Click for full show notes, exercises, and parenting scripts from this episodeWatching teens gobble down five plates of food, grow six inches in one night and flock in groups to the mall as they attempt to attract “mates” really makes you think...teens aren’t so different from wild animals! And just like wild animals, our teenagers are up against quite a bit as they begin setting out on their own in the world. They’ll need to know how to protect themselves from danger, how to socialize with others, how to develop effective sexul communication, and how to provide for themselves as they become independent adults.We can’t protect our teens from the force of nature forever...so how can we prepare them to master the art of survival? Amazingly, there’s a lot we can learn about priming out teens for adult life from studying the patterns of adolescent wild animals. Whether it’s uncovering connections between the ways animals and humans both learn to avoid danger, or finding similarities in reproductive patterns across species, our guests today are here to shine light on how wild animals can teach us all about teenage behavior.My conversation today is with Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and Kathryn Bowers. They’ve been researching animal science together for the past ten years—and they’re also both mothers of young adults. Investigating the behaviors of wild animals while simultaneously wrangling teens at home caused them to identify similarities between teen adolescence and animal adolescence. Their book, Wildhood: The Astounding Connections Between Human and Animal Adolescents, discusses how we can use research on animals to help our teens grow up safe, confident, and independent.The key according to Barbara and Kathryn is getting your adolescents’ four main needs met...Click for full show notes, exercises, and parenting scripts from this episode