hold on to your kids

making parents instead of peers the primary influencers on children

One of the first questions homeschooling parents get from people who don’t homeschool is some version of the socialization question:

• Aren’t you worried that your kids won’t socialize with their peers?

• The most important part of school is enculturation: how can you deny that to your kids?

• Or, more bluntly: you don’t want your kids to be weird, do you?

I have never been moved by this question, mostly because I am ambivalent about the degree to which I value socialization. For most kids my kids’ age, my answer would be: “No, I don’t want them to be like that kid.” I know this sounds arrogant, but I mean it. I want my kids to be different, set apart, from their peers, because I think this is what’s best for them and their peers.

My kids need to know that to follow Christ in this world entails making decisions that distinguish you from the people around you. That’s just the score. There’s no way around it except by accommodation and dilution.

Their classmates and teammates need to see, know, and experience a different manner of life. They need to be shown that another way of living is possible from the one presented to them by pop culture.

We live in a culture where the desire for socialization has run amok. It has become the final fig leaf covering our nation’s dismal educational system, the last argument we can make in favor of compulsory education. And we repeat it like a mantra without really considering if we are pursuing the correct goal.

In their book, Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Mate argue that we the way we have prioritized peer socialization and peer attachment has damaged our kids. Because we have become enculturated by the notion of the importance of socialization, parents have abdicated the primary role they are to have in the lives of their children. We have turned it over to peers who neither unconditionally love nor deeply know our children.

Peer attachment is terrifyingly thin and fragile; kids can never rely upon their attachments in a long-term context with their peers. Kids know this, and because they know this, they are constantly seeking affirmation from their peers that will never be forthcoming.

Historically, as the authors and common sense tell us, culture has been passed down by elders: parents, grandparents, extended family, and other wise members of a culture. Today, though, we have replaced the traditional means with a youth-oriented culture that encourages children to create their own cultural touchstones and values. This is historically unique and frankly stupid. Kids just do not have the requisite wisdom, experience, or perspective to create culture. The old vertical transmission has been replaced with a horizontal transmission.

Here is how the authors describe the effect this has on kids and what parents must do:

By weakening the natural lines of attachment and responsibility, peer orientation undermines healthy development. Children may know what they want, but it is dangerous to assume that they know what they need. To the peer-oriented child it seems only natural to prefer contact with friends to closeness with family, to be with them as much as possible, to be as much like them as possible. A child does not know best. Parenting that takes its cues from the child’s preferences can get you retired long before the job is done. To nurture our children, we must reclaim them and take charge of providing for their attachment needs.

Moreover, kids naturally enjoy similarities they have with their parents as long as this isn’t undermined by culture. My oldest loved mowing the lawn with his fake lawnmower when I was out there with the real one. We once told my youngest that he looked a lot like me and was probably going to look like me as an adult. His response: “Good. I like Dad.”

By constantly undercutting parental influence, our culture has removed the most secure base from which a child can engage the world.

This transference of attachment from parents to peers has also taken away the traditional means parents used to command the goodwill of their kids: “The power we have lost is the power to command our children’s attention, to solicit their good intentions, to evoke their deference and secure their cooperation. Without these four abilities, all we have left is coercion or bribery.”

This is what you see parents reduced to today. It does not have to be this way and historically was not. Multiple times, my kids after watching the way other kids behave have made comments along the lines of, “How can that kid act that way?” My kids are not perfect. Far from it. But they do understand authority and respect. They understand (implicitly, of course) that me and mom set the tone for how things work in our home. They see themselves as members of a unit.

One of the popular arguments against school dress codes or uniforms is that such things diminish the individuality of the student. My response to that has always been, “Kids don’t dress to show their individuality; they dress to show their tribal loyalty.” Kids do not dress in a certain style (or listen to a certain genre of music or prefer a certain type of movie, etc.) because as individuals they constructed an ideal and personalized system of dress. They do so to fit in with the peers they want to fit in with.

And this leads to maybe the key thing I took away from this book and would suggest any parents reading this focus on: when we give our kids a longer leash with their friends, they are not becoming more independent; instead, they are transferring their dependence to equally blind and ignorant fellow children. Here is how the authors phrase it:

What to us looks like independence is really just dependence transferred. We are in such a hurry for our children to be able to do things themselves that we do not see just how dependent they really are. Like power, dependence has become a dirty word. We want our children to be self-directing, self-motivated, self-controlled, self-orienting, self-reliant, and self-assured. We have put such a premium on independence that we lose sight of what childhood is about. Parents will complain of their child’s oppositional and off-putting behaviors, but rarely do they note that their children have stopped looking to them for nurturing, comfort, and assistance. They are disturbed by their child’s failure to comply with their reasonable expectations but seem unaware that the child no longer seeks their affection, approval, or appreciation. They do not notice that the child is turning to peers for support, love, connection, and belonging. When attachment is displaced, dependence is displaced. So is, along with it, the power to parent.

It is imperative that we hold on to our kids. We must be the adults who teach them how to be adults. We must give them a safe and secure base of unconditional love moderated with a healthy respect for our authority from which to engage the world. We must acknowledge the ways we have given over this responsibility to people who do not love our kids or desire what is best for them.

Our world tells us to let them go. But we must hold on. We are the ones best positioned to help them grow into their unique skills and gifts, along with their individuality. Their peers are not equipped to do this; let’s stop letting them.

I want to note that this is a pretty bare-bones approach to this book and these ideas. I worried that if I kept typing, people would stop reading. This covers the central insight I took out of the book. I encourage you to read it yourself to find more evidence and argumentation to back their claims.