Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen

I saw Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen: The Essential Conversations You Need to Have with Your Kids before They Start High School by Michelle Icard recommended somewhere and got it from the library on audiobook. I figured this was a good time to read it since I'm coming up on my daughter starting high school next year. The book description says, "Trying to convince a middle schooler to listen to you can be exasperating. Indeed, it can feel like the best option is not to talk! But keeping kids safe—and prepared for all the times when you can't be the angel on their shoulder—is about having the right conversations at the right time. From a brain growth and emotional readiness perspective, there is no better time for this than their tween years, right up to when they enter high school. Distilling Michelle Icard's decades of experience working with families, Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen focuses on big, thorny topics such as friendship, sexuality, impulsivity, and technology, as well as unexpected conversations about creativity, hygiene, money, privilege, and contributing to the family. Icard outlines a simple, memorable, and family-tested formula for the best approach to these essential talks, the BRIEF Model: Begin peacefully, Relate to your child, Interview to collect information, Echo what you're hearing, and give Feedback. With wit and compassion, she also helps you get over the most common hurdles in talking to tweens."

This was a good read. I thought it gave lots of helpful thoughts and good advice on how to structure conversations in a way that avoids a fight. Sometimes the examples didn't seem like the best way to handle a situation, but I also think the point is that every teenager handles things differently, so you have to kind of adjust the advice to fit your situation. I'm going to check out the physical copy of the book now so I can make note of a few things that were hard to keep track of in the audiobook version. Overall, I think books like this are definitely a helpful thing to read to just expand my mind in terms of parenting and give me more tools and ideas.

Rating: * * (2/3 = Liked it)