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

Written by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté

Narrated by Daniel Maté

Like countless other parents, doctors Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté have had to confront their children becoming secretive and unreachable. Focused more and more on their friends, they recoiled or grew hostile around adults. Why? the problem, Neufeld suggest, lies in attachment; children are increasingly forming stronger attachments to their friends than to the adults in their lives.

Dr. Neufeld has dubbed this phenomenon peer orientation, which refers to the tendency of children and youth to look to their peers for direction: for a sense of right and wrong, for values, identity and codes of behavior. This peer orientation undermines family cohesion, poisons the school atmosphere, and fosters an aggressively hostile and sexualized youth culture. It provides a powerful explanation for schoolyard bullying and youth violence; its effects are painfully evident in the context of teenage gangs and criminal activity, in tragedies such as in Littleton, Colorado; Tabor, Alberta and Victoria, B.C. It is an escalating trend that has never been adequately described or contested until Hold On to Your Kids. Once understood, it becomes self-evident - as do the solutions, none of which are impossible or even costly to undertake.

Hold On to Your Kids will restore parenting to its natural intuitive basis and the parent-child relationship to its rightful preeminence. the concepts, principles and practical advice contained in Hold On to Your Kids will empower parents to parent and satisfy their children’s inborn need to find direction by turning towards them for their source of authority, contact and warmth. Daniel Maté’s warm and sensitive narration, gift with dialogue, and engagement with the authors writing make this an enjoyable and informative listen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Post Hypnotic Press Audio
• Release date: Mar 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781926910857

Reviews for Hold On to Your Kids

[Mundy Brantes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

dr. mate thank you so much for writing this book it is amazing and extremely informative, only wish I would have read this book 20 years ago to have been a much better parent to my child. Thank you very much and God bless you and God bless your ability to convey beautiful ideas

[mirkwood-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Just started it, no surprise here. For years "professionals" have told us how to parent our kids and kids are not better off for it. Glad I didn't listen.Attachment parenting validated, nice for a change.

[deldevries · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Some great ideas in here. Think about relationships and positive attachment through connection as helping an adolescent grow up in a safe environment. Peer pressure might be positive, but why leave it to chance.

[cecilturtle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A fairly common sense approach to parenting. I have reservations as to the underlying theme that Mom should stay at home, but the actual premise is sound. With parents more and more delegating their role due to social pressures (especially in North America), I can see how this would be valid. I think European values still hold strong with an emphasis on family, so this thesis may seem a bit extreme. A little dry, but well explained.