I recognize I didn't make it far into this text and perhaps I've misjudged it, but I couldn't stomach the start to see where it was all going. It turns out that there is a right and wrong way for your children to attach to each other, and the first and most important attachment that needs securing is child to parent. Connection is so important and this book helped me to remember to keep making the effort to connect - ESPECIALLY when it seems really difficult!

In Hold On to Your Kids, acclaimed physician and bestselling author Gabor Maté joins forces with psychologist Gordon Neufeld to pinpoint the causes of this breakdown and offer practical advice on how to “reattach” to your children and earn back their loyalty and love. D., to tackle one of the most disturbing trends of our time: children today increasingly look to their peers for direction—their values, identity, and codes of behavior. The stronger a child’s peer orientation, the more intensely she will resent and assault another kid’s individuality” (p 125). 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).By helping to reawaken our instincts, Maté and Neufeld empower parents to be what nature intended: a true source of contact, security and warmth for their children.

Instead I encountered a revolutionary interpretation of the role of attachment in the lives of our youngsters and an exploration of the implications of this on our culture and our role as parents. Part of the reasons our children begin to detach to us and find something else to attach to is that we encourage “independence” and self-reliance, most of the time, way too early. Hence parents must guard and closely guide the kids on every step, because if they don't do so the kids are swayed by their incompetent peers. If emotional stability, and safe, warm, peaceful connection were given to these kids by their parents, they wouldn't spend their life despairingly chasing it elsewhere - howsoever the technology improves or cultural habits disappear.To nurture our children, we must reclaim them and take charge of providing for their attachment needs” (p 13). 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.

Gabor Maté’s connections—between the intensely personal and the global, the spiritual and the medical, the psychological and the political—are bold, wise and deeply moral. If they don't get it from us, they will try to find it somewhere else - and the results might be disastrous. If you have listened to yourself, as I have recently, command a child to brush their teeth or put on shoes, and flinched at the terseness, discourtesy or despair in your voice, Maté’s book will make you examine your behaviour in a new light. But the truth of what Mate and Neufeld lay out in very clear and easy to read language was apparent. The authors’ sense that children are slipping from adult grasp, becoming a sort of lost generation, will resonate with parents, especially those battling with excessive screen time or teenage estrangements.

Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté is a brilliant book that stopped me in my tracks. We also need to encourage our kids to develop relationships with other children who have strong attachments to their own parents. Didžiąją jos dalį užima kalbos apie tai, kaip pavojinga ir kaip vispusiškai blogai yra orientacija į bendraamžius.

Without secure attachment, kids can't mature, and if they can't mature, socialization is going to be damaging.By helping to reawaken our instincts, Mate and Neufeld empower parents to be what nature intended: a true source of contact, security and warmth for their children. When I started teaching middle school at the ripe age of twenty-one, I noticed immediately that children just didn’t know how to appreciate the past. I also think of how much the church is inspired in this way - from it's strong emphasis on families and family time, to always ensuring that there were caring adults who played a big part in your life (leaders and Sunday school teachers and such) and helped your own parents get to know people you were associating with better, along with their families.