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

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If your child is already peer-oriented, Neufeld and Maté offer strategies for reclaiming your children. In the year 2018 we all know how biased and off base our opinions can be so I am surprised the authors did not seek to confirm more of their opinions in scientific study of their hypothesis. If all that seems moral to us, it’s only due to our own peer orientation…Most readers of this book will already have been raised in a society where the transmission of culture is horizontal rather than vertical” (p 10).

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. It really has made me think a lot about my own life, my own parenting, and did make me notice a lot of the things that did go right. In Hold on to Your Kids, acclaimed physician and bestselling author Gabor Mate joins forces with Gordon Neufeld, a psychologist with a reputation for penetrating to the heart of complex parenting. They seek the unconditional love that other immature children cannot give them, and when they don't get it the results are anger, suicide, self-mutilation, alcohol and drug consumption, and just about every other ill that is plaguing the youth of today. Gordon Neufeld is a Vancouver-based developmental psychologist who consults with parents and professionals regarding children and their problems.Sometimes the novels chosen are new, often they are from the backlist and occasionally re-issued from way back.

Unconditional parental love is the indispensable nutrient for the child's healthy emotional growth" (118). This doesn’t trouble Maté, however, who thinks overshooting by only 10 minutes is “great… It’s a question of degree and having some latitude.I might be inclined to recommend this chapter alone to parents, particularly those with small children who are trying to understand how kids get along or how preschool fits in or if they are worried about a shy child. The authors show us how we are losing contact with our children and how this loss undermines their development and threatens the very fabric of society. By advicing the fellow solution, the author just erasing the weight of the parents' mistakes and bad decisions (likely including his owns), as if dealing with the consequences would be something optional, if it gets too hard, just get rid of the kid and put the weight onto the shoulders of a relative, some teachers or some fellow kids.

As our kids grow up, they are put into far too many situations where they are expected to develop dependent relationships on their peers rather than on mature adults. For example he begins the 10th chapter with the sentence: "Agressive people had always lived between us, as everyone knows, who have read the classical writing Tom Brown's School Days, for victorian boys, and know the bluster, but coward boy, Flashman. I have a hard enough time paying attention to my own kids, let alone someone else's, but I always love it when friends have a genuine interest in my kids. The last chapter on the digital age is probably the most practical, relevant, true, and hopeful information that I have come across. I'd love to tell you all the great ideas from the whole book, but I wouldn't do it justice and really you should just read it.Now we have kids who have graduated from college with no idea who they are or what they are interested in.