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David Furst: This is All of It on WNYC. I'm David Furst, in for Alison Stewart. If you're new to parenthood, you were probably prepared for the sleep deprivation of infancy and the chaotic toddler phase, but you might have thought that once your child started kindergarten, things would ease up a little. They're talking, they can sometimes entertain themselves. In other words, you may have thought that the elementary school years would be the calm before the storm of teenagehood, but it's often anything but quiet.

That middle period of middle childhood is a time of enormous emotional, social, cognitive growth. It's when kids are forming their identity, they're learning skills that they're going to need for the rest of their lives. What happens or doesn't happen during this time can shape everything from a child's self esteem to their long-term mental health. Supporting kids as they move through these years is important for their long-term well being. Psychologist Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler writes about this in her new book, The Crucial Years: The Essential Guide to Mental Health and Modern Puberty in Middle Childhood (Ages 6-12). Dr. Ziegler joins us now. Welcome to All of It.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Thank you so much for having me.

David Furst: What is happening for kids developmentally between those ages 6 and 12?

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: I'm so glad you're asking, because in our field, they're called the "forgotten years," because people do tend to kick back.

David Furst: That's a lot of years to forget.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: It's a lot, it's a lot, but you're so focused, zero to five, like you were saying, you're sleep deprived. You just want to keep them alive. Really, you're focusing on your bonding and safety and security in the world. Then they go to school. We're talking kinder to about sixth grade, and we call it the school age years. It's like we start to focus on academics. That's one thing that's happening. Sure, there's cognitive development happening, like you were saying, but there's all this other stuff that's going on, which is a lot around moral development and a sense of, "What can I do? What am I good at?"

That's what's really key, is that once they get to those teen years, it's, "What's my identity? Who am I, and where are my people?" Right before that, it's, "What can I actually do?" That means literally everything from, "Can I catch a ball?" to, "Can I be a friend? Can I make breakfast? What can I do?" That's a big thing of what's going on, but the crucial years are interesting now because puberty's happening now, earlier. That used to be an adolescent thing. While they're still trying to figure out, like, "What can I do?" All of a sudden their body is developing at rates that are faster than they are emotionally. Does that make sense?

David Furst: Yes. I want to come back to that idea of puberty happening earlier. 6 to 12, as we mentioned, covers a range of years. Not every child develops at the same rate and along the same curve, right?

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: That's right. You can have a kid who's more, let's say, along the lines with empathy. You're like, "Oh, my kid's doing really well there," but maybe they're not doing as great, let's say, I don't know, with reading. Then maybe there's the physical development. "Oh, yes, my kid's a great athlete already." You've got another person who's like, "Oh, my gosh, my kid just-- They can't figure things out. They're tripping all the time." There is a lot of uneven development. Things don't really start to equal out, in a sense, until sometimes you're 16, 17. It's an older adolescent thing when puberty's done. Everybody's caught up. The height, the weight, the intellectual capacity. They're arrived. There's a lot of development still going on, a ton.

David Furst: Listeners, we want to hear from you during this conversation. Do you have a child who is between the ages of 6 and 12? Do you have any questions for Dr. Ziegler? Give us a call or text us, 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Let's come back to that question of puberty. You say that studies show that kids are entering puberty earlier. How do we measure that? How do we know?

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Such a good question. If we look back 100 years ago-- There's two metrics. First of all, about 100 years ago, Freud said, "This is latency." He called this stage of childhood latency. Everything's quiet. Things are just calm and quiet. Sexual development isn't happening. When we look back, since about the 1980s, kids have been going through puberty about three months younger per decade. We are now at about two years younger. That's significant.

It almost reminds me of climate change. Like sometimes when you hear things and they go, "Oh, it's a degree here and a degree there." Well, that's a big deal in terms of the earth. This is a big deal in terms of child development. We know that it's happening younger and younger. We know that kids who are of color or who have a lot of stress or trauma in their backgrounds also go through it younger. We know that there's different reasons. There's not one single reason.

David Furst: Why is that happening?

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: There's leading reasons. One of them, not in order necessarily, is obesity. We have a lot of kids who are obese in this country. Having more body fat on you progresses puberty along. Stress, trauma, higher ACEs scores, those kids, their bodies also develop faster. We look at socioeconomic status. Sometimes it'll say race. Again, when I say Black and brown kids, but really we think it'll say race, but what's underneath that really is socioeconomic status. Again, ultra-processed foods and the quality of food and sleep, and all of that that kids have. You look at environmental toxins, hormones and foods, stress, obesity. This is the formula for why kids are going through this much earlier than before.

David Furst: Can you talk about the difference just so we can make the distinction here between puberty and adolescence?

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Yes, such a good question. In the book, we write, and I say, the word adolescence is almost not even that useful, because there's a lot of different definitions. Technically, adolescence isn't around an age like 12 or 13, although I think we generally associate it with teens. Really, adolescence is when sexual development starts. Sexual development, let's say, starts at nine years old now. Then now we're saying-- we're calling 9-year-olds adolescents, whereas before we would have, again, been thinking, I think 13, usually a teenager. Adolescence is a term that seems to be a moving target.

David Furst: I want to get to some phone calls. We're getting some questions for you right now, but I wanted to also ask you, when should we start talking about puberty with kids?

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: I think that's a conversation to start probably around age 5 or 6. It's a simple conversation at 5 or 6. It just starts off by just saying, like-- Even, let's say, they're going to kindergarten, "Oh, all these things are going to happen. You're going to continue, and your body's going to continue to change, and your brain does." What you really want to say to a young kid in kindergarten, first grade, is something called puberty, which is when your body changes first starts in the brain. We know if you see physical signs of puberty in your kid, let's say in third or fourth grade, about a year before, the chemicals and the hormones started to change in the brain.

That just means if they feel moody, if they feel sad, they can't explain why their preferences for things are changing, you just say to your kid, really easy breezy, not alarmist, "Hey, there's something called puberty and it starts in the brain. It's probably starting in your brain, that's all." You just start there and then you build.

David Furst: You don't leave it at one. This is a continuing conversation.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Oh, this is a long, long-- This is a six, seven years conversation.

David Furst: Not one and done.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: No.

David Furst: We are speaking with Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler, clinical psychologist, author of the book, The Crucial Years: The Essential Guide to Mental Health and Modern Puberty in Middle Childhood. We're talking about the 6 through 12. We are taking your calls if you'd like to join the conversation. The number 212-433-9692. Let's hear from Claudia in Elmont. Welcome to All of It.

Claudia: Hi. Hi, thank you for taking my call. I have a 12-year-old, and obviously, I'm mom. I feel that I am at war with my 12-year-old every day when it comes to schoolwork and just making sure everything gets done. I am just afraid that if I'm not asking him, "Hey, are you done with work? Hey, is everything completed?" I feel as though he wouldn't get anything done. I feel as though we're enemies as opposed to mom and son right now. I am not sure how to navigate this phase of ensuring he does everything correctly and promptly for school, but also just leaving him to be and letting him do his own mistakes. I don't know what to do.

David Furst: Claudia, this is an excellent question, and I'm going to be listening very closely to the answer.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Oh, hi, Claudia. I am in the same boat with you. I have a 12-year-old, too. This past year, I felt like, all of a sudden, we're enemies. I just felt the same way, and then I had to take my own advice. Claudia, I'm going to tell you professionally and then also personally what this looks like. Just remember the stakes are very low. I'm assuming he's in sixth grade. Is he a sixth grader?

Claudia: Seventh.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Seventh. Okay, seventh grader. Stakes are still relatively low, meaning, if he doesn't hand something in, if he doesn't get an A in a class, that's not going to prevent him from getting into the college of his dreams, which are things that parents are already getting stressed about. Take advantage. I like to call these years the years of opportunity. Take advantage of the fact that you are going to sit by sometimes, and it's so hard, and you're going to see, like-- these are real examples for me, the charger of the laptop sitting on the counter. "Do you think you remembered everything?" You're there to help with the executive functioning, but you're not there to do it, because if you do it, they're not going to learn it.

You're there. You can prompt, "Do you think you have everything? Did you create a list?" Or he comes home from school, "Why don't we sit down? Why don't you make a list--" My kid doesn't like to do it either, "Of what you need to do tonight or what you need to pack," or, "Let's pack tonight, not in the morning." You can do those motherly type of things, but now that he's 12, you don't then run back in the house and grab the charger or go get the lunch or the water bottle that they left. All those things that they do--

David Furst: Have you been watching me?

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: I know. All of us, all of us, right?

David Furst: I've done a lot of those things you just ticked off.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: It's okay to do it when they're five and three, but it's not really okay when they're 12. Claudia, if this motivates you, this is what motivates me, because trust me, I know it's easier to clean their rooms. It's easier to pack up their backpacks. It's easy on us, but we are not doing them a service. That's what motivates me. When I just want to go and grab it and just do it fast myself, I say, "Wait, but I'm robbing him of the opportunity to learn, and that is my job as a parent."

I am no longer-- In the book, I talk about our different roles. I am no longer at 12. You're about to go almost to manager mode. That's what I call it. You're going from the CEO. Like, "I am fully in charge and I'm telling you where to be in all things. At 12, he picks his own friends. He picks what he wants to do, probably. He picks the sports he wants, all those things. I'm not saying that you just let him make whatever decisions, but he's more in charge. You're there to help manage and guide, but support, not do.

David Furst: I know we're talking about the ages 6 to 12, but we have a text here that might be hitting on something I'd like to hear the answer to as well. That is, "What if you feel like you dropped the ball during those crucial years? Is there a way to repair the damage? Talking about some of those things you were just talking about, not packing their bag, et cetera.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Let me tell you, this has been a surprise to me, talking all over the country about this book, that comes up at every single talk. Somebody inevitably has this look on their face of either horror or sadness and they're like, "Oh, my God, my kid's 12 or 13, and I didn't. I missed the ball."

David Furst: Missed the boat.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Yes, but this person says the word "repair", and I have a whole section on that. It's around, just because you didn't do it this way or you did it a different way, there's always opportunity. That's what makes a healthy relationship. When we do something either wrong, which I'm not saying you did, or you just didn't do it, you didn't know any better, that is an opportunity to show your kid.

You go, "Hey, when we know better, we do better. I know this now. You know what, buddy? Or you know what, honey, I used to do all these things for you. In some ways, I think that's why now that you're in high school, or even if you're in college, that you're probably not so great at it because I stepped in a lot. That's on me. Here's how things are going to change. I'm still going to be here to support you. You can ask me any questions you have, but I'm not going to be doing those things for anymore because I love you too much to keep doing things that aren't helping you now and into the future."

I just think you say that. That's it. It's a beautiful thing. You don't even have to-- Don't say sorry. You're not sorry. You just know better now or you know differently. You're going to try something different.

David Furst: If you've noticed any of the things we're talking about as you've parented your own kids through puberty, we want to hear about it. Join the conversation. We have a number of calls we're going to get to in just a moment. The number to call, 212-433-9692. We'll take your calls after a break and continue speaking with clinical psychologist Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler, author of the new book, The Crucial Years: The Essential Guide to Mental Health and Modern Puberty in Middle Childhood. Stick around. This is All of It on WNYC.

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David Furst: This is All of It on WNYC. We're talking about the new book, The Crucial Years: The Essential Guide to Mental Health and Modern Puberty in Middle Childhood (Ages 6-12). We're speaking with Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler, the author of this book. We're also taking your calls, 212-433-9692. I'm David Furst, in for Alison Stewart. Let's hear from Andrea in South Salem, New York. Welcome to All of It.

Andrea: Thank you so much for taking my call. I'm sure lots of parents have the same question. I have a boy who just turned nine, and I would love to know when the appropriate time to speak to him about sex. I know lots of his peers are already a little more advanced in that knowledge. What's a good time?

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Love this question. Thank you so much for asking it. We have all of these statistics, now with kids having access to the internet, that they are viewing porn online, and that is usually by accident at first. They're looking something up. Before they know it, they're either seeing just inappropriate sexual content all the way to porn. We know this is happening for majority of kids by the age of 12. That means 9, 10, 11. You're right at the perfect time.

Let me back up, though, and say, before you're going to jump to talking to a kid about sex, you want to first make sure that they truly know what's happening to their own bodies. Let's say, your nine-year-old, you're saying, "He's not going through puberty yet. Nothing's happening in his-- There's probably stuff happening around him. This is a beautiful, perfect opportunity to tell him about all sorts of things. You need to talk to him about sexual development. That includes getting erections. It includes masturbation. It includes pubic hair. For boys, their first sign of puberty physically is their testicles grow larger and their penis grows bigger.

That's something that a parent doesn't see. That's something, maybe they notice, maybe they don't even. You want to let them know, "Hey, bud, that's the first thing that's going to happen." I have scripts in the book to guide parents through all of these talks, literally. You want to start there. Then when he starts asking questions, usually, for a boy, they do want to know about sperm and semen, then that's where it just naturally goes into, "Oh, yes, then the semen and sperm could fertilize an egg one day, should you ever want to have a child." Then you can lead into that conversation.

I do want to say, first, let him know what's happening, why his voice might get deeper, why it starts cracking, all the things that happen to a boy, and then go into the talk around sex. I'd say for every parent, this is boys and girls, please emphasize two things. Number one, let them know what's happening with the opposite gender. That's very helpful for them. It's something we don't typically do. Number two, really make sure that these are times that are somewhat comfortable. Don't do it random. Don't be weird about it. Cringy, a kid would say. Just find these natural opportunities. They can be two, three-minute conversations, and then make them repetitive or over time.

David Furst: We're going to take another call, but I want to read a text very quickly here. This is echoing something we were talking about earlier. "I'm a college professor, and every semester, I have some students whose parents have clearly done the literal and figurative picking up for them throughout their adolescence. I echo the sentiment that this is a disservice for them."

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Yes. Oh, Professor, Hello. I want to give you a little behind the scenes. During the break, we were just talking, and we were talking about kids going off to college. We're joking, like, "Oh, if you've got a kid going off to college, is it too late?" I go, "No, because in college you are literally going to be faced with this. You're going to want to do a paper for your kid. You're going to want to remind them to set their alarm."

David Furst: Do a paper for your kid.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Do a paper for your kid.

David Furst: Oh, my goodness.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: You can't imagine. How easy is it for your kid to go-- The parent is all involved, "Oh, don't you have something due tomorrow?" "Yes, I haven't totally gotten to it." "Okay, send it to me."

David Furst: Oof.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: These things happen. This isn't a one off. I'm sure the professor right now is nodding his head and laughing or angry. Here's what I want to say. This isn't just my theory. This is Erik Erikson's psychosocial stages of development. What I mean by that is this is a Psych 101 thing. This is a stage of development that's called industry versus inferiority. Literally has a name. A kid comes out of this at 12 or 13, and they either feel industrious, which would have been a term in the 1950s to say high self esteem, good self worth. I know what I'm good at. Or inferior. Today's term is low self esteem.

You have to give them the opportunity to do these things themselves, or we have a bunch of college kids who are 18 to 24, lonely, unhappy, and truly have a hard time launching, whether it's college or elsewhere, into the work world because they hadn't had to do so much by themselves and learn to accept and thrive off of failure. That is really, really huge.

David Furst: Join the conversation. The number 212-433-9692. Let's hear from Nicole in Kew Gardens. Welcome.

Nicole: Hi, how are you?

David Furst: Great.

Nicole: Thanks for taking my call. I am calling, I have four children in rapid succession. They are almost 17, 15, 13, and almost 12. It's three boys and then a girl at the end. You would think I'd be calling about the almost 12-year-old, but actually the conversation is a little bit more pertinent to the older ones because they went through this period of time during COVID. I really feel like they lost a lot of ground during that time because of the wacky situation that they were in in the city. I'm just curious to know if you've noticed any decline in these adolescent-- not adolescent. I mean, just the teens during the COVID years who went through this time [crosstalk].

David Furst: Not just in the city, everywhere.

Nicole: Yes. I feel like almost-- My almost 12-year-old, obviously, she's a girl and that's different, but she's a little bit further on than even the boys are because she had more years during that time in a regular school setting, whereas the boys didn't. I'm curious to know if you noticed--

David Furst: There was the interruption.

Nicole: Yes.

David Furst: Dr. Ziegler.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Nicole, what you're noticing as your instinct as a parent is actually what the data is showing. We are estimating that kids lost about five years of emotional growth. This is now data. We do know that, truly, your 17-year-old feeling emotionally to you, like about a 12 year old is tracking, and it makes sense. If you talk to any teacher, they will tell you, "Oh my gosh, middle schoolers feel like elementary school kids, high schoolers feel like young middle school kids."

This is something that educators are seeing, teachers are seeing, and now the data is also supporting it. What does that mean? What that means for you as a parent, and this is hard, but we can't skip steps. This is like a saying I have. Anybody who works with me knows that. What I mean by that is developmentally, when it comes to social emotional development, you can't skip it. What that means is, yes, chronologically you're 17, but emotionally, I'm going to meet you where you're at. By doing that, you're not holding your kid back, you're giving them what they needed. Then they're going to, let's say, metaphorically, emotionally going to go from 13, 14, 15, and they will catch up if you do that intentionally.

The problem is, today, people are seeing, parents are seeing what you're saying, and they just want to say, "This is ridiculous. You're 17 years old, you're 18 years old. Why are you behaving this way? Your younger sister, look at her, she's more mature than you." You're doing those things, but in actuality, that's the part that's not helpful. Treat them their emotional age and they will catch up. This is really a whole generational problem.

David Furst: We have a lot of questions coming through right now. We'll try to get to as many of them as possible. The number 212-433-9692. Natasha in Ridgewood, Queens. Welcome to All of It.

Natasha: Hi, thanks so much for having me. I was telling the screener, I'm in a queer partnership, and we have an almost six-year-old boy who very much feels like he is a boy. Just wanted to get some feedback around, he's been noticing that he's the only person in the house with his particular genitals, and he's very much talking about that. Just wanting to figure out, how do we address that, and how do we prep him for being more embodied in his own body and in his own feelings as he ages beyond six, seven, eight, into his preteen years?

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Yes, absolutely. It's such a great question. I always say this to people, because what happens is-- I have a chapter in the book that's talking to your kid about puberty. I give all these scripts, and then people will say, "Oh, if I have a son, I'm going to leave that up to his dad. If I have a daughter, then I'll do that." I say, "There are so many families in this country that don't have that luxury. We can't think that way." Moms need to be able to talk to their sons, and all the way around. We have single parents, we have same sex parents, all of that.

Here's the thing, you just want to say to him, "Yes, I am--" If you're talking to a six year old, "I am a girl, and so my body parts are different than yours. The girls in your class, their body parts are different, too, but we all have brains." You can be silly with it. "We all have brains, we all have eyeballs. Then there's some parts of our bodies that are different." What you want to do is you want to label his body parts as his actual body parts. A lot of people have all these little nicknames. They have stories about that. Don't do that. We know we want to empower kids. And so penis. Scrotum, semen, sperm. You want to use those words.

Initially, starting off for him, what you want to say to him, especially if you have just one boy and you haven't started this conversation yet. Him and I have this all-- This is a whole nother chapter too, which is around sexual and gender identity, which is exploring his body, just meaning probably touching him himself is normal. You want to normalize, particularly for boys, you want to normalize some of these things because if they're not sure, but they're touching themselves and it feels good. This is where shame starts. When kids feel like "I'm doing something, no one's ever talked to me. Nobody said this is okay."

You want to do that, or some people listening, I'm sure, because I get this all the time, say, "Oh no, my kid will sit in the middle of our living room and he's touching himself and we're mortified." I say, "That's normal." What you want to say to him is, "That's something that you can do in the privacy of your room. That's not something to do around other people." All these questions are actually really normal and you need to normalize them.

David Furst: We're talking about-- You can read more in the book, The Crucial Years: The Essential Guide to Mental Health and Modern Puberty in Middle Childhood (Ages 6-12). We're speaking with Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler, and we have so many questions. I want to try to get to a couple of them here. This is an interesting text we just got. "As a child in the 1980s, the Psychological and emotional support did not exist the way it does now. If not for Judy Blume books, I would have been completely lost. Despite years of talk therapy and medications, I still feel broken by puberty. Is there anything I can do to better understand and make peace with the turbulence of my adolescence?"

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Oh, what a beautiful question. Here's what I want to say to this. You're never going to believe it. When you open the book, in the very beginning, there's a whole page, before you even start the book. It's almost a trigger warning. My early readers said, "Oh, my gosh, this book stirred up so much for me." Parents were saying that, and I was surprised. At first, we were going to do a trigger warning around-- There's a whole chapter on body image because that was really triggering for people, but we do. We cover bullying. We cover all the changes in the body, acne, all the things. I got so much feedback.

That's a beautiful question. I have so much sensitivity around it. What can you do about it? I will say, for the person who sent this in, if you have a child, truly read this book, because our baggage, our experience, 6 to 12. I talk about my 6 to 12 years right in the introduction, and it did the same thing for me. It was like a walk down memory lane, "Oh, yes, what was it like?" I was assimilating. My skin was dark. I literally feel the same way about Judy Blume. I was clapping when he was reading that out loud. Judy Blume was it. She really was the only person that wrote about these things.

I watched the movie as well and cried when I watched the Netflix rendition, because it really was our childhood for people who were kids in the '80s. I will tell you that if you have a child or you're going to have a child, or you think you're going to, if you read this book, even if you just read the first three chapters, you will get some of that repair. There are times in there where I prompt you and I say, "If right now you're feeling really overwhelmed by this, go seek out professional help."

I think a beautiful context for that, to wrap this part up is to say, if you're meeting with a therapist, "I realize that either I am a parent of, or I'm going to be a parent of a kid in this stage. I had so much trauma or bad memories or poor body image or all the things I went to, and I need to work on that because I want to do better for my kid." I think there's some really beautiful reparative work that can happen.

David Furst: Another question here, another text. "My child is autistic, so everything happens later. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Yes. I have a small section in the puberty part of the book around children with special needs. That is absolutely true. Here's what I'll say. I think the best thing you can do is find yourself a small community. It can be a large community. There's communities online, but there's also in some areas, depending on where you are. I think this is so important because if you have a child who's anywhere on the spectrum, they are going to really struggle when puberty starts. Hygiene becomes a huge problem. Things around touching themselves can be a huge problem. It is a huge challenge, and parents feel so alone in it.

I will say, I-- There's some stuff you can read in this book I think would be really helpful, but I also want to say, please find your person even. Even if it's one other parent, it really does make a difference. All of a sudden you're in community. I'm in Denver, and there's a community there that has all of these parents that gather around this. I'm thinking here in New York, there's probably multiple. Please look for them because I think it'll be a huge game changer for a parent who's navigating this because it is really challenging.

David Furst: You've been a clinical psychologist for more than two decades, is that right?

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Yes.

David Furst: A lot has changed during that time. What would you say, a couple of the most significant things that you can mention, and how your work has changed because of them?

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: I would say the biggest thing that's changed are screens, the internet, social media. That's not something we ever contended with. Everybody says this. Think back when you were-- The one thing that hasn't changed is the curiosity in kids. Kids are curious. They have questions about everything. When their bodies start to develop and change, they certainly have questions. What did kids in the '80s do? They snuck around, tried to find a Playboy magazine. Open that up, looked.

I remember having VHS's of Richard Pryor and hearing his dirty jokes. There's always that little curiosity, but that was like the most devious thing I could do. Now, massive change. You just go online, you just go on social media, put in whatever it is you're curious about. How has that affected kids? I think that Jonathan Haidt's Anxious Generation has definitely shined a light on all of this with teens. I think what I'm here to say is I have a whole chapter I'm so proud of that's around the young end of kids. We have to teach them digital citizenship. We have to teach them when they're curious, where to go, what's a good source, what's a deep fake, what is a parasocial relationship.

David Furst: We don't just have to teach kids this.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Oh yes, right. Adults as well. It's funny, because in the screens chapter of the book, I do-- I'll say the term, let's say artificial intelligence. I'll say what parents need to know, and it's a short paragraph, how to teach your kids about it. It's a different paragraph and it's the same information, but in a kid-friendly way. Now, all of a sudden, that's your mandate. That's the biggest thing that's changed. Their curiosities now can be answered or viewed on anything around the world. That's actually very frightening.

David Furst: And so much. We could go on there talking about deep fakes, all kinds of misinformation, very, very targeted advertising, filters, time management, cyberbullying. How we manage this, very difficult.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Very challenging. As you can imagine, when you think about the brain development of a 6 to 12-year-old, their prefrontal cortex is at a third to a halfway developed. They're not even close. They're impressionable, they're overwhelmed. Kids talk to me about political issues, they talk to me about climate issues, they talk to me about things that you feel heartbreak.

You're like, "Wait, you're not supposed to be stressed about these things." They are so inundated with media. For any parent who thinks right now, "Oh no, not my kid, we don't have the news on and they're not on social media." YouTube is the first social media app a kid will go on. We have two-year-olds. We have two-year-olds that can navigate YouTube better than us to.

David Furst: To see the train videos or whatever.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: It starts off, again, seeming very innocent. Before you know it, they become older again. One show leads to the other. That's done on purpose. All of a sudden, they're hearing about-- It starts like this. The polar bears homes are melting away. It starts off like that. A kid will come home, and they'll be really sad. Then it just goes from there. Now they've got adult kinds of anxieties weighing on them. That's why we see depression and anxiety on the rise.

David Furst: We are obviously just scratching the surface here. We can read much more about this in the new book. It is called The Crucial Years: The Essential Guide to Mental Health and Modern Puberty in Middle Childhood (Ages 6-12). Speaking with psychologist Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler, thank you for joining us today.

Dr. Sheryl Gonzalez Ziegler: Thank you so much for having me.