Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers
Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers
A psychologist with a reputation for penetrating to the heart of complex parenting issues joins forces with a physician and bestselling author to tackle one of the most disturbing and misunderstood trends of our time — peers replacing parents in the lives of our children.
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 behaviour. But 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.
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 satisfy their children’s inborn need to find direction by turning towards a source of authority, contact and warmth.
Something has changed. One can sense it, one can feel it, just not find the words for it. Children are not quite the same as we remember being. They seem less likely to take their cues from adults, less inclined to please those in charge, less afraid of getting into trouble. Parenting, too, seems to have changed. Our parents seemed more confident, more certain of themselves and had more impact on us, for better or for worse. For many, parenting does not feel natural. Adults through the ages have complained about children being less respectful of their elders and more difficult to manage than preceding generations, but could it be that this time it is for real? — from Hold On to Your Kids
From the Hardcover edition.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars LOVED THIS BOOK!!
Book was everything I wanted it to be. Took a little longer than I’d hoped to arrive, but arrived in excellent condition.
2 Stars incomplete book
the book i bought has no introduction and no chapter 1 either. VERY DISAPPOINTED.
i got ripped off by buying a incomplete book or defective book.
4 Stars Important support for attachment theory
I just finished reading this book. It makes a compelling case against the peer-oriented culture which has grown to dominate over the past few decades, especially as it pertains to parents losing their hold on kids as the primary nurturing and guiding force until they reach maturity. It goes as far as to claim that true maturity isn’t actually occurring among those who are taking their cues solely from their fellow immature peers. It’s the blind leading the blind, with disastrous results.
In today’s culture which places a high value on peer interaction along with less time available for families to spend together, it’s more difficult for parents to remain the primary orienting force in their children’s lives. Children are encouraged to socialize with other children early and often. High student: teacher ratios in daycares and schools encourage attachment to peers instead of teachers. The extended family of loving adults that used to be the norm in children’s lives is now the exception, and our mobile society creates isolation instead of community. Add to this mix the effects of media which perpetuates the culture of cool, and the result is that it’s simply much, much harder to parent today than it was a few decades ago, and it’s far easier for children to turn to each other to meet their attachment needs.
So … what does all this mean to me, the mother of a three-year-old sensitive child? Actually, the implications are pretty direct. As a sensitive child, Lucas absorbs everyone’s energy. He mimics everything and everyone. It already appears that he’s very susceptible to influence by his peers, coming home from preschool with new behaviors and mannerisms all the time, to my enormous frustration. He’s also sensitive to even the most subtle withdrawal of my affection, and this drives him to attach more quickly to others who will fill the void. If he’s around his peers when we’ve been having a rough time with our mother-son relationship, any authority and influence I may have had disappears and all hell breaks loose. If this keeps up, I’ll lose him completely by middle school.
I’ve struggled with how to handle these difficulties. Mainstream parenting philosophy dictates that firmer boundaries and punitive measures are necessary to nip negative behavior in the bud. Attachment theory suggests the opposite. I’ve waffled between the two, leaning toward attachment and then chickening out in the face of parental and societal pressure. Intuition always leads me back to attachment, though. And when I doubt myself, I end up with a book like this one to give me the support I need.
The following is a quote from the book that seemed to sum up the prescription for me:
“The key to activating maturation is to take care of the attachment needs of the child. To foster independence, we must first invite dependence; to promote individuation we must provide a sense of belonging and unity; to help the child separate, we must assume the responsibility for keeping the child close. We help a child let go by providing more contact and connection than he himself is seeking. When he asks for a hug, we give him a warmer on than he is giving us. We liberate our children not by making them work for our love but by letting them rest in it. We help a child face the separation involved in going to sleep or going to school by satisfying his need for closeness.”
For me, this translated to:
* Playing more with him and watching him play, especially when he hasn’t asked.
* “Spending time” at bedtime, (laying next to him until he falls asleep) even if it’s inconvenient for me.
* Satisfying his need for closeness - saying yes unless there is a really good reason to say no - even if it means going with him every time he needs to go to the bathroom or find a sock or wash his hands.
* Allowing our daily “quiet time” to be spent in the same room together.
* Being unconditionally loving in my tone and words. Reaffirm that I love him no matter what.
* Do what it takes to manage my own frustration in healthy ways (exercise, meditate, sleep, etc.) so I don’t take it out on him.
In essence, I need to consider his attachment needs ahead of my own needs for space, quiet, control, approval or whatever it is I’m seeking at the moment. I am a mature adult, and I can be creative in finding other healthy ways of getting those needs met. Lucas is not, and he won’t be for a long time. If left to his own devices, his choices are not going to be smart ones. Just look at most adolescents.
This book was just the right wake-up call to get me back on track.
2 Stars Just o.k.
Some of the premises I don’t agree with. It is important for some peer bonding to occur. The inference that day care is not good because kids are more aggressive than those who aren’t in day care. Exactly what is a working parent supposed to do?
5 Stars Size matters
Great book but you might search Amazon.ca for a used original hardcover - larger type and easier to hold in the hand.
Filed under: Parenting Advice Book Reviews