Maggie Dent grew up in the country and she always felt she ‘spoke bloke’.
As a high school teacher and a family counsellor, she discovered she had a real affinity for teenage boys, and understood how to communicate with them.
It helped that she was also the mother of four sons.
In her conversations with parents she often found they were bewildered by their teenage sons.
They said it was as though an alien had landed in their family and their sweet boy had been replaced by an unpredictable and sometimes monosyllabic human.
But Maggie says we often don’t realise how vulnerable teenage boys are as they grow into adulthood.
She believes if parents learn about some of the ways the brain changes during adolescence, it can make for much better ways to communicate.
Further information
From Boys to Men is published by Pan MacMillan
Listen to Maggie’s podcast Parental as Anything