Judith Warner, AND THEN THEY STOPPED TALKING TO ME
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[0:56]Due to the Warner, it's the author of And Then They Stop Talking to Me, Making Sense
[1:00]of Middle School.
[1:01]She is also the author of The New York Times Bestseller from 2005, Perfect Madness, Motherhood
[1:07]in the Age of Anxiety.
[1:08]And was a New York Times columnist for a column called Domestic Disturbances.
[1:13]She is a journalism fellow for the Women, Donors Network Reflective Democracy Campaign and
[1:17]a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
[1:20]Her last book was called We've Got Issues, Children and Parents in the Age of Medication
[1:24]and it received a 2010 Outstanding Media Award for Science and Health Reporting from the National
[1:29]Alliance on Mental Illness 2011 Changing Lives Award from the Parent Professional Advocacy League
[1:34]and a 2012 Friends of Children's Mental Health Media Award from the American Academy
[1:39]of Child and Adolescence Psychiatry.
[1:41]She was also awarded a 2012 to 13 Rosalind Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism.
[1:47]A former special correspondent for News Week in Paris, she hosted the Judith Warner show
[1:52]on Exem Satellite Radio from 2005 to 2007 and in 1993, she wrote a bestseller called
[1:57]Hillary Clinton, The Inside Stories, while with several other books.
[2:01]She's a frequent speaker on American Family Life, workplace issues in mental health,
[2:05]and currently lives in Washington, D.C.
[2:07]Welcome, Judith.
[2:08]Thanks so much for coming on Momstone.
[2:09]I have time to read books.
[2:10]It's my pleasure.
[2:11]I'm so glad to be here.
[2:12]I love this is like a continuation of our Instagram Live during which I had major technical
[2:17]difficulties.
[2:18]So I'm glad that we're doing this again in a different platform so we can get the
[2:21]full story from you.
[2:22]And you did a great interview anyway.
[2:24]So, hello.
[2:25]Thank you.
[2:26]And as I told you on that, this is such a treat for me because I remember years and years
[2:29]ago going to listen to you speak at my old grade school and just being like in awe
[2:34]of you.
[2:35]And now here we are, like I don't know, 15 years later and still talking so it's really
[2:39]cool for me.
[2:40]Well, great for me.
[2:42]And again, I'm flattered, flattered by all the nice things you've been saying.
[2:46]So can you please tell listeners what your latest book and then they stop talking to me
[2:50]is about.
[2:51]And then they stop talking to me is about making sense of middle school as the subtitle
[2:56]says.
[2:57]And I quoted only because it really does sum it up so well.
[3:01]And I can do it without seeming conceited because it was a friend of mine who came up with
[3:06]that wording rather than me.
[3:08]And she said it to me because I was, you know, we had the title and we were just struggling
[3:12]and struggling to have a good subtitle.
[3:15]And she said, yeah, I know I've been listening to all these years really when you've
[3:18]been trying to, you were caught up in, you know, making sense of it all.
[3:23]And I thought that I literally said to her, like, I got to go, I got to write that down.
[3:27]You know, it was so perfect because there's so much to make sense of in so many different
[3:32]ways.
[3:33]Many of us are haunted by our own middle school memories or junior high or people who are
[3:39]older and went to junior high school or in some parts of the country.
[3:42]They just still use the name of junior high school.
[3:46]Those are memories from that time are so powerful.
[3:49]They tend to be so strong.
[3:51]And for most people, though, not all, they tend to be really, really painful.
[3:57]And often people hold on to what happened to them at that time as almost determinative
[4:04]of what happened later or who they became.
[4:08]And that really fascinated me.
[4:10]I mean, that was the piece that fascinated me for decades.
[4:13]I mean, way before I was a mother.
[4:17]But there also is this making sense that parents encounter when their kids get to be in
[4:23]early adolescence, which for most correspond to middle school, and their kids change.
[4:29]And life gets a lot harder.
[4:31]Their world changes too.
[4:33]You know, sometimes the kids don't change so much as just the social environment that
[4:38]they're in, that that changes in generally not in a positive way.
[4:43]And parents want to be able to help their kids, and they also want to be able to help
[4:48]themselves if they are suffering through it too, which was my situation.
[4:54]And it's very hard because it's just very hard to have a sense of what's actually going
[4:59]on, or I certainly felt at the time, to find something to read that really helps you
[5:06]intellectually make sense of it as opposed to giving you like a five step how to, which
[5:13]and those things never speak to me.
[5:14]You know, I always want to understand things kind of on a deeper level.
[5:18]So that's what the book is about, answering those questions, and hopefully making people
[5:22]feel less alone with the pain they may either have brought forward from their own experience
[5:29]or be experiencing in the present, and also just have a greater sense of understanding
[5:36]and feel like they feel like they have a friend who gets how they're feeling, and
[5:42]understands what, you know, the questions they're asking themselves, and then can speak
[5:46]to that in an interesting and entertaining way.
[5:49]Well, I think you did that.
[5:52]Thank you.
[5:54]I liked how, so there were basically two different sort of goals and functions of the
[5:58]book that you addressed just now, but that we're so evident.
[6:03]With regard to your own middle schoolers, right, that their parents out there, like I have
[6:08]two middle schoolers who are picking up this book thinking, okay, this is how I'm going
[6:11]to get my kids to start talking to me.
[6:14]And then there are the people who are just sort of like having a PTSD moment about their
[6:18]own middle school existence that many people, as you point out in the book, haven't
[6:21]even thought about it since, don't like to talk about it, choose not to revisit it.
[6:25]You even mentioned someone in your book who was so flooded by bad feelings they had to
[6:29]go seek treatment after even talking to you about the middle school.
[6:32]Right.
[6:33]She was triggered.
[6:34]Her PTSD was triggered.
[6:35]I felt terrible.
[6:36]No, I mean, it's just like, it's a testament to how much you can sort of stuff these
[6:40]bad memories away.
[6:42]And the part that I found compelling of how you introduced even this whole topic is from
[6:47]your own first person experience about it.
[6:49]And then the topic was not, as we said in Instagram live, it wasn't just your kids
[6:54]not talking to you.
[6:55]It's that you remember girls not talking to you.
[6:58]This is one quote I want to read one that I'll stop talking.
[7:00]You wrote, I can still remember how it felt.
[7:03]The ground disappearing beneath my feet, not a single friendly face, not a word of recognition,
[7:08]much less reassurance.
[7:09]It was like one of those bad dreams where you're shouting and shouting and no sound comes
[7:13]out of your mouth.
[7:14]I felt utterly abandoned and completely powerless.
[7:16]I was in a black hole of pain and it seemed like there was no outside to it.
[7:20]So take me back for a minute to your own middle school experience, which clearly was upsetting
[7:25]enough that now you've written this book to sort of work through your own stuff and then
[7:30]also for your parenting of a middle school or experience.
[7:33]You know, everything that you said about that kind of dual approach is contained in the
[7:38]way people read the title.
[7:41]For me, the title was about that experience that I went through in eighth grade and that
[7:45]I found in my research where I interviewed just so many people about their middle school
[7:49]stories.
[7:50]You know, that's a really typical thing that happens, that ostracism that seems to come
[7:56]out of absolutely nowhere like one day you're fine and then the next day you come, no one's
[8:00]talking to you and you don't know why so many people have that experience.
[8:04]It's very common at that age.
[8:06]And you know, that was the perspective that I thought everybody would bring to the book
[8:12]when they saw the title.
[8:13]But in fact, immediately, as soon as we started having mock-ups of a cover, I realized
[8:18]because it was a big debate within the publishers that people were understanding it the other
[8:23]way that it was about how your kids stopped talking to you.
[8:27]And that was fascinating to me because I didn't anticipate it.
[8:30]And I thought in the end, well, that's great because more people, you know, can relate
[8:34]to it or at least be drawn into it.
[8:37]But I always think it's worth mentioning just in case people think, oh, well, that, you
[8:40]know, I didn't have that experience so it stopped for me.
[8:43]And yes, the book worked for me personally on both levels.
[8:47]When I started working on it, you know, what sort of compelled me to write it was the experience
[8:53]of being a middle school parent and how painful I found it.
[8:56]It just was miserable.
[8:57]I found I was really angry with the other moms, not with the other kids, but with the
[9:02]other moms in a way that felt very much the way I felt in seventh and eighth grade.
[9:08]And I knew that something was getting triggered because my reaction was too strong.
[9:13]And it was also, again, it was childish.
[9:17]It was middle schoolerish in the sort of the form that the emotion took and even it's
[9:24]not so much the way I did act on it, but the way that I wanted to act on it.
[9:29]You know, the things that would come to mind for these really kind of childish mean girl
[9:33]things, which I will say again, I didn't do, but that's how I felt.
[9:37]And I also noticed the moms around me, a lot of them seeming to go into a kind of regression.
[9:44]I mean, you had some who started really dressing and talking like their kids.
[9:49]There were a lot who were really caught up in sort of the swirl around popularity like their
[9:54]kids were.
[9:55]And then there were a lot who were just looking the way I was feeling looking real.
[10:00]pissed off withdrawing into themselves, sort of holding on to
[10:04]grudges against the other moms. And I knew about it because at
[10:08]least with one daughter, she was completely out of it so
[10:11]people would, you know, complain to other people, about
[10:14]other people to me. So I knew, you know, what they were
[10:17]feeling and why. And in the book, I combined my two
[10:20]daughters into one, protect their privacy, but it's
[10:23]harder to keep the conceit going when you're talking. So
[10:26]the working through was from the outset, really, about
[10:30]that experience. But you are absolutely right. What ended
[10:34]up happening once I started writing and this complicated
[10:37]the writing a lot is that I started working through my own
[10:40]experience from 30 years earlier and what I had carried
[10:44]forward into the present. And that was actually much harder.
[10:50]It had more of an emotional kick. And it complicated the
[10:53]writing a lot more. It sort of would send me off into
[10:56]different tangents. It would bring up a lot of emotion that I
[10:59]wasn't even aware of having. And even in one case, I
[11:04]noticed effectively affected me really badly as a as a
[11:07]journalist as an interviewer. You know, the interviews I did
[11:10]for the book were just amazing. People would talk that I
[11:13]would speak to them usually for two hours, at these one on
[11:16]one phone calls. And they would I would basically get their
[11:20]whole life, you know, wrapped up in that period of time. It
[11:23]was just they were incredible. But I interviewed a woman
[11:27]who I had gone to middle school with. And we were doing
[11:32]it actually over dinner. I hadn't seen her since the last
[11:34]day of eighth grade. And when I listened to the interview
[11:37]afterwards, I was so embarrassed because I was a terrible
[11:41]interviewer. I kept cutting her off. You know, I kept
[11:45]almost talking over her. I was so nervous that I was like
[11:49]talking a mile a minute and you know, doing all these bad
[11:52]interview tactics. So you end up with tons of me on the
[11:56]recording. And every time she's about to say something
[11:59]interesting, I get worked up and I cut her off. And I mean,
[12:02]so embarrassing tells you. Well, now I'm afraid to talk
[12:06]because I'm worried you're going to think I'm about an
[12:07]a rear. I already didn't interview with you and you're not
[12:10]like that at all. There was a part in the book where you go
[12:14]visit a middle school, I think, and you start talking about
[12:17]all your own experience with the cool kids and the one girl
[12:21]who's staring down and not talking and you identify right away
[12:24]that clearly she's being shunned right now and you don't know
[12:26]why. And you start opening up not just about journalistic
[12:29]techniques, but your own experience and next thing you knew
[12:33]every every kid in the room was hanging on your every word.
[12:35]And that's sort of how I felt reading this book. And I think
[12:38]why it can be helpful for people in all different stages of
[12:41]going through middle school. What was it like when you
[12:44]realized you sort of had that not power necessarily, but that
[12:47]shared experience and comment with people even going through
[12:50]it right then and how much it helped to share it.
[12:54]It was very exciting because I had no plans going into working on
[12:59]this book to actually interview middle schoolers. And the the
[13:04]main reason was that there are other writers who have written
[13:07]really great books where they immerse themselves in the world of
[13:12]middle schoolers, Peggy Orenstein did Linda Pearlstein did and
[13:16]then and then there are others too. Those are just the, you know,
[13:19]those are two of my my favorite authors. And I felt like
[13:22]their books were fabulous and and stood and, you know, there
[13:27]was no reason to add to that frankly. Also, I was really
[13:31]interested in the adult experience. I'm, you know, I write
[13:34]about adults. That's that's consistently what I write about
[13:38]adult ideas, adult behavior and how adults relate to each other
[13:42]kind of through their kids. And I ended up in that class
[13:45]room in the school you're talking about. It was actually a
[13:48]K through eight private school. And I was waiting, I was
[13:51]supposed to be talking to the head of the middle school for
[13:55]whatever reason I had to wait and somebody sort of ushered me
[13:58]into a classroom and put me in the back just to have me
[14:01]somewhere I think. And they were doing this really was an
[14:03]English class. They were doing this really boring grammar
[14:06]exercise. And then they started talking about their passion
[14:08]projects and the teacher, you know, want to meet it, talk to
[14:11]them and and sort of share techniques for how they might go
[14:14]about doing their research. And, you know, I had no idea how
[14:18]eighth graders should do their research. I mean, because my
[14:20]techniques were not really, I think relevant for them, but
[14:24]also at that point, it was early on. And I had no idea what I
[14:27]was doing to be perfectly honest. My life was incredibly
[14:29]chaotic. And I was kind of barely making it, making it through
[14:33]work wise. And so I, you know, I said a couple of stupid
[14:38]things. And then I just started talking to them about the book
[14:41]to fill the time. And I talked about, I just started telling
[14:45]my own story that story you told about, about being
[14:48]ostracized and about how that story had stayed with me
[14:51]after. And it was my main memory, my main memory of middle
[14:55]school generally was I could remember every instance of
[14:58]victimization. And when I got to be an adult, though, and I
[15:03]started trying to write about this and this, you know, way
[15:06]prediate to just this book, that I started to discover that
[15:10]things were not at all what they seemed that there was a
[15:12]whole lot I had left out. And they were at that point really
[15:18]holding on to it because they, I mean, they were sort of sitting
[15:22]forward in their seats with their mouths hanging open. And it
[15:25]was amazing because when I looked at that girl who was there,
[15:29]but not there, you know, she was in the classroom, but it was
[15:32]as though she was, I don't know, as though she had like a glass
[15:36]box around her in the, in the sense that everyone treated her
[15:39]like she was invisible and, and she looked like she was
[15:42]trying to shrink into invisibility. I knew exactly how that
[15:45]felt. And though I didn't know what the drama was that it
[15:48]bled up to that, I imagined it was something relatively
[15:51]similar. And also, again, these are such common stories I
[15:54]know now. And I didn't get to go any further because the person
[15:58]I was supposed to interview came in just at that point and
[16:02]looked kind of annoyed because I hadn't been cleared to talk
[16:04]to the kids. And I hadn't thought of it, you know, just when
[16:06]I was called to do so because for one thing, I was very
[16:09]nervous to do so. It was a classroom of popular kids and they
[16:12]may be nervous. It really changed everything though. For one
[16:17]thing, I realized just as you said, like these stories are
[16:21]actually important. And it is important if possible to talk to
[16:25]kids, whether in the course of the research or after, because
[16:28]maybe as adults, if we can, maybe we can kind of speed the
[16:33]process of whatever drama is playing out there up a little bit.
[16:38]So it comes to a resolution a little bit faster, and we
[16:41]spare them some of this pain. And also, you know, the fact
[16:44]that I was saying things were not as they seem, things are
[16:46]not so black and white. That was important for everybody in
[16:50]the room because they think in a very black and white way at
[16:53]that age, parents even more so today thinking a very black and
[16:59]white way because they want to really rush to their kids
[17:01]defense. And that does not help them. So I do hope now that it
[17:06]is out, that there will be opportunities, you know, once I
[17:10]don't know, once life goes a bit back to normal to speak with
[17:14]middle schoolers, even if, you know, life stays abnormal for
[17:17]a long time, it's I do it by zoom or something, because I
[17:21]just feel like it would be helpful. And at the very least, it
[17:25]would be interesting for them.
[17:26]Absolutely, especially your findings that people who peak in
[17:31]middle school generally aren't as happy as people who peak
[17:34]later and that the characteristics that make you popular in
[17:38]seventh and eighth grade are not necessarily those that will
[17:41]give you prolonged popularity even or success in life. So I
[17:45]think that when everything seems so important and magnified
[17:49]when you're in middle school, having the perspective that
[17:53]actually, the research shows that, you know, that girl who's
[17:56]having all the parties, this might not be, this isn't the
[17:59]be all an end all that this is their other things that are more
[18:02]important, things like that. So I think that perspective is also
[18:04]really helpful. I think it's really important. I think there was a
[18:08]psychologist I interviewed relatively early on who specialises
[18:11]in working with girls of that age. And she said to me that age
[18:16]and throughout their teen years. And she said, you know, often
[18:19]the ones who are super popular in seventh and eighth grade get
[18:22]to tenth grade. And the social skills they had that worked for
[18:25]them really, really well at the time, don't are not working for
[18:29]them anymore. And they have kind of a crisis and they come to
[18:32]me. And I interviewed people who had those stories exactly. And
[18:38]then saw in the in the clinical research, you know, large scale
[18:42]studies that that bore that out in, you know, slicing and
[18:46]dicing what popularity means in a lot of different ways. And
[18:50]looking at the how and why it is that the kind of popularity
[18:55]kids have if they are in the popular crowd in middle school
[18:59]doesn't serve them well as they get further on in high school
[19:02]in college and young adulthood. And there's a lot we can do
[19:07]for kids. First of all, just that storyline I think is
[19:10]definitely interesting and fun for them, you know, for for
[19:14]a variety of reasons. But it gives us the opportunity also to
[19:18]sort of deconstruct the nature of popularity, you know, on
[19:22]what it means. The fact that there are two kinds of popularity
[19:25]that social scientists study, there's the kind where people
[19:28]actually like you, which is the popularity we have in
[19:31]adulthood, I think. And then there's the kind of popularity
[19:34]that comes from having power and being high status. And that's
[19:39]the kind of popularity that kids care about the most in
[19:43]middle school. And that tends to come with all of these
[19:47]negative side effects. The first kind, it's great. But it's
[19:51]the second kind that that everyone is thinking about when they're,
[19:55]you know, 11, 12, and 13. And of course, we know as
[19:58]parents that when you're kids.
[20:00]It is excluded or hurt or shunned or anything.
[20:03]You feel it as well as they do.
[20:05]And you even sit in your book
[20:06]that you learned that, quote,
[20:07]watching your child be rejected socially
[20:09]can be a form of misery that's every bit as bad
[20:12]as being a middle school or yourself.
[20:14]So in actuality,
[20:15]the pain that we feel as parents is actual,
[20:18]like legitimate sorrow and a hurt when we watch it.
[20:22]So having the tools to put things in perspective
[20:25]and help the kids understand their own middle school
[20:27]experience is actually really beneficial to us.
[20:31]He is hugely beneficial.
[20:33]And the lessons I learned in the course of writing this book
[20:37]from all of this research that I combed through
[20:40]from hearing stories, from talking to people,
[20:43]even though my kids are, by now, of course,
[20:45]well out of middle school,
[20:47]those lessons stayed with me
[20:49]and were really important just for understanding
[20:52]social dynamics in general and coming to peace
[20:55]and coming to peace with the past
[20:57]because those, I think it actually is more painful
[21:01]to see your child be rejected or excluded or worse,
[21:05]of course, bully that.
[21:05]I'm not talking about bullying
[21:07]because it tends to be a more extreme case
[21:10]and sort of a problem in it of itself.
[21:12]And again, there are other excellent books on that,
[21:16]including one by Emily Bazzalon, which is great.
[21:18]I'm talking about the more mundane kind of nastiness
[21:22]and unhappiness.
[21:24]I think it could potentially hurt to more
[21:26]than having it happen to you.
[21:27]And the reason is it lasts longer, the pain lasts longer.
[21:32]And also it's happening to the person you love more
[21:36]than anyone or anything on the planet.
[21:38]And so, and and you're powerless.
[21:41]You can't do anything about it.
[21:42]So that combination just makes it killer.
[21:45]But if you have more both emotional
[21:48]and intellectual tools for dealing with it,
[21:52]it becomes so much easier
[21:54]because you can talk to them about it more productively.
[21:57]You can talk to yourself about it more productively.
[22:00]And if necessary, you can talk to the school
[22:02]or encourage them to talk to the school
[22:04]in a way that is going to be actually useful
[22:07]and hopefully productive as opposed
[22:09]to making matters worse, which unfortunately,
[22:13]we often do, you know, even with the best of intentions.
[22:16]So true.
[22:17]You know, there were a couple moments in the book
[22:19]where you referred to situations
[22:21]where you were kind of staring out at people
[22:24]but not really seeing them.
[22:25]That you had your head in the clouds
[22:27]or you were thinking about something else
[22:28]or you were zoning out.
[22:30]And I just wanted to ask you about those things.
[22:33]And because you made some joke in the beginning
[22:34]about how you, if that sounds like you
[22:36]and that you just didn't even notice them
[22:38]when people thought you were staring at them.
[22:40]And in a mean way, you just weren't even seeing them.
[22:42]I was just wondering what that was about.
[22:44]Well, in my opening anecdote, you know,
[22:46]I talk about the ostracism and our homeroom teacher.
[22:49]And this was very unusual for the time
[22:50]because teachers didn't usually get involved.
[22:52]Actually set up a kind of, I don't know, confrontation
[22:56]to have us talk it out because it was so ugly.
[22:59]And I can still, I mean, I sort of painted it in the book
[23:02]and then I can just remember it so well.
[23:05]There was a ringleader, you know,
[23:07]who was really kind of creating the situation
[23:10]and then the followers.
[23:11]I mean, it's always like this.
[23:11]So the followers were sitting in the box.
[23:13]She was sitting up front
[23:14]and she was very calmly and sweetly laying out,
[23:16]you know, why everyone hated me.
[23:18]And one of the reasons was that I,
[23:21]I thought I was better than everyone else
[23:23]and I looked through people, you know,
[23:25]like they didn't exist.
[23:26]And I remember, I mean, I didn't think I was better
[23:29]than everyone else.
[23:30]Certainly, I was actually, I felt terrible about myself
[23:33]as kids that age often do, especially girls.
[23:36]But the thing of looking through people like they didn't exist,
[23:40]I knew was actually probably true.
[23:42]I wasn't aware of doing it.
[23:44]But when she said it, it kind of resonated
[23:46]because if that was happening,
[23:49]I mean, I don't think at the time actually,
[23:50]it dawned on me that I was doing it.
[23:52]But I didn't deny it.
[23:54]And I thought to myself, unfortunately, didn't say,
[23:56]I don't see them.
[23:57]And that's true.
[24:00]I mean, that and that is a form of spaceiness.
[24:04]You can call it what you will.
[24:05]You could call it mild ADHD or self obsession
[24:09]or, you know, the description for it can be, you know,
[24:12]more or less judgmental and negative.
[24:14]But I, you know, I know now that it's true
[24:18]because someone called me out for it just a couple of years ago.
[24:21]And once again, I wasn't aware of doing it
[24:23]because I was actually about to do a speaking event,
[24:26]very nervous about it, playing out in my mind
[24:29]what I was gonna say.
[24:30]And I happened to be standing with somebody I knew
[24:32]and did not say hello, like just ignored him.
[24:35]I didn't see him, literally didn't see him.
[24:38]And, you know, the thing about, you know,
[24:41]those kinds of behaviors that that age,
[24:43]you need to become aware of how you impact the world,
[24:46]not just how the world impacts you.
[24:49]Otherwise, you just feel like a victim all the time, right?
[24:51]People are angry with you, people are grasping you,
[24:53]people don't like you.
[24:54]And they are attributing motivations to you,
[24:57]which are not right, you know, very often,
[25:00]certainly in my case.
[25:01]But there was a behavior coming from me
[25:04]that was upsetting other people.
[25:06]And I was completely unaware of it.
[25:08]And I, you know, tell this and share it,
[25:11]one because a lot of that has to do with,
[25:15]oh gosh, with traits, with personality,
[25:18]with, in some cases, mental health stuff,
[25:20]with, you know, with all kinds of kind of mechanical elements
[25:23]of who we are, that tend to stay with us throughout our lives
[25:27]that we tend not to be aware of
[25:28]unless someone points it out to us.
[25:30]And if adults can make middle schoolers more aware
[25:34]of their behavior and its effect on others,
[25:37]they'll not only make life easier for the kids
[25:40]and easier for those around them potentially,
[25:42]but certainly easier for them
[25:44]and make them feel more empowered
[25:46]and less like victims most of the time.
[25:48]But they'll also be setting themselves up later in life
[25:52]not to keep making the same mistakes over and over again.
[25:55]These are social skills, you know,
[25:57]kids need to be taught social skills
[25:59]the same way they need to be taught math, you know,
[26:03]or science.
[26:03]They don't necessarily come naturally
[26:06]and some of the ones that do come naturally, you know,
[26:09]aren't very nice ones, but they're not gonna self-correct.
[26:13]That's impossible.
[26:14]I mean, adults don't even self-correct most of the time.
[26:17]So I'm glad you brought that up
[26:18]because it's something that I think it really, really
[26:21]is important and that case just happens to be my own.
[26:24]I mean, that's the social skill that's lacking in me.
[26:26]It's not necessarily very typical of a lot of people,
[26:29]but there are all sorts of other things
[26:31]that are more typical and, you know,
[26:33]that can be fixed pretty easily.
[26:36]So for the parents who picked up this book,
[26:38]whose kids did stop talking to them
[26:40]or who were worried that their kids
[26:41]are gonna stop talking to them soon,
[26:44]what advice would you give to that group of readers of yours?
[26:49]I would say the research shows that
[26:53]even if they stop talking to you for a while
[26:56]or start fighting with you all the time
[26:58]or start finding fault with everything you do,
[27:01]just seem not, you know, they don't seem to like you anymore.
[27:04]That it doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot
[27:07]and it's not gonna last.
[27:08]They're going through what they have to go through.
[27:10]They are at a point in their lives
[27:12]where they are literally biologically programmed
[27:14]to start to withdraw from you and try to figure out
[27:18]who they are, where they fit,
[27:19]what kind of person they're gonna be, et cetera,
[27:21]on their own.
[27:22]And they need the space to be able to do that.
[27:24]And you have to be able to tolerate
[27:27]the distress of their doing that
[27:29]without experiencing it as a kind of abandonment.
[27:34]And it's hard not to.
[27:35]I mean, it's really hard for parents themselves
[27:39]to go through that transition
[27:40]where they're sort of, you know, cuddly little kids
[27:43]where they knew everything about their lives
[27:44]and they told them everything, you know,
[27:46]suddenly withdrawn, closed the door
[27:48]or just become non-communicative
[27:51]or become very unpleasant to talk to.
[27:53]It's painful.
[27:54]And it's really easy to worry that something really,
[27:57]really bad is going on, right?
[27:59]That they're withdrawing because they have
[28:01]some horrible secret or something like that.
[28:03]It's so important to remain calm,
[28:07]to remain the adult, to be cool about it
[28:11]and be friendly too and be there
[28:13]when they're ready to come back.
[28:15]You know, and when they're ready to talk
[28:17]to be ready to listen, to not, you know, talk at them
[28:21]and be receptive, you know, be a good listener
[28:23]the way I was not in that interview
[28:26]that I, you know, embarrass myself in so greatly.
[28:29]Don't interrupt, you know?
[28:30]Don't try to push the conversation
[28:33]when we're the other.
[28:34]Ask questions and listen non-judgmentally
[28:37]and they'll come back sooner, you know,
[28:38]the door will reopen sooner, they'll come back to you.
[28:41]But again, most importantly, it's normal.
[28:45]That's good to know.
[28:47]And just one last question,
[28:48]having worked on this book
[28:50]and I know you've written other books
[28:51]and your perfect madness was a bestseller and all the rest.
[28:55]What advice would you have on other authors
[28:57]undertaking a big research type project like this
[29:00]when they are attacking this project?
[29:02]You know, I had a terrible experience in writing this book,
[29:06]which I actually have not talked about publicly before
[29:09]in that I developed a kind of OCD
[29:12]where I lost the ability to write for a while.
[29:14]I was researching obsessively and rewriting
[29:18]the worst if it was that I was rewriting basically
[29:20]compulsively without realizing I was doing it
[29:23]to the point that we are at a certain point.
[29:25]My editor said she was taking it off the schedule
[29:27]because, you know, we got back and forth so many times.
[29:31]I felt really insulted because I was like,
[29:33]what is she talking about?
[29:34]She's only read it, you know, twice.
[29:36]And then toward the end when I was looking for something,
[29:40]I actually created a folder where I put all of the drafts
[29:43]and all of her responses.
[29:45]And I realized she had read it eight times
[29:47]and I had no idea.
[29:48]So, you know, I would say,
[29:50]do not rewrite excessively.
[29:53]Also, be a little self-aware with the research junk.
[29:56]Don't go to a point where you start to drown.
[29:59]But then.
[30:00]And this was not a typical experience for me.
[30:02]It had to do with other stuff I had gone through
[30:04]and my brain was going a little haywire.
[30:07]I mean, look, the good side of it is,
[30:09]I have research that I have not seen pulled together
[30:11]anywhere else that's deeply fascinating
[30:14]and that I can pull from when I speak
[30:15]even if all of it isn't in the book.
[30:18]I would also say have a really good outline
[30:21]that you're working off of.
[30:22]I normally do from my other books.
[30:25]I have a really tight outline
[30:27]and even if the writing part of the book deviates
[30:32]a great deal from the outline,
[30:34]the research follows the outline.
[30:36]And that means that the research files
[30:38]that I create are well organized and easy to access.
[30:42]In this case, I was working in a very,
[30:44]well, it was a chaotic environment.
[30:46]I was working in a very chaotic way.
[30:48]And that is partly what made the research so circular often
[30:51]and made the writing kind of chaotic too
[30:54]because things were just all muddled up together.
[30:59]So I think the best advice that I can give
[31:01]that maybe has a more universal application is,
[31:05]really have a good outline when you start out.
[31:08]If you end up changing it, fine.
[31:10]Please use it while you're doing your research.
[31:12]Excellent.
[31:13]Well, Judith, thank you so much for coming on mom.
[31:15]I'm starting to have time to read books.
[31:16]Thank you for helping middle school parents,
[31:18]middle schoolers and every adult who's had
[31:22]a challenging middle school experience
[31:24]and wants to just take a minute
[31:26]to kind of work through it in their own head.
[31:27]So thank you for all of that and for all your time.
[31:30]Well, thank you so much.
[31:31]You're a wonderful interviewer, which is why I end up
[31:34]telling you things I wasn't planning on saying at this point.
[31:37]Well, that makes me happy.
[31:39]That's awesome.
[31:41]Thanks.
[31:42]Okay, bye.
[31:43]Bye.
[31:44]Thanks for listening to mom.
[31:46]So don't have time to read books.
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[32:02]Get 10% off with code zibby at jiggypuzzles.com.
[32:05]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Textures Sound
[32:08]for the sound editing.
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