk normal and be like, hi honey, how was your day?

(38:07):

You don’t have to drop in. And there’s real reasons for that. So babies really do respond to smiling and certain eye contact and pitch of even songs really does get their brain really stimulated and interested, but they’re past that stage. So again, there’s no prescriptive, it doesn’t have to mean that their sixth birthday, you completely stop talking. That it’s just that pressure to I have to be so on, isn’t there? So I love that you just shared that. And I was thinking too, as you were talking, one of the things that was really sweet, I had really, it was like nostalgic time writing was I said, so at six years old, your kid has probably lost or will lose their first baby tooth and it’s magic, but at 12 they will lose their last baby tooth, literally and per dentist, I checked it out, am I right on this?

(39:05):

And they’re like, yep. That’s what we say. Six to 12 is when you lose all your baby teeth and you just have usually your grownup teeth by the end of 12, beginning of 13. I’m like, just like that. I mean, none of this, it feels sometimes like magic when you’re tracking it all. But like you said, there are stages and seasons in development for a reason. And I tell this story in the book, my daughter who’s now 17, but at the time she was 12, she comes to me in the morning and she’s like, has her hand. She’s like, look, I just lost my last tooth. And I was like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe that. Three hours later she’s like, mom. And I’m like, yeah. And she’s like, I just got my period just like that crazy. I’m like, who loses the tooth and gets her period on the same day? But it was now looking back so symbolic. I don’t know. Maybe that was the universe’s sign. This is going to be something you’re going to write about old today. That story happened five years ago, but that is really is what happened to her. And I know that probably doesn’t happen very often, but the point is, yeah, you kind of lose your last baby tooth and start your period probably within the same year.

Dr. Sarah (40:14):

Which is interesting, right? We about, we didn’t dive too deep into puberty this episode, but I know that you’re really well versed in this. I think we think about puberty as this emotional evolution, and it is, and it’s hormonal and it’s shifting and all these sort of psychological soft changes, but it’s also very much related to biological clock stuff that is set in motion and has no, it doesn’t give a crap how we parent. It’s happening. The train is driving itself. We have so almost no say whatsoever in how those biological shifts get expressed. Obviously I will say, and you could speak to this probably better than I can, but trauma, high levels of stress, environmental stressors, environmental toxins, all that stuff can completely shift these biological expressions. But it’s not like if you parent the right way or the wrong way, your kid’s going to physically grow differently. It’s not that fragile of a system.

Dr. Sheryl (41:28):

No, you’re exactly right. I mean, normally people ask, there is an earlier puberty trend. This really got exposed in the pandemic during the pandemic. And it was funny because when we were writing the first draft of it, and I had a co-writer, she was like, I want to write the line. And they’re like, Hey, parents, everybody doesn’t have to go out and buy organic milk and blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, that’s actually the controversial statement because some people, I think I took it out. I don’t think it’s in there. I totally agree a hundred percent that on the face of things, this isn’t one of those parenting things that’s like, Hey, parent this way and your kid’s going to get, your girl won’t go into earlier puberty for sure, and she won’t get her period until 13 or 14 and all these things. But I think that there are just for the people who are wondering why this earlier trend, there’s not one solid reason, but I’ll tell you that stress leads the way stress is probably thought to be the number one factor. And then there are environmental toxins and the hormones and the foods that we eat.

Dr. Sarah (42:32):

Those are stress. If you think about it, stress have stress on the cellular level. We’re talking about stress, emotional stress is only one piece of the stress response.

Dr. Sheryl (42:44):

That’s right. That’s right. We hold stress in our bodies and we don’t probably stop and think about that so much. That’s why you get a stomach ache, a headache, you get tension in your shoulders. That’s stress. That’s stress. So whether I tell you I’m stressed or not, my body is going into motion. So if you have an eight or 9-year-old who’s experiencing stress, what we see is that the hormones start developing faster. And the first sign of that puberty in a girl, I’ll say what it is in a boy, it’s not as obvious, but in a girl, the first physical sign is breast development. That’s more usual for a boy. It’s his testicle development. It gets bigger and the penis eventually grows. But around that age, you’re not really looking down there so much, so you don’t really see it. And then before that, and this is where we’re evolving, you’re saying we’re getting more information.

(43:35):

As parents, I like to remind people, I say, puberty starts though in the brain before you see that breast bud, the wheels are in motion already in the limbic system, it’s already reorganizing itself. And so even before the breastfe, if you have a kid who’s nine and you’re like, yep, my kid, I see that. I see they have breast buds. That means for quite some time, I can’t tell you how long, six months, 12 months, their brain has already been changing. So this period of time of thinking like, okay, they’re in childhood and I can lay back. It’s really pretty short. Leave them for you. Maybe you’ll remember this conversation and your 7-year-old, like a year or a year and a half from now, you’re going to be like, holy cow. Yeah. I’ve now hit the preteen feeling moment, which I used to think of as 10, 11, and 12 is absolutely eight and nine now.

Dr. Sarah (44:28):

Is that because I guess my thought is on the one hand, I think it’s really important for parents to understand the signs of this so that they can respond because actually there’s probably documented studied consequences of having very precocious puberty, right?

Dr. Sheryl (44:47):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (44:47):

But I’m also mindful of, I don’t want parents to be like, oh my God, if my kid has precocious puberty, are they trauma? Is there a stressor that I am missing? Because I think also we forget that there’s so much environmental stressors on the cellular level. We live in a pretty sort of toxic, high toxic load world, and I just don’t know the science. I really genuinely don’t curious about why it’s happening now. And I can’t imagine that it’s simply because of emotional stress. I feel like it’s got to be…

Dr. Sheryl (45:24):

Right, a combination of things. And I would say that I have read more studies than I ever dreamed I would because I also feel like this is really the role of endocrinologists when we’re talking about this and what do they have to say about it? And it is consistent in terms of the short list of contributing factors, including genetics, by the way. So it’s not like there aren’t women in generations before us that went through puberty earlier. I also want to make the distinction because you threw out precocious puberty, and I know that there’s probably parents like, what’s that? So precocious puberty is puberty that happens. This might blow some people’s minds today, as in 2025, if a girl is in puberty at age eight, that is considered still within the average, that would be considered earlier puberty, but not precocious. Precocious now is seven and under, and they say for girls of color, black and Hispanic girls, it could even be six and under for precocious.

(46:24):

Okay, so precocious means you see signs of puberty in your kid. That might be some pubic hair, some underarm hair, maybe they’ve got a touch of acne, their hair’s getting really oily, their underarm smell, just those signs. And you’re like, what’s going on? Why is my kid having this? Right? That is a reason people first generally go to their pediatrician. Pediatrician checks them out and goes, huh, you’re right. I do see these signs too. They make a referral to an endocrinologist and then that person will do all of their testing, do all of that whole piece. So again, for girls, that’s under the age of eight for boys, it’s under the age of nine. But what I’m talking about is earlier puberty, which is the two year swing that we see has changed. So eight to 10-year-old girls, nine to 11-year-old boys who have signs of puberty, that means they’re in elementary school. And I don’t know about you, but in elementary school I thought everybody was pretty little. And those crazy growth spurts that we see with puberty were really a middle school thing. Now. They are a third, fourth, fifth grade thing. And by middle school, you’ve still got all over this discrepancy, but it’s almost like puberty is stretched out and almost lasting longer. So I hope will clarify.

Dr. Sarah (47:35):

Yes, that’s very helpful. How do we make sense of this? How are we making sense of this?

Dr. Sheryl (47:41):

Why is it happening? Yeah, what’s different?

(47:44):

So it is, so first and foremost, it is thought that kids are under more stress than ever. So that’s number one. Number two, if a girl lives in a home, this isn’t in order, by the way. I should just say another reason. If a girl lives in a home with, let’s say, so mom and dad are divorced and mom’s got a new boyfriend or is remarried, we know that that actually is called the stepfather effect. It triggers the body to go into earlier puberty when they spend a lot of time with a non-biological man in the house. Oh, interesting. Yeah, it’s really interesting. So that’s just one thing that kind of falls under…

Dr. Sarah (48:20):

Very evolutionarily based, right? Super old brain midbrain, hind brain biology.

Dr. Sheryl (48:27):

Exactly. I’m a female and there is a non-related male in my home that’s tripping up my hormones, so my body’s getting the signal. Maybe it’s time to be able to reproduce. We have to remember that this is why we have this sexual development, it is to reproduce. So we are so advanced technologically in all these other ways that sometimes we forget like, nope, the body has some really, really old ways of structuring itself. And that is what happened. Because if you think about it evolutionary wise, when you were a little girl, when you were eight, nine, and 10, you weren’t around very often people who were not in your family that would not have triggered your hormones in that way.

(49:07):

But those are reasons, like you said, environmental toxins, plastics, B-P-A-B-P-A is very real. That is pretty well documented. And so that’s why you see so many things now that say B, p, a free, because the truth is there really was a link. Anything that is an endocrine disruptor. So hormones in our foods, the ultra processed foods that we eat, the poor quality of food, these are all the reasons. And then again, genetics. These are all the reasons. So between the products you put on your face, the food you put in your mouth, the home you live in, the air you breathe, this is all disrupting or hormones. So we can do our best. We can absolutely do our best. We can probably do better. If you’re listening and you’re like, I’ve got a younger kid, again, take the plastic bottles out. I’m not here to say that that’s my area of expertise, but all I’ve been doing is studying this and it’s so consistent. And in European countries, just like the red dye stuff, they’re so far ahead of us in saying, this is bad. Take it out of foods. This is not good for kids.

Dr. Sarah (50:08):

And then people listen. The thing is we know we have the research.

Dr. Sheryl (50:13):

Yes.

Dr. Sarah (50:13):

We just don’t have the follow through. That seems to be the big problem.

Dr. Sheryl (50:18):

And we’ve got a lot of people who have a vested interest in keeping the red dye in that candy or keeping BPA because it’s cheaper in a aligner of a can. You think? It’s not even plastic, right? It’s a can. It’s just a coffee cup. Then I’m just putting, but it’s got plastic in it. Why? Because it’s cheaper. So there are reasons for these things, and so we can be, I think as parents on this point, I think you can always be more aware. Yesterday I had a talk with a cardiologist and I learned some pretty cool things, and I was like, if I took anything from this, it was three actionable steps that I can do. I can do that. And I said to him, this is probably the best that I can do. Is it good enough? He’s like, just start somewhere. So that’s perfect.

Dr. Sarah (51:03):

Yeah, us segue into like, okay, let’s give people three actionable steps, but not necessarily just to stop early puberty. I think that’s a bigger hill. We need to do a whole episode on that. But what are three actionable steps for tuning into the unique needs developmentally of a six through 12-year-old child as your parenting?

Dr. Sheryl (51:24):

Yeah, I think that’s so great. I think number one would be the emotional attunement, right? So you did that really good. Usually with a baby, almost just biologically, a baby cries and you go to it. Now you’ve got a six to 12-year-old. They’re a combination of crying tantruming, shutting down, not talking to you, not even being home. And so that’s harder. So I would say the first thing is just focus on attunement. What mood is your kid in? Kind of match their tone. They’re going to have less tolerance for you not being at the same emotional place that they’re at and teach them, this is the teaching. It’s kind of fun. You get to teach them emotions, your kid even starting at six, I want them to know more than happy, mad, and sad. I want them to know the nuance. Oh, when that happened today, I bet you were really disappointed.

(52:14):

Oh, I bet you were frustrated, right? Start elaborating on their emotional vocabulary. So it’s like a one two combo there. But the first one is stay attuned to their emotions and model and teach them what their emotions are, that they have names, that there’s different causes. What’s a trigger? So a lot around that regulation piece. And then the second part, which like you said, is you actually get to talk to them. And when I say talk to them, this probably is going to be a most two minute conversation. And the conversation just says things like, I am noticing this. I’m noticing when you do this, this, and this tends to happen. When you come back from little Ryan’s house next door, usually you’re kind of in a bad mood. I’m thinking something goes on there that’s really bothering for you. So now you’re doing the linking for them.

(53:03):

You’re noticing those things. And so that’s like a one, two. So I think there’s emotional regulation. I think there’s teaching of emotions, elaborating. And then I would say the third one is have brave conversations. Talk about the tough stuff. And I will give you very convincing reasons to do so. I have a whole chapter on substances. I have a whole chapter on eating and disordered eating. And so again, I think people are hearing this and they’re looking at their six or 7-year-old and they’re like, I’ve got time. We don’t need to be talking about that. Well, I give you age appropriate scripts on how to just begin. You don’t go zero to a hundred. You’re not like, Hey, tell you about eating disorders. There’s anorexia and believe it. No. You just start at a level of like, Hey, what does food do for us? What’s the purpose of food?

Dr. Sarah (53:47):

It’s like this prophylactic. We don’t want to necessarily wait until the problem has evolved to the point that we see it to start addressing it. It’s like, why don’t we start teaching them skills for thinking about these tricky things that are, whether they experience it personally or they witness their peers experience it, they’re going to need to make sense of it in order to protect themselves from kind of stepping right in this crap. This is, like you say, it’s the crucial years for orienting them, but giving that foundational framework, we don’t really need to teach zero to five year olds about these things because they’re still in this protected little cocoon for the most part. But these six to 12, these middle year kids, they’re coming in and out of the real world. And so now we have to help them make sense of the real world when they come back in. I feel like that is so important. I love that you said that.

Dr. Sheryl (54:42):

Yeah. And it’s a great way of reframing it. I think that we’re not having, these are not scary conversations if you just start them off slow and casual before they’re even needed. Just like, Hey, when you notice so-and-so drinks, alcohol, what do you think about that? What do they look like? What happens? What happens to the mood in our house? Or whatever? So I’m purposely giving the tough stuff, examples, the things that people do, not even sex. There’s studies that say, I’m talking now teenagers. There’s a large portion of parents that literally will actually check a box that says, I never plan to talk to my kids about sex. And so we get scared of the things that we have unresolved issues around, or no one talked to us about them. And so I’d say that’s a strong third message, which is honestly, this book will give you scripts for just opening up a conversation around this little drop here, a little drop there. And I give such compelling research stuff. I didn’t even know how strong the research was around. If your kid knows how you feel about alcohol, straight up, how do you feel about alcohol? They are more likely to have to be moderate or not even drink that when they are 11. You are still the hands down, most influential person in that kid’s life.

(55:58):

And you wait though and you don’t have these hard or uncomfortable, awkward conversations. Well, when they’re 12 and 13, they’re moving on to the next phase and that’s how we could end today. The phase after the industry versus inferiority, am I good or not good at things is identity. Who am I and where are my people? So if you don’t know who you are and you don’t know a lot things about the world, you’re going to go looking for them online in random group chats with maybe people who are not in your best interest because you don’t know what you’re good at. You don’t know who your people are. So now you’re doing almost two things at one time in this next stage. So if that is motivating, that’s how I end. Every chapter is looking ahead and I have a little box and it’s like, Hey, if you work on this and you master this when they’re 16 and they have a car or they have a boyfriend they might be sexually active with, here’s how they’re better set up.

Dr. Sarah (56:54):

I love that. Yes, this is, it really is a crucial time and it’s helpful to have a bit of a roadmap, so I’m really glad your book exists. So thank you for writing it.

Dr. Sheryl (57:08):

Thank you. And thank you for helping usher it out into the world so that as many parents as possible can really read it and hopefully feel energized and excited that, oh, I can just be more intentional. You don’t have to do that many different things. There’s just a lot of intention around you get to spend the amount of time you get to spend with your kid, how are you going to spend it and what are you going to talk about? That’s all it is. So I’m excited for people to get the message and thank you for giving me a place to do that.

Dr. Sarah (57:35):

Yeah, thanks for coming on the show. If people want to follow you, follow your work, go get your book. Where should they go?

Dr. Sheryl (57:45):

The one central hub is my website, drsherylziegler.com. And there you’ll see I have a substack that kind of just started. I have a podcast, I have socials, and so they can find me anywhere and they can buy the book anywhere. I’m just so grateful for that.

Dr. Sarah (58:00):

Yay. All right. We will send them there. We’ll put it all in the show notes.

Dr. Sheryl (58:04):

Awesome.

Dr. Sarah (58:04):

Thank you so much for coming on.

(58:05):

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