Talk to Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow into Confident, Caring Young Men

by Joanna Schroeder, Christopher Pepper

An urgent and practical book that helps parents and their boys navigate important topics like sex, drugs, bullying, power, consent, and more in a way that helps them grow their emotional intelligence, while also building connection and a closeness that can last a lifetime.

Talk to your Boys is a practical guide to communicating with your tween and teen boy with the goal of raising young men who care about themselves and others. The book focuses on 16 essential and wide‑ranging conversations on mental health and masculinity, sex and consent, money and power, violence and guns, and more. Packed with helpful advice, conversation starters, tips and scripts, Talk to Your Boys is designed to help families get better at having these crucial, but sometimes awkward, discussions with the larger goal to raise emotionally intelligent men who aren't hemmed in by outdated ideas of masculinity.

Co‑authors Joanna Schroeder, a parenting journalist, and Christopher Pepper, an award‑winning educator, have a real understanding of how challenging it is to navigate the ever‑changing worlds of teenagers with compassion and wisdom—especially when one has multiple children at different stages of development. Their practical advice is woven together with interviews with the leading experts in psychology, gender issues, and child development along with the voices and perspectives from dozens of teen boys from different backgrounds.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction, Audiobook, Adult, Self Help, Relationships

307 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 9, 2025

Reviews

[lape.titemortt · Rating 5 out of 5]

⭐️♾️
This wasn’t my “norm” of book but as a parent of three boys, two of whom are teenagers, I figured “why not?” And let me tell you what! I highly recommend this book. It’s a must-read for any parent with sons. I already applied one technique this morning—reflective listening—and it was incredibly helpful. I’m so glad I ventured out of my comfort zone with this book and am grateful to have gotten my hands on this resource.

I’ll definitely get a physical copy so my husband and I can explore these techniques together. This book made me realize that we both still have so much to learn about parenting and navigating the everyday challenges of raising sons.

Thank you, Workman Publishing & authors for my gifted ARC 💕


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All my reviews are my own opinion.

[Natalie Scherck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great conversation points to keep in mind when raising boys (and girls too!).

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for anyone who's raising a young man in these trying times.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many useful prompts and things to think about; I’m thinking of buying this one to use more as a reference later.

[Amber M · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read for any parent! My number one goal as a mom is to make sure my kids don’t grow up to be jerks. This book has great advice for how to talk to boys about various important topics. My favorite parts were the quotes from boys that they interviewed to get their perspective on what it’s like to have these talks with their parents and tips for how to get kids to engage more.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy.

[Todd Kashdan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many books exist on caring for boys. This one is exquisite. Very practical and original exercises and prompts. Love the high quality quotes throughout the book from boys interviewed. It brings the content to life.

[Rita Strub · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally! A book on how to talk to your teenage boys. Nothing earth shattering but helpful. Including scripts for what to actually say!

[Robert Lewis · Rating 1 out of 5]

The idea of this book is to help parents (though presumably also teachers, coaches, clergy, whoever) talk to young men about important issues to do with relationships, crime, substance abuse, technology, and so forth. That’s a worthy goal because as many scholars have pointed out, young men seem to be struggling quite a bit these days for a variety of reasons. That’s an important topic and one might argue a book like this is needed.

The trouble comes in the form of the book’s practical advice. While the bulk of the book’s advice is solid, I think most readers will find the vast majority of it self-evident. Don’t expect any real deep psychology here. There isn’t any. Instead you get tips for how to have the kinds of conversations you probably ought to be having already if you’re the parent of a young boy and so one questions the book’s utility.

Worse, if you actually took the book’s script literally and asked the specific questions it suggests, I don’t think you’ll get the response you’re looking for. Take it from an adult man who was once a young boy. If you actually said some of these sentences to a teen or pre-teen boy, he’s less likely to respond positively and have a deep conversation and much more likely to call you a rude word and walk away. I don’t believe for a minute any of these scripts have been tested on real young men. For a book whose entire purpose is to help people have difficult conversations, that seems pretty much unforgivable.

I give some credit where it’s due for framing most of these topics conversationally rather than prescriptively, to allow for variance between individual parents, children, and families, though the authors’ own values and political biases do creep in more frequently than one would like, which also substantially weakens the book overall.

At the end of the day, I think the book has its heart in the right place and I think something like it would be quite useful. But I don’t think this one hits the mark. It may have plenty of good advice, but what good advice it has, any thinking person has already thought of. And that’s unfortunately mixed in with oversimplified and unrealistic conversation scripts that won’t help anyone.

[Nrlhakimin · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Boys will be boys.” But I do not want to surrender to that passed-down idea. I believe that my boys have feelings, fears, insecurities and that they make mistakes — and I should be there for them in their ups and downs.

This book attempts to guide us on how to talk to boys through 16 crucial topics by suggesting opening sentences to start conversations, strategies on how to handle their antics and discussions on the challenges faced by teenagers these days.

I find some parts of the book useful, such as the suggested topics to ask or talk about. I also love the part where they share about what boys think. They do have opinions even though they usually keep them to themselves because most of the time they feel that no one cares.

There are some parts of the book that do not align with the values we nurture in our household and I find that the book leans too much on gentle parenting. As an Asian parent, balance is very important, and respect is a must. So I believe that it is a good book to widen our perspective and also make us aware of the things we would like to incorporate and avoid. Thank you @putrifariza and @times.reads for providing me with a parenting book that will help me become better, insyaAllah.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Currently on chapter 3 and it's not what I expected. They do share a lot of research that paints a sad and difficult picture for our young boys but I don't think it's representative of what most go through. What I enjoy the most is the comments from the boys interviewed. The proposed statements of how to connect to teenage boys seem too artificial. It should have been comments that the boys shared of instances their parents/loved one connected with them in certain situations.

Overall, teenagers are the same as adults in how they want to be treated. No one wants to hang out with someone who controls them, tells them what to do, tries to change them, and not understand them. They want someone who is loving, encouraging, and supports them through mistakes (without judgement) and hard times.

I'll update this rating when I finish reading the book (if I can bring myself to it).

[Maron · Rating 3 out of 5]

I heard about this on a webinar and wanted to read it as an aunt to three boys (17, 8, and 2). Although I don't have yet have a connection with them that I can talk about these various topics, I think that the exercises included and hearing from the boys referenced helps to give me some understanding for how I will start to engage with them differently. How I can continue to be curious, when to push a little more, and when to just signal that I am around to listen if needed. It was also helpful for me to think more about the lives of boys, their influences, and what they might be longing for.

[Angé · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very basic and rudimentary guide on how to raise teen boys, which is also applicable to girls and non-binary folks. As well as younger kids. I sometimes didn’t like the tone of the book and I can’t explain why, it didn’t sit well with me. I loved that they brought in a Black expert to showcase the intersectionality of race, sexism, right wing ideology and its growing momentum etc.

I think it’s still a helpful guide for parents and caregivers because it talks about porn, gaming, the internet, consent and most things that will show up in our kids’ lives.

[Cadence Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Could have gone more in depth about how to have these conversations. It felt like they often assumed a best case scenario about how these conversations might go which is great but not necessarily realistic and doesn’t help give tools about how to have those conversations if they don’t go the best way possible.

[G · Rating 4 out of 5]

A helpful review

The authors covered important issues in an easy to understand way. They did a good job of incorporating topics that specifically relate to minoritised boys and made an effort to be inclusive and look at issues from various angles. Its a good resource and every bit helps.

[Katie Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

read about 75% of this, skipping the parts that didn't apply to me as a high school teacher.
This book includes practical tips for engaging kids in conversation and a "we asked boys" section in each chapter where teenagers responded to the topic being discussed

[Leah Swasey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read “14 talks by age 14” at the same time and much prefer the organization of that book.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

only listened to first few chapters, most of the info I already had from other sources. Good info though.

[Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great content but the AI narrator was TERRIBLE in the audiobook. If the content had not been so good, I would have abandoned. Boo.

[Kari · Rating 4 out of 5]

This had great conversation starters, but I have read books more Christian based that I liked better.

[Lisa Hofle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for anyone with a teenage boy.