Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen

The Essential Conversations You Need to Have with Your Kids Before They Start High School

By: Michelle Icard

Narrated by: Michelle Icard

The 14 essential conversations to have with your tween and early teenager to prepare them for the emotional, physical, and social challenges ahead, including scripts and advice to keep the communication going and stay connected during this critical developmental window.

"This book is a gift to parents and teenagers alike." (Lisa Damour, PhD, author of Untangled and Under Pressure)

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, including:

• What phrases invite connection and which irritate kids or scare them off
• The best places, times, and situations in which to initiate talks
• How to keep kids interested, open, and engaged in conversation
• How to exit these chats in a way that keeps kids wanting more

Like a Rosetta Stone for your tween's confounding language, Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen is an essential communication guide to helping your child through the emotional, physical, and social challenges ahead and, ultimately, toward teenage success.

This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF of conversation starters to have with your kids.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 Michelle Icard (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“There’s no such thing as The Talk anymore. To raise the healthiest, most resilient kids, parents need to have hundreds of talks over many years. With Michelle Icard’s big-picture framing of what to cover and deep dive into how you can say it all, the task will be much less daunting. It might even be fun.” (Cara Natterson, MD, author of Decoding Boys: New Science Behind the Subtle Art of Raising Sons)

“Fourteen (Talks) by (Age) Fourteen offers incredible insight and empathy to both young adolescents and their stressed-out parents. Icard makes clear that the stakes are high - we must not shy away from these crucial conversations with our children. This book is the guide we’ve been waiting for.”—­ (Devorah Heitner, PhD, author of Screenwise: Helping Kids Thrive (and Survive) in Their Digital World)

“An incredibly user-friendly and straightforward guide. A must-read for caregivers of adolescents, providing readers with the necessary tools to talk to their tweens and sustain happy and healthy relationships.” (Booklist)

A must read for all pre teen and teenage parents!

A must read for parents of 10-16 year olds, even older teens and parents can benefit from this book.

Reansonable conversations

To me, this read like a dialogue to determine what is healthy development and where interventions may be necessary. Although I tend to crave more concrete data and case studies, I didn’t feel deprived of facts and statistics. This is a good resource for parents to help their children navigate their life in a balanced and supportive manner.

Very helpful

wish I would have had this book before I was in the midst of raising my 14 year old granddaughter. Needed it at least before middle school. Addresses current teen issues...very up to date. Will listen to a few more times....lots of great information.

Very informative

I will be referencing this for my two daughters as well as for my high school students.

Realistic & so useful

This book is upfront, honest, realistic and so so helpful to parents! Even with a lot of knowledge in this area already, I learned a lot and found the many examples incredibly helpful!

Outstanding!

Wonderful book - I am using things I’ve learned from Icard not only with my 11 year old, but also with my 16 year old.

Great book for post COVID middle schoolers

I have a 13 year old son who missed a year of school due to COVID and returned as an 8th grader. This book validates their personality, attitude, and suggestions on how to talk and reason with them. I definitely enjoyed this book and learned a lot. Most of my concerns turned to “normalcy” and needed to hear it.

Makes teenage years feel manageable

Sound practical advice. Really makes middle school years and beyond feel less intimidating. We've been trying out techniques and so far it's going really well with our 11 year old. I have the hard copy but really found listening to it was like having coffee with a friend who's been there and you trust.

educational/helpful

book suggests a variety of good ways to talk about a variety of important topics

Hopeful mom

Loved this book! I've struggled with being a parent from the beginning, having being brought up with very strict overbearing parents myself. Having a child in high school, one middle school and some in elementary school, I felt like I was caught in a whirlwind with the storm only getting worse! This book helped cover a lot of my fears I have as a parent and made me see that I am defensively parenting due to my own fears and insecurities. This book has given me the tools and guidance I needed to parent more offensively. It's helped me realize that with patience, love, and understanding for my children it will help create the unique individual children that I Hopefully will raise. I love the BRIEF algorithm and all the examples that she gives. I feel like a book has given me a better road to help me navigate through the difficulties being a parent.