Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Parenting: advice & issues

AND THEN THEY STOPPED TALKING TO ME

Judith Warner

Making Sense of Middle School

The bestselling author of Perfect Madness trains her eye on the middle-school years: why they're so painful, how parents unwittingly make them worse, and what we can do about it.

The French have a name for the uniquely hellish years between elementary school and high school: "l'âge ingrat" or "The Ugly Age." Characterized by a perfect storm of developmental changes--physical, psychological, and social--the middle-school years, roughly the ages 11-14, are a time of great distress for parents and children alike, marked by hurt, isolation, exclusion, competition, anxiety, and often outright cruelty. Some of this is inevitable; there are intrinsic challenges to early adolescence. But these years are harder than they need to be, and Judith Warner believes that adults are complicit.

With piercing insight and compassion, Warner walks us through a new understanding of the role that the adolescent school years play in all our lives. She argues that today's parents are overly concerned with status and achievement--in some ways a residual effect of their own early teen experiences--and that this is worsening the self-consciousness, self-absorption and social "sorting" so typical of early adolescence.

Tracing a century of research on middle childhood and bringing together the voices of social scientists, psychologists, educators, and parents, Warner shows how adults can be moral role models for children, making them more empathetic, caring, and resilient. She encourages us to start treating middle schoolers as the complex people they are, holding them to high standards of kindness, and helping them see one another as more than "jocks and mean girls, nerds and sluts." Part cultural critique and part call to action, this essential book unpacks one of life's most formative periods and shows how we can help our children not only survive it, but thrive.

Judith Warner is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety and Hillary Clinton: The Inside Story, as well as the highly acclaimed We've Got Issues: Children and Parents in the Age of Medication. A senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, Warner has been a frequent contributor to the New York Times, where she wrote the popular Domestic Disturbances column, as well as numerous other publications.

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Book Published 2020-05-05 by Crown

Comments

Grounded in unforgettable interviews, with a sharp eye for the apt quotation and anecdote, and packed with fresh insights into the relevant psychological and sociological literature, this captivating book cuts across the boundaries of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation to lay bare the realities of pre-teen life today and the damaging imprint those experiences and memories impart upon our future identities, interpersonal relationships, and emotional expectations.

Warner has written a compulsively readable book, a cross between The Breakfast Club and Desperate Housewives. I only wish I'd had it on my bedside table when my own kids were adolescents. But I'd actually recommend it for parents at any stage, as it holds a mirror up to us as much as to our kids, and indeed to society as a whole. We created the whole concept of middle school and its associated traumas; it's time to free ourselves!

Fascinating... Well researched... Judith Warner interviews scores of fellow middle school survivors in her accomplished and highly readable new book... She also gets personal with her tales of middle school woe - both as former student and as a parent.

If your child's middle school journey is unraveling you, Warner's new book is the one you need to read. She will give you the gift of perspective, along with a personal and scientific understanding of what is happening to your child. I have often advised parents not to allow themselves to be sucked back into middle school when they see their children's distress or hear their war stories. But I had no guidebook to offer them. Now I do.

As the parent of a middle schooler, I felt as if Judith Warner had peered into my life - and the lives of many of my patients. With clarity, compassion, and insight, And Then They Stopped Talking to Me brilliantly captures the landscape of today's kids' experiences and the psychological, familial, and cultural forces shaping them. Along the way, Warner debunks age-old myths and offers practical guidance that every parent can use. This is a gift to our kids and their future selves.

Judith Warner has written the book that every parent of every adolescent needs and has not been able to find. It not only helps us decipher what's going on inside our middle schoolers' hearts and minds, but also gives us concrete advice on what to do about it. I found myself wishing I'd had it when my children were younger. Then I found myself wishing that my mother had it when I was younger. Middle school is a monstrous roller coaster ride. Warner helps us heal our own still-bruised psyches so we can actually help our children.

Book was chosen as one of their 40 Must-Read Fiction and Nonfiction Books to Savor This Spring: Why is middle school so bad? Warner uses the perspective of both kids and adults to analyze why, what we can do to help middle schoolers and how we can make that time happier and more successful. Read more...

In And Then They Stopped Talking to Me, Judith Warner reminds us of the emotional, psychological, and cognitive demands of early adolescence - both our own and that of our children. With her usual sharply tuned ability to chronicle the traumatic in the ordinary, Warner reminds us of our primary role with our middle school children: to remain steadfastly compassionate and to help them make sense of the chaotic and unforgiving world they often live in. An indispensable parents' companion for navigating one of the most challenging and extraordinary stages in life.

A fascinating entry on the middle school years and the struggles both children and adults face during this time.

It's been over 40 years and I still get a knot in my stomach when I drive by my hometown junior high school. Judith Warner's remarkable, compassionate, fascinating look at the terrifying abyss that is called middle school has given me a perspective and insight that I only wish I'd had decades ago. It's a must.

Judith Warner brilliantly challenges the assumption that middle school has to be a chalkboard jungle, offering both fascinating social history and practical advice on a life-stage that sends many adults into a PTSD spiral. She shows how, by compassionately revisiting their own pasts, parents can truly support early adolescents in developing the building blocks for long-term happiness and resilience, ultimately making those years better - for ourselves and, most importantly, for our children.

Warner's subjects' memories of bad behavior include bullying, shunning, shaming, and physical assault by former best friends, mean girls, cool kids, and sometimes even parent-to-parent. As Warner digs deeper, it becomes apparent that these hurtful episodes and feelings of exclusion are probably universal, and represent understandable reactions to seesawing emotions and hormonal swings. Her advice? Parents must keep channels of communication open, and model socially acceptable behavior, even in the face of wildly unpredictable and immature actions. This readable, relatable, and well-documented account makes sense, and should help families survive the middle school years.

In this call for change, a bestselling author examines the often painful middle school years and offers parents sound advice that will enable their children to become more empathetic, caring, and resilient.

It's easy to feel overwhelmed parenting a middle school child. Judith Warner gives us the historical context to understand that we didn't get so anxious about this period for no reason. I learned a tremendous amount reading this book!

If middle school is as fraught for you as a parent as it is for your child, Judith Warner's honest, raw writing on the topic offers a dose of sanity in the midst of what often feels like fresh madness. Filled with wry humor and a reassuring sense of dealing with someone who's been in the trenches, And Then They Stopped Talking to Me will get you talking about the middle school experience in a way that will ease the journey for everyone in your family.

This deeply researched and deeply empathetic book is one that every parent, every teacher and every school counselor, administrator, and would-be reformer should read. Judith Warner challenges us to think beyond the stereotypes, the headlines, the hype and our own often painful memories of trying to find our footing in the adult world and offers a compassionate portrait of what it means to grow up in America, what kids really need, and the universal drive to belong.

Much has been written about our maddening middle schoolers, but little about their parents. Warner remedies this omission by demonstrating - through history and horror stories, research and reflection - how by reliving our own anxieties and traumas, we wind up arming our middle schoolers for battle rather than equipping them for kindness. We swallow our kids' emotions and pain, then wonder why we feel sick. In this revelatory, original book, Warner shows there's a better way, one marked by a balance of connection, distance, and empathy - for other kids as much as our own.

This book is many wonderful things: a fascinating tour of the history of early adolescence; a powerful exploration of the ways our own experiences as former adolescents can reverberate across our lives; a masterful assembly of research and insightful, propulsive reporting. Perhaps most importantly, it illuminates how we as adults can do the most essential work of all - raise children, at a time in their lives when we may find them alienating and infuriating, to be happy people who care about others and about creating a more just world.

I don't know a single adult who did not feel alone, insecure, or deeply self-conscious in middle school. Judith Warner puts the pieces of the puzzle together to show us just how not-alone we were - and gives us the knowledge to guide our children through one of the most painful moments of childhood.