A review by sbdutson
Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers by Gabor Maté, Gordon Neufeld

4.0

I listened to the first 4 chapters of the book and then turned to the ebook to finish it as it was too hard to get anything out of the audio version for me. This book really forces us to challenge our ideas of what “good” parenting should look like. As an attachment based therapist, I found this book challenging a lot of my own views of parenting in the context of attachment. Reading some of the critics of this book makes me think that some don’t like this book simply because of how it challenges their notions of what should be. The authors take a “no apologies” “we are right, you are wrong” type of approach to writing this book, which I get can be hard to swallow at times. What I found to be helpful was to notice what triggered me to say “I don’t agree with that” and then to reflect on why. I learned a lot about myself and my views from doing that. For example, I feel like his ideas on how much we should let our kids be with other kids w/o parent interaction is a bit extreme. In his mind, parents need to always be there, which seems crazy to me! However, looking at it more seriously I can see how for me, I just need to be mindful of not going to either extreme. I hope others who read this can see that too (meaning not that specific idea, but how the challenging points of the book can be used to have them reflect on what matters to them as good parents).