And Then They Stopped Talking to Me

Making Sense of Middle School

De: Judith Warner

Narrado por: Judith Warner

Duración: 7 h y 39 m

Resumen del Editor

Through the stories of kids and parents in the middle-school trenches, a New York Times best-selling author reveals why these years are so painful, how parents unwittingly make them worse, and what we all need to do to grow up.

“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. This is a gift to our kids and their future selves.” (Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone)

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 are a time of great distress for children and parents 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 deep insight and compassion, Warner walks us through a new understanding of the role that middle school plays in all our lives. She argues that today's helicopter parents are overly concerned with status and achievement - in some ways a residual effect of their own middle-school experiences - and that this worsens 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's book 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.

©2020 Judith Warner (P)2020 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

"As the parent of a middle schooler, I felt as if 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 kids' experiences today 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." (Lori Gottlieb, author of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone)

"I don't know a single adult who did not feel alone, insecure, or deeply self-conscious in middle school. 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." (Rachel Simmons, author of Odd Girl Out and Enough As She Is)

"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." (Michael G. Thompson, co-author of Raising Cain)

Only thing I've read that has helped JHS trauma

I actually had to stop listening to this book for several weeks because it felt so uncomfortable to re-experience junior high school feelings--but was just able to finish it. It was ultimately healing. Warner nailed it when she explains that that life stage caused lifelong trauma in adults but that they have left it unprocessed and unquestioned. Her book helps one do the thing that helps - reframe what happened, reframe who you thought you were, and as a result reframe who you are. She perceptively blames bad American junior high behavior on the values of the larger society--children of that age are not inevitably programmed to be morally reprehensible. Believe it or not, the idea that things didn't have to be the way they were, that the kids' personalities and social positioning behaviors weren't fixed in stone, that the me that is descended from that junior high self wasn't and is not fixed in stone, is a new idea. It allows empathy for people fixed in memory as enemies and empathy for a newly discovered and less flattering version of one's junior high self.

An outstanding book that gives cause to reflect.

We are not the author’s intended audience. We are in our mid seventies, married over 50 years. My wife and I listened to the entire book together, a chapter a day. We both considered chapter 7, an incredible chapter for the insight it provided. My wife was verbally bullied by other girls, at the start of seventh grade. She had been happy until then. She was not invited to birthday parties. That gave her very low self esteem and led to poor decisions. She felt she was worthless to humanity, until I came along, just after she graduated high school. She thought she was the only girl treated this way, in junior high. The book gave her tremendous insight into the fact that she was bullied, and that her treatment was not unique. The book in effect, made her feel normal. We have had a wonderful 50 year plus marriage, and as she has stated, “ I’ve had a wonderful life. It really depends on who you marry.”

Not a helpful book

Not a very helpful book for a teacher who teaches middle school. Used too many examples from the 70s and doesn’t seem to get the fact that kids this age exaggerate to appear cool. The last part of the book provided some good information but people might loose their interest before getting into the last part

Pointless: author offers no advice or insight.

This book was a complete waste of my time; I only listened to the the whole book hoping for some redeemable conversation and because I didn't want the time I had already invested listening to be for naught. The majority of the book is a review of the history of family life over the past century. It includes information that you'd have to have lived in a cave to not already know. In fact, the entire book is basic info of the life of adolescents that any adult and even child would have knowledge of simply from living in our society. It also focuses on places like NY and big city communities that have many issues that are not just common knowledge but do not apply to kids and communities in less wealthy or even middle-class, mid-sized cities or rural areas of the country. The author offers no advice or intelligent insight into modern life with middle school aged children. The book only becomes mildly interesting in the last couple of chapters, where the author finally begins discussing modern life.