Hold On to Your Kids

“Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers” by Gordon Neufeld, PhD and Gabor Maté MD

Book #8 for 2026

This book was recommended to me by my father, a retired licensed marriage and family therapist, and also by my favorite librarian/retired homeschool mom. If the same book is ever recommended to you more than once, especially by people in completely different circles – read it!

This was an eye-opening book, and I haven’t read about the concept anywhere else. It was not an easy read. It felt like a textbook. After finishing the book, I feel smarter, not better, and not necessarily encouraged, but definitely smarter.

Here are several quotes from the book:

“The modern obsession with parenting as a set of skills to be followed along lines recommended by experts is, really, the result of lost intuitions and of a lost relationship with children previous generations could take for granted. That is what parenthood is, a relationship.” page x

“When our parenthood is secure, natural instincts are activated that dictate far more astutely than any expert how to nurture and teach the young ones under our care. The secret is to honor our relationship with our children and all of our interactions with them.” page x

“The child will orient either by the values of the pure world or the values of the parents, but not both.” page 25

“Jesus captured the incompatibility of competing attachments, and, too, the bipolar nature of attachment when he said, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one; and despise the other.” Matthew 6:24” pages 29-30

“Although the possibility of loss is present in any relationship, we parents strive to give our children what they are constitutionally unable to give to one another: a connection that is not based on their pleasing us, making us feel good, or reciprocating in any way. In other words, we offer our children precisely what is missing in peer attachments: unconditional acceptance.” page 105

“Unconditional parental love is the indispensable nutrient for the child’s healthy emotional growth. The first task is to create space in the child’s heart for the certainty that she is precisely the person the parents want and love. She does not have to do anything or be any different to earn that love – in fact, she cannot do anything, since that love cannot be won or lost. It is not conditional.” page 117-118

“Children learn best when they like their teacher, and they think their teacher likes them. The way to children’s minds has always been through their hearts.” page 173

“Family outings and holidays need to be protected. If these times are to serve the purpose of collecting our children and preserving the ties, we can’t afford to dilute the function by taking our children’s friends along. Nor can we afford the kind of holiday that splits the family apart, as is becoming the fashion on both the ski slope and at the sun resort.” page 207

“The structures that facilitate the parent-child relationship are key: family holidays, family celebrations, family games, family activities. Unless a time and place is set aside and rituals are created, pressures that are more urgent will inevitably prevail.” page 207

“… I have come to consider the families sit-down meal as one of the most significant attachment rituals of all. Attachment and eating go together. One facilitates the other. It seems to me that the meal should be a time of unabashed dependency: where the attachment hierarchy is still preserved, where the dependable take care of the dependent, where experience still counts, where there is pleasure in nurturing and being nurtured, and where food is the way to the heart.” page 207

I would recommend reading this book to all parents. I think that the concepts are really important.

📚 Do you have a book recommendation for a book that contains information that you feel is really important?