Middle School Makeover Guide: How to Improve Your Child's Middle School Experience | Parenting Tips & Strategies for Academic Success

Since I am a Family Connection Coach, I read a lot of books and blogs on the subject of parenting and recommend very few. Many leave me frustrated because they are short on the “how to” and even shorter on the “why?” when it comes to making the case for adjusting your parenting communication style. That is not true of Michelle Icard's new book, Middle School Makeover: Improving the Way You and Your Child Experience the Middle School Years.Icard has done a great job of summarizing all of the most recent neuropsychology research on the developing teen brain. This new research provides parents of middle schoolers with an alternative to the limiting and relationship-damaging view that the tween and teen years are something simply to be suffered through.Peppered with cultural references that those of us who grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s will enjoy revisiting. The references serve a greater purpose of helping you remember what it was like to experience the tween and teen years.Although Icard writes thoughtfully about using consequences and dangling carrots, this is one aspect of the book that I don't advocate simply because I believe strongly that these create power struggles that can be avoided with the communication skills taught in the Gordon model, developed by Dr. Thomas Gordon. Having said that, that is the only caveat that I have to add as there is much in Middle School Makeover that makes this book a very welcome addition to the parenting genre.Thank you, Michelle Icard, for helping to raise the level of discourse around the topic of parenting it is a very welcome change!