Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers Paperback – August 15, 2006

If you are a parent of a child who has not yet gone off to college, then I implore you to buy this book and actually read it.This book is co-written by the same author of When the Body Says No: the Hidden Signs of Stress. That book is an illuminating study on the lasting impacts of stress in our bodies. I highly recommend reading that if you have struggles with chronic illness that still plague you today.This book discusses parenting. Specifically, the impacts on our children due to the decimation of the parent-oriented attachment norms that have historically guided societies all around the world since humanity's origins. Since about the 1940s our Western society has seen a dynamic shift of children reorienting to peer-oriented attachments with cataclysmic results. To learn about how this has happened and just how devastating this has been for our children, read this book. I urge you not to buy into the lie that what is happening today is an acceptable new normal for a liberated society. It is not acceptable. It is not healthy, and it is not something caring adults should stay silent about. Our children do not belong to the schools, their friends, or their activities, and it is in their best interest for us to fight for them--especially when they say they don't want us to.This book comprehensively destroys the notion that it is healthy for children's core attachments to be peer-oriented rather than parent-oriented. Although it has become normalized, it is not healthy. Our children's sense of security, identity, and acceptance, not to mention their experience with vulnerability, and their opportunity to take creative risks should not be entrusted to the volatility and immaturity of their peers. Adolescents are often inherently fickle and selfish when it comes to interacting with one another. They are in a nearly constant flux of acceptance and rejection of each other. Step into most cafeterias around our country for a quick reality check if you think I'm exaggerating. Children who are peer-oriented rather than parent-oriented for their core attachments are much more at risk when, not if, they get emotionally tossed about and rejected by their peers.Peers certainly have their place in a child's life, but a child's fundamental grounding should not be dependent on such fluidity. It should come from the security of their home life. This book emphasizes the importance of raising children in a multigenerational village of invested supporters. We were not created to live in isolation or raise our children in isolation.The breakdown of fundamental emotional and social needs examined in this book is a much-needed reality check for parents. Our children spend their days in schools where anxiety, depression, bullying, isolation, and addiction are alarming experiences they are or soon will be exposed to. There is a rise in dependence on superficial social connectivity through technological devices in lieu of deep interpersonal attachments. Online gaming systems breed addiction as they supplant in-person connections and divert children from what is truly nourishing for their development. Information that is wholly inappropriate for their age is at their fingertips and being processed through brains and hearts not yet ready to digest such adult knowledge.The authors emphasize that all is not lost and hope is very much alive. Parents and adults in caretaker positions need to reclaim their God intended roles in the lives of the children entrusted to our care.Make no mistake, if the adults are not filling the biologically embedded attachment needs of their children, voids will exist. Children will seek to fill these vacuums by reorienting their attachments to be primarily peer-centric and the fallout from this will be damaging. Safeguarding our children from being in that position is vital to raising children who are healthy, resilient, vulnerable in the ways they should be, and as creative as they were designed to be.⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ This book is a soul-searching, potentially paradigm-shifting must read for every parent.

I'm so happy to review this book because it absolutely changed my life and my daughter's life forever! I will be honest with you and tell you that I was at my wit's end. My 13 year old, who used to be a sweet kid became constantly defiant and depressed at home. The kid who obviously loved me, I'm a really cool mom, now ignored me and rolled her eyes. Her grades were suffering and she began stitching into her skin during school. This is when someone sews shapes into their skin with a needle and thread. So I got this book.I read the book very quickly because it resonated so strongly with all I was going through. Our society values peer influence so highly and at such a superficial level that we are losing our kids to isolation and hopelessness disguised by technology and unhealthy friendships.I pulled my daughter out of school in her last semester of 7th grade. This meant that she would have to repeat 7th grade and be a year behind. As a single mother with her and a baby, as well as a full-time career I committed to homeschool her. We worked out a strange schedule of night and weekend study focused on real life skills and developing her values system. She was indignant...at first. After the first two weeks things started to ease. She began applying herself more, she softened, started taking great love and responsibility with her sister and with our home. I followed the advice of the book and rebuilt our relationship and the tenderness we have for each other. She was honest with me! She broke down and told me about all her fears and walls.The girl that just wanted to be on the internet or texting in bed was now going to the gym several times a week, going for walks with the kids around the neighborhood, volunteering to help younger students learn to read and really working on improving our family relationships. She stopped yelling at me and ignoring me!! She reached a healthy weight, she was way too skinny.During that one school year we did two years of work and caught her up. She entered high school today, right on schedule! She held my hand as we drove to the bus stop. She was excited about meeting new kids and really applying herself at school. This week she received an award for her volunteer service over the past year. Also, on a daily basis, I have people tell me what a remarkable and intelligent child I have. Last year, she was depressed and aloof, people were concerned about her.Reading this book led me to make a very difficult decision that I thought was absolutely beyond my capacity as a mother. I believe if I hadn't put her first and done everything I could to get her away from her unhealthy friendships that I would've lost her forever and her academic possibilities and life possibilities would have suffered severely. No one agreed that I was doing the right thing! (The school, her father, my mother, no one understood why I needed to this.) This book gives practical step-by-step instructions to get your kids back from unhealthy destructive behaviors that are becoming more and more prevalent as a result of our current culture. If you are losing your child people act fast and be brave. It was the best decision I ever made.