14 Essential Conversations with Tweens: An Interview with Michelle Icard

By Elaine Griffin

Parents of middle schoolers dread ‘The Talk.’

When I was in middle school—what we called “junior high,” back in the day—The Talk featured the birds, bees, and a lot of contractions like “don’t,” “can’t,” and “shouldn’t.” Parents of today’s tweens have it worse, thanks to an intersection of sexuality and technology that’s made such talks even harder.

In the same way, conversations about drugs and alcohol are now more complicated because of vaping.

For parents feeling nervous about having conversations with their tweens on such topics—and admit it, that’s you—Michelle Icard’s “Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen: The Essential Conversations You Need to Have with Your Kids Before They Start High School” is sure to boost your confidence. Having read and loved Ms. Icard’s book, I recently interviewed her about how parents might establish effective communication with tweens on a range of tough topics.

Quantity Over Quality

For starters, some welcome, liberating news: Ms. Icard suggests that parents should spend less time worrying about making mistakes when engaging their tweens on high-stakes topics. Instead of trying to give the perfect lecture at the perfect time, she suggests, parents should initiate numerous smaller dialogues that evolve as students mature throughout middle school.

The goal and probable result: parents will develop a trusting, conversational rapport with their kids that will make more difficult conversations not only possible, but also probable and powerful. As this process can take years, she encourages parents to play the long game.

That’s what Ms. Icard herself has been doing; “Fourteen Talks” is her second variation on this theme, which she’d introduced in “Middle School Makeover: Improving the Way You and Your Child Experience the Middle School Years.” I asked Ms. Icard about what inspired her to follow this first book with “Fourteen Talks”; she said she was reflecting upon a “recurring theme” on a Facebook Parenting Group she facilitates.

Parents “wanted to talk to kids but were frustrated at how their kids responded,” she said, adding that verbal communication with tweens can be hard because “at age 11, kids are deep in the throes of separation. It’s a job of a tween to break with their family and find their own identity. This is why slang develops, whether in speech or through texting. Language, which is an important tool of connection, is something kids start to use to break from their parents.”

Add Structure to Your Conversations

To address the consequent challenges in communication, Ms. Icard developed a structure for
conversations, giving them a defined beginning, middle, and end. Her catchy acronym for her model? BRIEF (like this sentence).

“B stands for begin peacefully,” she explains in her book. “R is for relate; I triggers the interview part of the conversation; E reminds you to echo what you’re hearing; and F is the point at which you can give feedback.” Using this structure, Ms. Icard models a conversation for each topic she presents, thereby showing parents how this method can help forge genuine dialogue on just about anything. 

I asked Ms. Icard why brevity is essential.

“Getting in and out quickly works because tweens want their own thoughts and sense of autonomy,” she replied. “If a parent goes on too long, the lights go off. Tweens will think that you don’t trust them. It becomes a lecture. Instead, leave them wanting more. This approach also removes the burden of perfection from parents. They shouldn’t put off discussing a topic until they have it exactly right.”

Bottom line: a lot of smaller talks add up to deeper communication.

Beware of Conversation Crashers

Ms. Icard not only maps a road forward, she also offers helpful traffic signals along the way, including a series of well-marked STOP signs in a section of each chapter whose name speaks for itself: “Conversation Crashers.” (Don’t make me confess how many of those STOP signs I’ve blown through in my own conversations! We all have work to do!).

It’s not that Conversation Crashers are false. It’s just that such well-intentioned words of advice don’t work with tweens.

Here’s an example. In her chapter on friendships, one conversation crasher is “I wish people could see you the way I do.” Next to this, Ms. Icard writes, “barf, is what your kid will be thinking. No kid wants the other kids at school to see them the way their 45-year-old parent does.” And with the shopworn cliché “just remember to be kind to everyone,” Ms. Icard responds, “Your child is going to hear this and think it smacks of kindergarten. ... The middle school social world is too complex for such a simple approach.”

Describing middle-school friendship (melo)drama as a roller coaster ride, Ms. Icard warns parents to sit on the bench and hold their kids’ coats rather than clambering aboard. “Parents need to understand that it’s important for kids to experience the highs and lows of middle school,” she told me. “They do them a disservice when they intervene. Kids learn to self-regulate and how to cope when they deal with challenges.”

Deploying another illustrative metaphor, Ms. Icard invites parents to think of middle school as a sport. “What sport wouldn’t allow for scrimmages or bumping?” she rhetorically asked me. “That’s not real life. ... Kids need to fall a little bit to gain strength. They need to feel guilty and bad sometimes. It’s like touching a hot stove; such things teach them important lessons.”

Don’t Be an Expert

To foster the sort of independence that allows kids to ride and play without you, Ms. Icard encourages genuine curiosity when you talk with them. She even suggests that playing naïve helps fuel dialogue. “It’s no fun having a conversation with a know-it-all,” she points out. “Kids at this age are skeptical. They enjoy debate, though they aren’t very good at it.”

Give them room to debate, and they’ll get better at it–even as you get better at reading them.

Ms. Icard underscores that the point of these conversations is to build rapport, which will help immeasurably during the much harder conversations awaiting you during the high school years. If you get in the habit of more interactive conversations now, your distraught teen will develop the habit of coming to you later. If you take your tween’s opinions seriously now, they’ll trust that you’ll take them just as seriously later.

Most important: you don’t need to have all the answers. (Indeed, Ms. Icard encourages admitting that you don’t, and then subsequently sharing third-party research with your tween that might permit them to reach their own conclusions rather than accepting your word as gospel.) It’s hard enough being a parent without having to always be right. If you admit you don’t have all the answers, you’ll allow your child to ask more and better questions.

Develop a Checklist

Ms. Icard finished writing her book before a pandemic that’s left all of us with far more questions than answers. I asked her how the pandemic might influence her conversational models, which are often characterized by negotiation and concessions on both sides. How, for example, can her interactive model help a parent talk to a child pleading to attend a sleepover, despite health and safety concerns a child might not fully appreciate?

Ms. Icard recommends that parents “develop a checklist of things that would have to change” to permit their child to participate in risky activities. Checklists allow a parent to avoid a categorical “no” without saying “yes”; instead, checklists allow you to share your reasoning process while teaching tweens to reason for themselves.

An example: If your tween wants to hang out at the mall with friends rather than being chaperoned by a parent, create a checklist involving safety and citizenship that they must fulfill before you could say yes to their request. Even as you are saying “not now,” you’re making clear that there will be a “when,” at some point in the future. And you’re teaching your child how to get to yes. In short, you’re helping them evolve into the independent, accountable adults they’ll someday need to be.

Tweens Desire Independence

It’s therefore little wonder that Ms. Icard counts her chapter on independence as one of her favorites in the book; in a way, her entire book is designed to help you help your kids reach independence day.

Tweens’ desire for independence, she explains in this chapter, manifests itself in two important ways: cocooning in their rooms and exploring the world.

“When kids shut the door, they are cocooning, which is the flipside of exploring,” Ms. Icard said. “It is a new way to think, an ‘ah-ha moment’ for me.” Kids isolate themselves in their bedrooms because they need a safe haven, given all the changes they are experiencing with their rapidly evolving brains, bodies, and friendships. At the same time, kids also seek independence through exploration, whether that means going to the movies, the mall, or a sub shop with friends.

Both kinds of activities – one involving closing in on oneself and one involving reaching out to others–reflect tweens’ need for independence. Ultimately, such gradual separation from family results in teens who can feel comfortable in their own skin as they navigate the larger world.

How you yourself navigate these alternately challenging and rewarding years will depend on your particular child. Ms. Icard urges parents to listen hard because not all kids are the same; as with every conversation we have with another, we must learn to read the person we’re with so that our ensuing conversations are meaningful and productive. 

“The openness and vulnerability of kids comes with time,” Ms. Icard emphasized. “Some kids are super chatty, but some will be closed off at first. They may feel more open when they see how you react. It’s important to just start by dipping your toe in the water.” Full immersion and deeper dives will follow, allowing you and your child to swim together while ensuring you can always return to shore.

About Elaine Griffin:

Elaine Griffin has worked at University School of Milwaukee since 1998, serving as the head of Middle School since 2019. Previously, she served as the assistant head of Upper School and taught Upper School English. She has both a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in English, and served as the president of the Whitefish Bay Library.