Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers

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 sexualized youth culture. Children end up becoming conformist, anxious and alienated. 

In Hold on to Your Kids, acclaimed physician and bestselling 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.

About the Author

Gabor Maté is a retired physician who, after 20 years of family practice and palliative care experience, worked extensively with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. The bestselling author of four books published in over twenty languages, Dr Maté is an internationally renowned speaker highly sought after for his expertise on addiction, trauma, childhood development, and the relationship of stress and illness. 

His book on addiction received the Hubert Evans Prize for literary non-fiction. For his groundbreaking medical work and writing he has been awarded the Order of Canada (his country's equivalent of the MBE) and the Civic Merit Award from his hometown, Vancouver. His books include In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction; When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress; Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder and (with Gordon Neufeld) Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers.