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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Apr 2005, 304 pages
Paperback:
Aug 2006, 304 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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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.
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.
Part One: The Phenomenon of Peer Orientation
Chapter One: In Our Own Backyard
Something has changed. We can sense it, 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 were more confident, more certain of themselves and had more impact on
us, for better -- or, sometimes, for worse. For many today, parenting does not
feel natural. Through the ages adults 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?
Today's parents love their children as much as parents ever have, but the
love doesn't always get through. We have just as much to teach them as parents
ever did, but they seem less interested in following ...
As children grow it is inevitable, and a good thing, that they start to gravitate away from their parents to establish identities for themselves. However, Gordon Neufeld makes a very strong case that the modern-day trend for children to become peer-orientated at increasingly early ages does not give a child the opportunity to establish the healthy identity that most parents hope for their children. Instead, ironically, it does the opposite, causing them to suppress their individuality, curiosity and intelligence in order to fit the group norm...continued
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Dr. Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia and The Shelter of Each Other
Hold on to Your Kids blows in from Canada like a Blue Northern, bringing us genuinely new ideas and fresh perspectives on parenting. The authors integrate psychology, anthropology, neurology and their own personal and professional experiences as they examine the 'context' of parenting today. This is a worthy book with practical implications for mom and dad. Peter A. Levine Ph.D., International teacher and author of Waking the Tiger, Healing Trauma and It Won't Hurt Forever, Guiding Your Child through Trauma
Hold on to Your Kids is visionary book that goes beyond the usual explanations to illuminate a crisis of unrecognized proportions. 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 sociey. Most importantly they offer, through concrete examples and clear suggestions, practical help for parents to fulfill their instinctual roles. A brilliant and well written book, one to be taken seriously, very seriously. Raffi, children's troubadour, founder of Child Honoring Society Institute
With original insights on parent-child attachments and how parents can restore them, this is a book for revitalizing families and rekindling the song in their children's hearts.
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