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Hold on to Your Kids

Name: Hold on to Your Kids
Author: Gordon Neufeld
ISBN: 9780375508219

by Neufeld, Gordon, Mate, Gabor

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Overview

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.

About the Author, Gordon Neufeld

Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D, is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Vancouver. He has spent much of his professional life creating coherent theories for understanding child development. He is nationally recognized for his work on aggression and violence among children and youth and appears regularly on radio and television, both in Vancouver and nationally.

Gabor Maté, M.D., is the bestselling author of When the Body Says No and Scattered Minds. His by-line is often seen in the Globe and Mail, for articles and commentary ranging from health to politics. He has worked in family practice, palliative care and psychotherapy. He is presently staff physician at a clinic in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where his patients are people with drug addictions, HIV and related problems.

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Editorials

Library Journal

Clinical psychologist Neufeld and health clinic physician Mat (When the Body Says No) offer readers much more than simple platitudes in this excellent book. The problem: today's kids are more peer- than parent-oriented and are not manageable or teachable. Furthermore, the unconditional love and acceptance they crave is completely absent from their peer relationships. According to the authors, parents need to take the lead in reestablishing the cherished connection they once had with their children as infants. They suggest seven principles of natural discipline, directives that include staying attached; keeping connected; never using separation techniques, anger, or impulses to "punish" the child; and never focusing on a child's behavior, no matter how horrible it may be. All the nagging, time outs, reward charts, and tough love commonly prescribed to parents should be replaced with the process of "collecting," or reengaging with, their children. This book, much like Patricia Hersch's A Tribe Apart, maintains that peer attachment, or "tribalization," is leading to a society no one wants-where teen depression, bullying, aggression, and suicide are almost commonplace, too many children are capable yet completely unmotivated, and high schools resemble prisons. Highly recommended.-Linda Beck, Indian Valley P.L., Telford, PA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.