Michelle Icard has one of the essential books for parents that have teens, tweens, or even children that will be starting intermediate to junior high. Overall it is an informative book that helps you understand, as a parent, that children will start gradually pulling away from parents. It is more of emotional readiness. As a parent, you will blink and your eight-year-old will become an eighteen-year-old telling you bye as they drive away to college. Children are curious and want their parents there when they need your advice or guidance. I highly recommend this informative book for all parents that are beginning to navigate through the teen years.
Thank you, NetGalley and Random House for the ARC.

All I can say is where was Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen: The Essential Conversations You Need to Have with Your Kids Before They Start High School by Michelle Icard before my daughter turned 15? This book would have been great to be able to read about 5 years ago. Would recommend to anyone with children in middle school. #FourteenTalksbyAgeFourteen #NetGalley

This is a super fun read. I really enjoyed this one!

Many thanks to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

This book is really insightful! As an elementary school teacher, I felt pretty confident about child development through the tween years -- but I definitely need some support to get our family through the teen years.

LOVE! She clearly knows her stuff and writes like it's a conversation. These strategies are so great for tweens and also the others in our fam. I love this!

Some of the topics in this book are what you might expect from a book about talking with your tween/teen - sexuality, technology, money. Others are less obvious – creativity, fairness, hard work. I love that the author takes such a holistic approach to teen development, focusing as much on creating positive habits as mitigating risky behaviors. The talks are also not overly prescriptive, providing just enough guidance for you to speak to your child without sounding too scripted. I’ve tried out Michelle’s approach with both my 14- and 10-year-old boys and it works!

As a parent of a middle schooler, I have been eagerly looking forward to Michelle Icard's follow-up to Middle School Makeover. In 14 Talks by Age 14, she gives loads of practical, useful wisdom on how to broach some of the most difficult topics that come up in adolescence. The BRIEF model she uses provides a great framework for starting a discussion, with the flexibility to adapt to your own family's needs. While much of what was discussed are things we already do, reading this book definitely helped identify the weak spots where my spouse and I could do better! I highly recommend to anyone who is looking to build or maintain two-way dialogue with their tween or teen, built on trust rather than just lecturing them.

With two daughters, ages 12 and 11, this book could not have come at a better time. I have noticed the shift from little girl to tween and have been struggling with how to understand and communicate. I learned very quickly that even though my girls are very different in their path to teen hood and independence, everything we are experiencing is completely normal and that with a minor shift in my own attitude and a few new techniques for communicating we can get through this together. Michelle helps us recognize the many challenges that we face in this stage of parenthood while providing a handbook for successfully navigating those challenges. She provides very practical topics and scenarios along with dialogues for parents to confidently help their teens manage the ups and downs of adolescence. The BRIEF model is such a simple technique that makes conversations less confusing and more meaningful for both the parent and the their child. This book is an excellent guide that will serve as a reference for me over the next several years.

This book was incredibly timely as my daughter approaches 13 this summer. While we have and will continue to have these important conversations referenced in the book, I found a lot of comfort in Icard's words as well. Middle school is ROUGH and it's hard as a parent not to internalize some of the drama.

This book hits it out of the park with advice on how to talk to your middle-school aged kids about anything and everything. It is filled with practical advice, real-life scenarios, and realistic conversation possibilities. As a long-time middle school educator, I believe that this book is a gold mine for parents wondering about how to tackle both everyday conversations AND tough topics with your kids. . Skip the battling, and engage in conversation! I found it helpful as an educator and also got some great tips for use with my own adult children as well--you are never to old to learn!

The book Fourteen Talks by Age 14 is a book that every parent of a teen or preteen should read. It is filled with straightforward advice on how to build and maintain an open communication relationship with your child. Parenting a teenager today is fraught with many concerns and issues that were not faced by parents in the past including: social media, bullying, and increased use of drugs. This book explores and explains about how to have those difficult conversations with your child in order to help him/her through the teenage years. The communication style presented by this book is called the BRIEF model. The steps are as follows: begin peacefully, relate to your child, interview, echo, and feedback. These steps are clearly explained and easy to follow. As explained in the book, the foundation of having better conversations with your teen is earning trust and building support. There are so many helpful tips to communicating with your teen including: conversation crashers, how to talk to your child about fun stuff, how to have rewarding conversations with your teen. So many important conversational topics are explored in this book and examined through role plays and examples including: friendship, money, independence, taking care of yourself, fairness, and sexuality. I highly recommend this book to all parents of pre-teens and teens. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this advanced review copy for my honest review.

Michelle Icard once again gives practical and comforting advice for navigating life with teens and pre-teens, and I love the ways she makes understandable what we know about our children's growing brains and changing needs. I would highly recommend this book and Icard's thoughtful, supportive approach to tough topics. The psychologist and professor sides of me will recommend this to families and to my students learning to understand teens and families. The parent-of-a-teen side of me will keep this handy to remind me in times of teen/parent drama to keep it calm, Botox-browed, and BRIEF. Thanks, Michelle, for this clear, friendly, and helpful guide!

There's a saying that kids don't come with guidebooks, but as far as parenting tweens and teens, this is the closest thing you will find to one. Michelle Icard's newest book is full of tips on how to communicate with middle schoolers in a nuanced and relatable way. I have found her guidance to be invaluable with my own kids (ages 12 and 10) and will recommend this book to everyone I know who interacts with kids of any age. A real gem!

I have truly enjoyed reading “Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen”, by Michelle Icard. The book is packed with amazing advice about navigating the teenage years, broken down into 14 “conversations”. You can pick and choose the conversations that are most pertinent to you at any time, or read them all as I have done!!

I realize Michelle can’t raise my teens for me, so having her guidance allows me to learn from her vast experience and hopefully make my family’s journey more smooth and enjoyable! Thank you for sharing your guidance!!

As a parent with no small amount of self-doubt, it was great to find this book that covered a lot of ground in a straightforward and non-judgmental manner. The author approaches a variety of topics with lots empathy, for the kids and for the parents, breaking conversations down in a practical way. I think this would be a great resource for parents of teens wondering how to navigate potentially thorny conversations that are nevertheless important.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I like the first part that helped parents to make sure they had the tools, so to speak, to have these conversations. But I was worn out by the time I got to the 2nd part and the 14 conversations. I am probably too impatient to read all that stuff in each chapter to get to the nitty gritty. Even the "crash course" section didn't seem to help me get my mind around "the" conversation I needed to be having. It seemed to me these are conversations you need to perpetually be actively pursuing with your child.

Michelle Icard lays out an easy to follow, casual formula for talking to your tween. The topics range from common sense living advice to more serious issues such as consent and sexuality. The book features a quick "crash course" at the end of each chapter to highlight the key points presented.

This was such a great book. Easy to read and accessible. I wouldn't say that it was groundbreaking per se but the way that she puts all the information together and frames it is really useful. I felt like I could have all of these items in my back pocket and address them as the time comes. Sometimes books like this aren't practical or easy to do, but this one was. Highly recommend!

Having been a middle school teacher for twenty years I knew this book would be filled with plenty of wisdom that I had already picked up on. As a parent of an eleven and fourteen year old I read it anyway. I'm so glad I did. We've had some very difficult conversations with my daughter over the last six months or so and I know that we have more ahead of us with her as well as with my son. Michelle Icard's BRIEF model is a valuable tool to use and easy to remember so I expect to put it into good use. I loved her real-world examples and I love that the model is flexible enough to only use the parts necessary in a given situation. I would recommend this book to anyone that wants to create an open two-way dialogue with their kids instead of the automatic one-way lectures we so commonly steer towards.

This book is so refreshing!!! My daughter just turned 12, and is already experiencing some of the dynamics Michelle expressed in this book. I love how simply explained it was, and lots of examples. She even gave examples of WHAT NOT to say to make the situation worse. I am so grateful for this book and I know I will using it as a reference as my daughter gets older. I will definitely be recommending this book to my friends.