Hold On to Your Kids

Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers

By: Gabor Maté, Gordon Neufeld

Narrated by: Gabor Maté

Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

Children take their lead from their friends: being 'cool' matters more than anything else. Shaping values, identity and codes of behaviour, peer groups are often far more influential than parents.

But this situation is far from natural, and it can be dangerous - it undermines family cohesion, interferes with healthy development and fosters a hostile and sexualised youth culture. Children end up becoming conformist, anxious and alienated.

In Hold on to Your Kids, acclaimed physician and best-selling author Gabor Maté joins forces with Gordon Neufeld, a psychologist with a reputation for penetrating to the heart of complex parenting. Together they pinpoint the causes of this breakdown and offer practical advice on how to 'reattach' to sons and daughters, establish the hierarchy at home, make children feel safe and understood, and earn back your children's loyalty and love. This updated edition also addresses the unprecedented parenting challenges posed by the rise of digital devices and social media.

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.

©2020 Dr Gabor Maté (P)2020 Penguin Audio

It is a parenting must read.

I struggled with this book for a while. Not because it was hard to read or to understand, but because it brought to light things I felt were wrong in my parenting and it was emotional and overwhelming to be woken up in this way.
I have since addressed a lot of issues and have seen progress in my relationship with my children. Parenting is not an easy fix nor something to be hacked. It must be understood in a profound way and this book offers a glimpse into that understanding.
I have respected both authors for many years now and this collaboration has been over my biggest expectations.
Thank you both for sharing your knowledge and experience.

Lock up your kids and blame their stupid friends

As an ACoA with ACE score of 8, I thought this would be a good book for guiding me to reparent myself, especially since I have liked Gabor's work. It was maybe a small miracle that blood vessel didn't pop in my head while listening to first half of this.

Constant blaming, contradictions, blind spots, plain untruths, and a concerning lack of empathy. Latter half seems to have good information and solid advice, but even that is constantly cut by putting the blame to children's peers.

Why on earth are you blaming the crooked flower for wanting to be with other crooked flowers, when you decided to go with it, and weren't able to provide necessary growing environment? Blame should never ever go this way.

I will go over the book again at some point, because it had good stuff in it too. Just a shame it has been made so difficult to reach. Maybe I indeed will mature enough with my own frustration, accept my own futility in trying to relate my viewpoint, and just accept that boomers will be boomers, who don't seem to realize they too, grew crooked.