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

Front Cover
Knopf Canada, Aug 13, 2013 - Family & Relationships - 368 pages
NATIONAL BESTSELLER

This parenting classic on one of the most disturbing and misunderstood trends of our time—peers replacing parents in the lives of children—is now more relevant than ever. The latest edition includes new material on how social media and video game culture are affecting our children, and what parents can do.
 
In Hold On to Your Kids, Dr. Neufeld and Dr. Maté explore the phenomenon of peer orientation: the troubling 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; 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.
 

Contents

Skewed Attachments Subverted Instincts
15
Why Weve Come Undone
31
part
45
Why Children Become Disobedient
74
The Flatlining of Culture
86
part three
95
Stuck in Immaturity
110
A Legacy of Aggression
127
Preserve the Ties That Empower
196
Discipline That Does Not Divide
213
part five
233
Recreate the Attachment Village
254
part
265
A Matter of Timing
282
Peer Orientation and the Youth
297
Acknowledgments
309

The Making of Bullies and Victims
139
A Sexual Turn
154
Unteachable Students
165
part four
177
Notes
321
Index
331
Copyright

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About the author (2013)

Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D, is a Vancouver-based clinical psychologist, internationally renowned as a foremost authority on child development. His Neufeld Institute delivers many courses he has created for parents, educators and helping professionals on several continents. He is recognized for his unique ability to unlock the clues to seemingly complex problems of child rearing and education.
 
Gabor Maté, M.D., is a physician and the bestselling author of When the Body Says No, Scattered Minds and In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts. A sought-after authority on stress, mind-body health, ADHD, parenting, and addictions, he travels extensively, addressing health personnel, teachers and lay audiences across North America and internationally.

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