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

by Gordon Neufeld

He could deflect the insults of peers. By contrast, a peer-oriented child who no longer looks to adults for his sense of self-valuation has no such protection.

There is an inside and an outside to attachment: the vulnerability is on the inside, the invulnerability on the outside. Attachment is both a shield and a sword. Attachment divides the world into those who can hurt you and those who can’t. Attachment and vulnerability—these two great themes of human existence—go hand in hand.

The psychological function served by these drugs is often overlooked by well-meaning adults who perceive the problem to be coming from outside the individual, through peer pressure and youth culture mores. It is not just a matter of getting our children to say no. The problem lies much deeper. As long as we do not confront and reverse peer orientation among our children, we are creating an insatiable appetite for these drugs.

The more children are attached to caring adults, the more they are able to interact with peers without being overwhelmed by the vulnerability involved.

The less peers matter, the more the vulnerability of peer relationships can be endured.

the flight from vulnerability is a flight from the self. If we do not hold our children close to us, the ultimate cost is the loss of their ability to hold on to their own truest selves.

In our customary headlong rush to figure out what to do about this or that problem, we often ignore the first essential step of looking, reflecting, and understanding.

The child has to be able to know that she is not identical with whatever feeling happens to be active in her at any particular moment.

Maturation is spontaneous but not inevitable. It is like a computer program preinstalled in the hard drive but not necessarily activated.

maturation cannot be commanded.

We can nurture the process, provide the right conditions, remove the impediments, but we can no more make a child grow up than we can order the plants in our garden to grow.

Dealing with immature children, we may need to show them how to act, draw the boundaries of what is acceptable, and articulate what our expectations are.

Teach the skills

Behavior can be prescribed or imposed, but maturity comes from the heart and mind.

The real challenge for parents is to help kids grow up, not simply to look like grown-ups.

We liberate children not by making them work for our love but by letting them rest in it.

One effect of peer orientation is that the love and nurturance we have for our children cannot get through.

You cannot feed someone who is not sitting at your table.

for fulfillment to sink in, the child must be able to feel deeply and vulnerably—an experience most peer-oriented kids will be defended against.

For the child to feel full he must first feel empty, to feel helped the child must first feel in need of help, to feel complete he must have felt incomplete.

Satiation may be a very pleasant experience, but the prerequisite is to be able to feel vulnerability.

Many children today are too defended, too emotionally closed, to experience such vulnerable emotions.

Over and over I hear some variation of “but my child is absolutely obsessed with getting together with friends. It would be cruel to deprive him.” Actually, it would be more cruel and irresponsible to indulge what so clearly fuels the obsession.

Peer Orientation Crushes Individuality

Individuality is the fruit of the process of becoming a psychologically separate being that culminates in the full flowering of one’s uniqueness.

have one’s own meanings, one’s own ideas and boundaries.

Individualism is the philosophy that puts the rights and interests of a person ahead of the rights and interests of the community.

Immature people tend to trample on any individuality that dares show itself.

The stronger a child’s peer orientation, the more intensely she will resent and assault another kid’s individuality.

The world our children live in is becoming increasingly unfriendly to the natural processes of maturing.

As peer orientation increases in a society, so will childhood aggression.

Given the pervasive nature of aggression, zero tolerance is shallow in concept and impossible to realize in practice.

Peer orientation is not the root cause of aggression.

But peer orientation powerfully stokes the fires of aggression and foments it into violence.

Peer orientation not only increases frustration in a child but also decreases the likelihood of finding peaceful alternatives to aggression.

the greatest source of frustration is attachments that do not work:

When peers replace parents, the source of their frustration changes as well and, in most cases, will increase rather than decrease.

It is not a given that frustration must lead to aggression. The healthy response to frustration is to attempt to change things.

But if tears of futility never come, adaptation will not occur.

The dilemma of peer-oriented children is that feelings of futility involve vulnerability: to feel futility is to come to terms with the limits of our power and control.

In a culture of cool, tears of futility are a source of shame.

Because of their flight from vulnerability, many peer-oriented children lose their feelings of fear.

Once feelings of alarm are numbed, the chemistry of alarm—the rush of adrenaline—can become appealing and even addictive.

Yet the sources of bullying are little understood. The measures proposed to deal with it are predictably ineffective because, as usual, they seek to address behaviors rather than causes.

Some children seek dominance without assuming any responsibility for those who submit to them,

The result of peer orientation is that powerful attachment urges force immature kids who should be on equal terms with one another into an unnatural hierarchy of dominance and submission.

Some parents hope to avoid upset and frustration by doing everything in their power to make things work for their children. Children parented in such a manner never come up against the necessary frustration that accompanies facing the impossible. They are deprived of the experience of transforming frustration into feelings of futility, of letting go and adapting.

Other parents confuse respect for their children with indulging their wants instead of meeting their needs.

Many parents in today’s highly unstable socioeconomic climate are present for their children physically but are too preoccupied with the stresses of their lives to be fully present emotionally.

The bully instinctively scans for the insecurity in others and seeks to exploit it for her gain.

Bullies are repulsed by differences and they dominate by attacking the differentness of others.