This is the last post for our inaugural book club with the amazing book Hold On to Your Kids. I’m sure most of you are off the wagon with this book at this point (lol), but I still want to post this last part for consistency (and because the last two chapters are excellent!). If you haven’t finished it, I encourage you to!
A few things before I dive into thoughts on this last section…
I found out that they’ve added another post-script to the book that addresses the pandemic and applies the ideas of this book to what we all experienced in those years. I learned this by listening to this recent conversation1 between my favorite “parenting” guru Janet Lansbury and Gabor Mate, one of this book’s authors (and another favorite thinker of mine). I won’t be addressing that as I don’t have that edition.
I also decided I won’t address the first post-script in book club format either. That section, called “A Postscript for the Digital Age: How to Hold On to Kids in the Era of the Internet, Cell Phones, and Videogames,” is excellent and I plan to integrate some of its ideas in a different post.
So with all that said, let’s look at the last two chapters of this marvelous book.
Chapter 17: Don’t Court the Competition
“We have to stop setting up our children’s peers to replace us—keeping in mind, of course, that the enemy isn’t our children’s peers but peer orientation.”
This is the opening sentence of the chapter.
Chapter 17 touches on big topics, like daycare and school, the two places where our children have a lot of peer interaction and not as much caring adult interaction, and our obsession as modern parents with “socializing” our kids. Other interesting ideas are how the “first fruits” of peer orientation—that is, how young peer oriented kids tend to act—seem really good initially; how shyness isn’t the problem we tend to think it is, and how peers are not the best answer to boredom (because of what boredom actually means psychologically).
The thing I love most about this book is its nuance. It’s relentless in its explication of the truth about child development, but it isn’t prescriptive or overly idealistic. It acknowledges all circumstances and the reality of our world but also lays out what is true about what children need.
For example, it doesn’t say that daycare and school are unequivocably terrible and that we should all be at-home parents and homeschooling. The main takeaway around these topics is that we need to be very mindful of attachment (that is, a child’s need to feel connected to her or his caregiver) if and when we engage in these systems, especially since our culture isn’t.
“Children don’t need to be at home but they most certainly need to feel at home with those who are responsible for them.” // “Preschool is not the primary problem and home school is not the ultimate answer. The key factor is the dynamic of attachment.”
I really connect with the idea of needing to be mindful of attachment when we engage in the world. As a parent I’ve been repeatedly shocked at how we’re expected to put our children in the care of people our children barely know (and sometimes that we barely know). Whether it’s a church nursery, an event where “childcare is provided,” daycare, or school, we do not have sufficient ritual or norms around establishing a relationship with the surrogate caregiver(s) ourselves, and definitely not around making sure our child feels comfortable and connected with the caregiver. I’ve felt this intuitively for years (this doesn’t feel right) as I’ve been expected to leave my kids in the care of people I’ve never met, who sometimes don’t even introduce themselves to me or my child. It’s just strange, and it felt really good to me to have this intuition affirmed by this book.
It’s hard to do things when they’re not normal in our culture, though. What parent is going to have their child’s teacher over for dinner over the summer, or find a time to hang out with their daycare provider and their child to help facilitate a trusting relationship? No one does things like this, and if you do, you’ll likely be thought of as a parent who is overly worried or involved. They’re fine, society says. Kids are resilient.
The second half of the chapter is about how children develop the much-coveted “social skills.” Most parents think kids need a lot of peer contact so that they can learn how to get along with others, to be good socially. This isn’t how it works:
“The belief is that socializing—children spending time with one another—begets socialization: the capacity for skillful and mature relating to other human beings. There is no evidence to support such an assumption, despite its popularity.”
What children need is to develop properly, which happens in the care of adults. Socializing with peers plays a part, but it’s really only a small part and it comes much later. First, they need to feel confident in their identity and see others as separate beings: “When a child knows her own mind and values the separateness of another’s mind, then—and only then—is she ready to hold on to her sense of self, while respecting that of the other person. Once this developmental milestone is achieved, social interaction will hone the child’s individuality and hone his relationship skills as well.”
So, in essence, it’s sort of the opposite of what we think: what will really allow kids to be socially successful is to ensure strong attachment to adults as they grow.
“If we were truly in harmony with the developmental blueprint, we would not be so concerned about children getting along with one another. We would place a higher value on children becoming able to hold on to themselves when interacting with others.”
This feels so true. So many adults in this world don’t have proper skills for relating to others. I see “patterns of compliance, imitation, and conformity” everywhere—and this is what happens when the priority of caregivers is to “socialize” their kids via peers instead of prioritizing relationships with nurturing adults. They even say this much: “Many of us experience [these things] as adults when we are too desperate to make things work with someone else: losing ourselves with others, giving in much too quickly, backing away from conflict, avoiding any upset.”2
Since I don’t want this post to be too long, I’ll wrap up the commentary on this chapter. They touch on various ideas about peer contact, and then end this way: “The trouble is not in children playing with one another, but in being left to one another when their basic attachment needs have not been met by the adults in charge. The more well-attached our children are to the adults who care for them, the less concerned we need to be about restricting their social play. It’s not that children shouldn’t spend time with one another, but we should not expect such play to meet their deepest needs. Only nurturing adults can do that. In our urgency for children to socialize, we leave little time for our kids to be with us or to engage in the solitary, creative play I’ve called emergent play. We will up their free time with play dates—or with videos, television, electronic games. We need to leave much more room for the self to emerge.”
The chapter then ends by circling back to the opening note: that peer orientation can look really “good” to adults at first, but it’s a Trojan Horse. Kids need caring adults much more than they need each other.
Chapter 18: Re-create the Attachment Village
If the last chapter was more negative, as in “these are the wrong ideas,” this chapter is its antidote. It’s also the last chapter of the original manuscript, and so it brings home so many ideas that run throughout the book.
It begins by describing how things used to be in a time gone by—far from ideal, as life never is, but as a “village of attachments” where communities were more vibrant and cohesive, where neighbors knew each other, extended families lived in close proximity, adults did their work close to home, cultural activities brought generations together, et cetera.
The central idea here is relationships, and we can work to craft our lives accordingly: “What makes the village a village is the connections among the people. Attachment villages can be created, if we possess the vision and the drive.”
What follows are three central ideas for doing so.
The first is “develop a supporting cast.” From our adult friends to our parents3, we need to cultivate relationships between our children and other caring adults. This also involves changing the way we socialize, trying to ensure our events are friendly to all ages, and building community in our neighborhoods where the kids know that all adults can care for them.
The second is “matchmake with those responsible.” What this means is taking responsibility for facilitating a working relationship between our children and those who will care for them. There are so many practical ideas in this section.4
The third is “defuse the competition.” This chapter is mostly about ideas for how to have relationships yourself with your child’s peers. This is actually one of the specific parts that stands out for me from my first reading of this book. He describes one scene where he was describing the first time his daughter wanted to have friends over. He writes: “When children reach adolescence, there is usually pressure on parents to facilitate peer get-togethers and parties. If peer orientation is in the air, the implicit or explicit message is for parents to make themselves scarce during this time. Again, it is important for parents to seize the lead, foil the polarization, and set a precedent.” He describes how he told her daughter yes, she could have a party, but no, they (the parents) would not be getting lost. They decided to throw a huge barbeque in which he took orders from each guest for their grill request. “The message would be clear—relating to Bria meant relating to her family. She was a package deal.” Something about this makes me teary every time I read it. We don’t actually have to give in to the idea that once kids are teens, they just need to be alone or with peers. They actually still need us, so much, and taking responsibility for building genuine relationships with their friends is one way we can support them at this stage.
There’s also a few paragraphs about cultivating relationships with parents of our children’s friends.
This is final (beautiful) paragraph of Hold On to Your Kids:
“Who is to raise our kids? The resounding answer, the only answer compatible with nature, is that we—the parents and other adults concerned with the care of children—must be their mentors, their guides, their nurturers, and their models. We need to hold on to our children until our work is done. We need to hold on not for selfish purposes but so they can venture forth, not to hold them back but so they can fulfill their developmental destinies. We need to hold on to them until they can hold on to themselves.”
That’s it, folks!
This book club has been an experiment. I hope it at least has convinced you that this is a book worth checking out as it’s pretty widely known as a must-read by thoughtful parents.
If you’re new here and this post has piqued your interest, here are all the book club posts for this book:
Intro/Chapter 1 (Why Parents Matter More Than Ever)
Chapters 2/3 (Skewed Attachments, Suberted Instincts; Why We’ve Come Undone)
Chapters 4-7 (The Power to Parent is Slipping Away; When Attachment Works Against Us; Counterwill: Why Children Become Disobedient; The Flatlining of Culture)
Chapters 8-13 (Section title: Stuck in Immaturity: How Peer Orientation Stunts Healthy Development)
Chapters 14-16 (Collecting Our Children; Preserve the Ties That Empower; Discipline That Does Not Divide)
I’m thinking about what our book club can look like moving forward and what our next read should be (I’m going back and forth!). Meanwhile, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one!5
You can find that conversation right here. It’s excellent.
This is actually the idea I’m thinking about most as I re-read this book a second time: how many adults simply didn’t get their attachment needs met from primary caregivers and therefore became peer-oriented?
There’s a line that says “Unfortunately many grandparents have also become too peer-oriented to assume their role in the attachment hierarchy.” I’ve heard disappointment expressed by many whose parents don’t seem to want to care for their grandkids, and it was shocking to see this so plainly expressed in this book from the 90s. I’m sad about this, both for the parents and the grandparents (they don’t know what they’re missing) and thankful that my parents aren’t like this.
I’m going to write a separate post on this ideas of passing the “attachment baton” as I have several personal experiences to share. It’s hard to read the theory and think “That sounds great but HOW DO I DO THAT?” I’m never interested in making parents feel more stressed than they already are; I’m interested in the opposite.
An interesting thought that has come up with one reader is how the ideas of Montessori seem opposed to the ideas in this book. As I’ve thought about this, I think the rub lies in thinking of the practices of “attachment parenting” (which encourages things like co-sleeping, babywearing, and breastfeeding on demand) as totally representative of the ideas in this book, which is not necessarily so. I also think that Montessori is primarily an educational philosophy whereas attachment is a child development concept. Anyway, the point is: let your reactions fly; I love to hear them and it helps me with ideas for future writing on parenting topics.
I just love this book so much and "reading" along with you has been beneficial. Thank you!
Re: Montessori and this book/attachment-oriented parenting in general. I find it interesting that Maria Montessori's primary work (as I understand it) was with children who were generally *lacking* in secure attachment with their parents. So much of her work was about cultivating the child's self, apart from the home, because these children came from homes where that kind of work was not possible. I also think that because she was not a mother herself, she did not understand biologically normal infant sleep, breastfeeding, etc--which is where the idea of a baby being on a separate sleeping space from the get-go, having "boundaries" around nursing so that the baby learns that the mother is a separate person, etc comes from. I think if she had been doing her work at a different time in history, when these things were "givens" as part of biologically normal parenting, she may not have proposed them. But she did the bulk of her work during a time when mother-baby separation was generally encouraged and many women bottle fed anyway.
This is not to say that Montessori's educational philosophy is not helpful or good, just that it is incomplete (as all educational philosophies are) and very much "of its time." I have not been drawn to go full-on Montessori in my parenting or education because I find that I can't get past some of these deficits, but I know many parents who have beautiful relationships with their kiddos AND who love and embrace Montessori's educational methods.
This book has been on my to read list for a while so I'll be sure to revisit your posts once I've read it! This is interesting what you're writing about peers/socialization, etc, as I am in the midst of Jonathan Haidt's new book which (in addition to being all about the dangers of social media for kids) is really all about child development. He really emphasizes the essential role peers play for children, and have always played for children, historically. And this makes sense to me - in the village you describe, the children would be with each other primarily, while the adults did the necessary work on the farm/homestead/village, etc. Of course as you say there also would be a network of trust in place with many caring adults the child would feel safe with, there in the background and always available. That shouldn't be underestimated. But I do intuitively think unrestricted (and non-parent involved) peer interaction is absolutely vital for kids. Though my 3 year old (oldest child) goes to nature school three mornings a week we're now leaning toward at least hybrid homeschooling once she's school age and so I'm very interested in this peer/socializing element! I don't think it should be dismissed, but I do also think it probably *is* a bit overemphasized. Anyway, interested in any thoughts!