Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers

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Finally, the authors' tone frequently betrays a world view where not only is an adult more powerful but also right or correct or justified in manipulating children, aka adultism. Today I want to share with you some sections in Hold On To Your Kids that I highlighted to save for later so I could go back and reference. They describe the importance a five-minute time in the beginning of the day to make eye contact, engage in conversation, uninterrupted. Instead of having “this troubled kid” on their hands, Maté and Rae needed to address their own behaviour – a revelation that was both “daunting and empowering”, Maté says.

Some of these mistakes are specific, such as using time out, a technique Maté rejects as “based on fear”.Immature children do not understand why these emergent, maturing others are trying so hard to get along, why they seek solitude sometimes instead of company, why they can be curious and interested about things that don’t involve others, why they ask questions in class.

It gave me more of a greater confidence in my instincts as a parent, that my husband and I are vital in the development of our kids’ relational maturity, that meaningful relationships with our kids will do more good than any discipline tactic out there, and that there is no need to fear parenting through the teen years. Try to lead: If you find yourself always getting into a standoff with your child, “you’d better not force the issue, because you are just going to create conflict”. Anyway, all in all, the author is not saying friends are bad, just that there should be adults around, and ideally you would be involved with your children and their friends and their families. I was also interested to see how much applied to teachers and teaching and how much attachment plays a part in learning.The last chapters of the book address how to prevent peer orientation and covers the topic of discipline that does not divide. While it is not extremely well-written (in a literary or organizational sense), I absolutely love and believe in the ideas presented in this book. If you are concerned about losing your children to either their peers or modern technology this book is a must read. Even if you accept the premise one could have hoped for some practical advice on how to strengthen or foster attachments but the advice is nebulous at best. In Hold on to Your Kids, acclaimed physician and best-selling author Gabor Maté joins forces with Gordon Neufeld, a psychologist with a reputation for penetrating to the heart of complex parenting.

To help them attach to other positive adults rather than to a bunch of peers you know nothing about and that they want to leave your company to spend every waking minute with. WINNER OF THE NATIONAL PARENTING PUBLICATIONS GOLD AWARD • “A worthy book that brings us genuinely new ideas and fresh perspectives on parenting. These kids then try to win the approval of their peers by conforming, bullying, rejecting adults, engaging in dangerous behaviors, seeking to form bonds through sexual experiences at younger and younger ages. It did, however, make me more anxious about sending my kids to school here, especially given their personalities, and made me realize where you live and what kind of neighborhood and school area you're in could possibly have a huge impact on how your kids grow up - for better or worse. I found it interesting that this book essentially stressed many of the concerns about American culture and family that the NFIC (National Family Integrated Church) does, yet without some of the baggage accompanying that movement.

This book is full of authoritarian garbage, bleating about a long-lost golden age and reads like it was written by entitled conservative boomers. We need to make it a habit of collecting our children daily and repeatedly until they are old enough to function as independent beings” (p 179). Unfortunately we cannot have it both ways…we need to learn to parent in harmony with this design rather than fight against it” (p 66).

Our society is so topsy-turvy that we may actually come to value the child’s willingness to separate more than her instincts for closeness. He started arguing that the opposite happened, but then realized, that the daughter was right, he was the one not paying enugh attention to her needs. Instead, our children develop dependent relationships with peers that are too immature to offer them the wisdom, guidance, and most importantly, the unconditional love and acceptance that their parents should be providing them with. I don't know, some very astute and important points mixed with out of date thinking and impossible or untrue statements. He brings to us his unique synthesis of the developmental literature and his exceptional ability to make children understandable.

Now we have kids who have graduated from college with no idea who they are or what they are interested in. Neufeld very clearly identifies the underlying problems in our culture that pull our children away from us. I've never been a real kid person, so having my own children I've had to be totally focused inward just to take care of my own little family, especially once the twins came along. Even slivers of time help: a parent who comes home late can pop into a child’s room for a quick catch-up if they are awake. Polarization occurs in relationships, which explains why youth shun their parents when they attach to their peers.