A new puberty guide for kids aims to replace anxiety with self-confidence

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/04/23/ [login to see] /a-new-puberty-guide-for-kids-aims-to-replace-anxiety-with-self-confidence
The authors of a new book on puberty had trouble coming up with a name. The guide to growing up, for pre-teens 9 to 13, is written for all kids – girls, boys, nonbinary youth. It's inclusive of the gender spectrum and the trans experience.

Titles like "Hello Hairy," and "The Rollercoaster Called Puberty" weren't cutting it, says Dr. Kathryn Lowe, one of the book's three co-authors, who are all physicians and parents.

They settled on You-ology: A Puberty Guide for Everybody. The slim, 150-page guide, published Tuesday by the American Academy of Pediatrics, is one a handful of recent puberty books that aim to be more inclusive. It explains body parts and how they change in clear, accessible ways, while assuring kids that there's a wide range to what is normal. Big feelings, big questions and growing faster or slower than other kids are all part of it.

"We talk about how every body is different," Lowe says, "Breasts can come in all different shapes and sizes. We try to normalize the variety of [ways] the human body goes through puberty and how there is no one right way."