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

by Gordon Neufeld

bullies exploit any apparent inferiority in others, just as they mock and devalue any perceived superiority in others. Bullies cannot stand anyone to be more important than they are.

that they are somehow responsible for how they are being treated. If the children targeted are not shielded by strong attachments to adults, they are at great risk of being emotionally wounded, for a deeply defensive emotional shutdown, for depression or worse.

All the attributes of bullies stem from the combination of these two powerful dynamics: attachment that is intense, inverted, and displaced and a desperate flight from vulnerability.

Those who perceive bullying as a behavior problem think they can extinguish the behavior by imposing sanctions and consequences. Not only do the negative consequences fail to sink in, but they fuel the frustration and alienate the bullies even more.

Until we see bullying as the attachment disorder it truly is, our remedies are unlikely to make much difference.

It is not the breakdown in the moral education of the bully that is the problem but a breakdown in the basic values of attachment and vulnerability in mainstream society.

There is a great difference between sexual contact as an expression of genuine intimacy and sexual contact as a primitive attachment dynamic.

To fully understand the precocious sexual behavior of young people we have to look again at three concepts I introduced in earlier chapters: attachment, vulnerability, and maturation.

Children who have replaced their parents with peers are the most likely to be sexually preoccupied or active.

Current fashion styles in dress, makeup, and demeanor promote the sexualization of young girls who are in no way ready for mature sexual activity.

The safest sex, from the perspective of attachment and vulnerability, would occur not as a way of forming a relationship, but in the context of a relationship that is already satisfying and secure.

Sex can be only as safe as the individuals are wise.

Adolescent sex is not so much a case of sexual experimentation as it is of emotional desperation and attachment hunger.

If we are to make a difference in their sexuality, we must first bring them back to the place where they truly belong—with us.

what should lead a child into learning is an open-minded curiosity about the world.

The child should ask questions before coming up with answers, explore before discovering truths, and experiment before reaching firm conclusions.

For teachers who value curiosity, invite questions, and give the child’s interests the lead, emergent learners are a delight to teach.

Peer-oriented students are completely preoccupied with issues of attachment. Instead of being interested in the unknown, they become bored by anything that does not serve the purpose of peer attachment. Boredom is epidemic among the peer-oriented.

The flight from vulnerability of peer-oriented children snuffs out their own curiosity, as well as inhibiting the curiosity of those around them.

When we as educators fail to register what’s missing, we also fail to realize what we’re up against in trying to temper children’s thinking or behavior. We try to get them to do something their minds are incapable of, and when we don’t succeed, we punish them for that failure.

For the peer-oriented, academic subjects become irrelevant.

Formal education is not intrinsically valued by the young. It takes some maturity to realize that education can open minds and doors and that it can humanize and civilize.

their misdirected attachments have them learning from the wrong teachers.

Once a society begins valuing economics over culture, breakdown is inevitable and the attachment village begins to disintegrate.

Our “enlightened” child-centered approach to education has us studying children and confusing what is with what should be, their desires with their needs.

What fulfills a teacher is to open a student’s mind. And to open our students’ minds, we need first to win their hearts.

Get in the Child’s Face—or Space—in a Friendly Way

The starting point and the primary goal in all our connections with children ought to be the relationship itself, not conduct or behavior.

Even as we must be the guardians of our children’s safety and well-being, we need to keep getting in their faces in ways that are warm and inviting, that keep enticing them to stay in relationship with us.

As children get older or become resistant to contact, the challenge changes from getting in their face in a friendly way to getting in their “space” in a friendly way.

When fully consummated, a greeting should collect the eyes, a smile, and a nod. To ignore this step is a costly mistake.

Morning would be a lot different in many families if the parent did not insist on parenting until the child had been properly collected.

we need to build routines of collecting our children into our daily lives.

For teachers and/or other adults who are in charge of children not their own, collecting them should always be the first item of business.

We need to give children something to grasp, something to hold dear, something they can take to heart and not want to let go of.

The ultimate gift is to make a child feel invited to exist in our presence exactly as he is, to express our delight in his very being.

If what we have to offer can be earned or is seen to be some sort of reward, it will not serve as nurturing contact.

It is widely believed, by the way, that to give in to a child’s requests is to “spoil” the child. That fear contains no more than a grain of truth.

A child cannot hold on to praise because it is subject to cancellation with every failure.

Even if he could hold on to the praise, he wouldn’t be holding on to the praise giver but the achievement that produced it.

No wonder praise backfires in some children, producing behavior counter to what is praised, or causing the child to back out of the relatio...

What we are saying is that praise should not be overdone, that we should be careful that the child’s motivation does come to depend on the admiration or good opinion of others.

The foundation of a child’s true self-esteem is the sense of being accepted, loved, and enjoyed by the parents exactly as he, the child, is.

Here our new-world preoccupation with independence gets in the way. We have no problem inviting the dependence of infants, but past that phase, independence becomes our primary agenda.

We fear that to invite dependence is to invite regression instead of development, that if we give dependence an inch, it will take a mile.

What we are really encouraging with this attitude is not true independence, only independence from us. Dependence is transferred to the peer group.

We could never court each other as adults by resisting dependence.

We cannot get to independence by resisting dependence. Only when the dependence needs are met does the quest for true independence begin.

it is usually those teachers who encourage their students to depend upon them who are more likely to be effective in fostering independence in the end.

A master teacher wants her students to think for themselves but knows the students cannot get there if she resists their dependence or chastises them for lacking maturity.