DEEP DIVE: Dr. Gabor Maté and Dr. Gordon Neufeld on Maintaining Healthy Connection with Our Kids

0:00Uncovered windows can make your home feel up to 20 degrees hotter. Stay cool and save up to 45 % off custom window treatments during the 4th of July VIP Access Sale at Blinds.com. From outdoor shades to room darkening blinds, finding the perfect fit is easy. Get free samples, expert design help, and professional measure and install services. Or DIY it with confidence and support every step of the way. Shop up to 45 % off site-wide right now during the 4th of July VIP Access Sale at Blinds.com. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Fresh Take from What Fresh Hell? Laughing in the Face of Motherhood. This is Amy.

0:37Today, I'm talking to Dr. Gordon Neufeld and Dr. Gabra Matei. Dr. Gordon Neufeld is an internationally renowned psychologist and foremost authority on child development and founder of the Neufeld Institute. Dr. Neufeld is recognized for his unique ability to unlock the clues to seemingly complex problems of child rearing and education. Dr. Matei is a renowned speaker and bestselling author, highly sought after for his expertise on a range of topics, including addiction, stress, and childhood development. Dr. Matei has written several bestsellers, including the international bestseller, The Myth of Normal, Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, and Scattered Minds, The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder.

1:19Today, I'll be talking to Dr. Neufeld and Dr. Matei about the newly released an updated version of their book, Hold On To Your Kids, Why Parents Need To Matter More Than Peers. Thank you, Dr. Neufeld, Dr. Mate, for talking to me today. So let's start with peer orientation, which is the sort of central thesis of this book, this thing we need to focus on. Can you define for us, Dr. Neufeld, what that means? Well, it needs to be differentiated from peer relationships or peer attachments. There's nothing wrong with peer relationships or peer attachments. It's when a child is orbiting around the peers or peer groups where it pulls them out of orbit from the adults responsible for them.

2:01And that has profound implications and that competes with the attachments to the adults that are responsible for them. It's sort of a being cool matters more than anything else. What the peers think of your behavior becomes more important and you start to shape it towards your peers? Yes, well, they matter. Whether it's being cool or not would have to do with whether your peers are cool. So it doesn't really have to do with that. That would be a particular manifestation. But it definitely peers matter more. You take your cues from your peers as to how to talk, how to dress, what's important, what's valued.

2:37You're looking to your peers for cues as to how to be and how to act. I think it's really important to add Gordon's insight. and this book is based on his insights and research, that when kids become peer-oriented, there's an automatic resistance in pulling away from the adults. So it makes parenting extraordinarily difficult because now the peer values and the peer influence show up as a contravailing force to the influence and relationship with the adults. So peer-oriented kids become very difficult to parent and parents are then constrained and very often in society advised to use punitive or controlling or coercive methods which further envenoms their relationships.

3:20So, orientation, quite apart from distorting child development, also undermines the basis of the family and of the parents' capacity to, in a healthy way, influence their children. And understanding this, this is such a departure from so much of what I've read and understood about development because we're sort of led to believe that this is a natural and inescapable part of development, that adolescence comes and kids pull away, and that's how it is, and you have to let it happen, even if it's hard, even if they scream they hate you, it's just how it goes. But you're suggesting that that, in fact, it has not always been how it goes, and that it is becoming, in fact, accelerated.

3:58It's been confused, or what confuses things is our love affair with a construct of independence. So we're confusing that when they transfer their dependents to peers, they're truly more independent. They're not. In fact, it arrests their development. They may be more independent from us, but they're not more independent at all. True independence is a natural outcome of healthy development, and it's always rooted in a fulfilled dependence. Fulfilled dependence is not possible. If you look at it this way, the purpose of attachments is to create the infrastructure of caring. And so that really justifies an attachment, whether it's a marriage, a friendship, and particularly with a parent and a child.

4:41If it doesn't deliver care, if it doesn't lead to the receiving of care, it's not really a viable attachment. But it is our love affair of independence and our misunderstanding of how it comes about that has eclipsed this phenomena. So we don't see it for what it is. As to being natural, I make this point in my book, the myth of normal as well, but we very much emphasize it in Hold On To Your Kids, is that many things that are normal in this society in the sense that they are the norm are far from natural or healthy. And if you look at human evolution, children used to live around their parents, really from birth until adolescence and adulthood.

5:22And they were always initiated into independence by adults. And independence didn't mean a hostile pushing away from a rejection of the adults. And so very often what we consider to be healthy teenage rebellion is neither healthy in this society nor is genuine rebellion. Because genuine rebellion is intended for freedom and independence. But as Gordon says, these independent kids just want to fit in and conform and become other cookie-cutter pictures of each other within the peer group. So it's not genuine independence at all. Genuine independence comes, as Gordon points out, when you've individuated, when you've become your own person.

6:03And that can only happen in the context of safe adult attachments. So if anything, orientation undermines genuine liberation and freedom and genuine individuation. By the way, there's a lot of research showing that this is normal. But that research is ethnocentric. That research is based on the assumption that whatever happens in our culture is not only the norm, but it's also healthy and natural. That's far from the case. Talk a little bit more about that, because this idea that youth have their own culture and that they individuate, you suggest that that's really something that came into play even in our culture, what, like in the 1950s?

6:39When did this start, this idea that youth are their own thing? Well, there was a short period of it, the flappers in New York, where you are. that was in the 1920s by that was limited to really new york as far as a culture apart yes it begins in the 1950s the 1960s is where it really takes off in the youth culture having its own the hippies in in the united states and canada north america was a prime example and you know there was a slogan in the 60s which had a certain political validity to it given the vietnam war and the lies that were being told about it, but never trust anybody over 30. Until I was 30, I used to say it myself.

7:21Then I realized maybe it wasn't such a good idea. Traditionally, there was always the concept of transgenerational transmission of values and culture. And there were elders. If you look at the indigenous cultures, the reverence with which elders are held. So this idea of that younger generation have to figure out all on their own, without, and even in opposition to the adult world, an automatic compulsive opposition. That's fairly new, and that came along very much in the middle of the 20th century in response to the breakdown of community and multigenerational families. If you look at it, Amy, as what's supposed to happen in adolescence, there is this myth, this faulty assumption that peers replace parents, But always in developmental, always has been the premise that's what to replace parents is a sense of personhood, is selfhood.

8:15And that is always been the developmental task of adolescence. And only when you have a strong enough sense of self that you don't lose it with your peers, and you have a strong enough relationship with your parents that you don't lose them when you're with your peers, are you ready for peer interaction? and we should look at a sense of readiness if the developmental task is accomplished and the relationships with the parents run deep they've given their hearts to those that are responsible for them their deep emotional attachments will peers have any positive effect on development whatsoever but it's a finishing touch and other things have to be in place first of all and that's What the danger is, is that we have many parents these days of young children who are rushing out to try and get enough social interaction with their children, thinking that this is required.

9:10This is not only required, it's dangerous. Not to mention, as we pointed out in some new chapters in the book, there's the pervasive and malicious influence of social media and the digital technology that connects kids to one another, even when they're not each other's physical presence. So the peer influence doesn't just happen when kids leave the home and go to kindergartens or schools. It happens actually in the home where the children, it's difficult to peel our kids off the digital media because they're so hooked on being with each other all the time. I've worked with severe drug addicts.

9:46And I can tell you that trying to peel kids off the digital media is like trying to deal with a drug addict in withdrawal. And it has the same effects on the brain, actually. So this book first came out in 2005? Is that correct? Something like that. And it's been published in dozens of languages around the world since then. But this has been updated. And so why now? So why is it time to revisit this material and put it in front of a new generation of parents? Do you think social media is accelerating the peer orientation? I think what happened is there was a shift from how to parent and ease of parenting in the pandemic and before to the well-being of children, the well-being.

10:25And this is a very welcome shift. And the shift is what is behind emotional health and mental health. And if we were probably writing the book now, we would have started with answering that question that is rooted in the deep infrastructure of attachment. Its roots are in the attachments with the adults responsible. And it's when attachments are awry that they don't receive the care. And that's really at the core of what is happening in our runaway problems with mental health is that the care isn't getting through. and it's meant to get through. That is at the very root. So in 2013, we wrote two more chapters on peer orientation and the digital revolution because, again, the book was released in Canada, at least the year before Facebook came out.

11:12It seemed quite appropriate for its approximate 20th anniversary, which it is from the Canadian publication, to address this new phenomena where our focus had shifted to well-being to again look at the huge implications of children orbiting around each other for the emotional health and well-being. If you look at how human beings evolved again, we evolved in small band hunter-gatherer groups. We lived that way for millions of years until a blink of an eye ago, the kids were with the parents the whole day, and not just with the parents but with other nurturing adults. And we've got far away from that now.

11:53And so in the United States, this is unbelievable, but 25 % of women have to go back to work within two weeks of giving birth, which amounts to a massive abandonment. We saw the child experience it, of the parenting presence. And these children spend most of their time from an early age running in a company of other peers. So that there's been vast social changes that have robbed parents of their proximity to their children in a way that they could deliver their influence and that care that they have to offer that Gordon talks about just no longer gets through. And so children are relying on each other now.

12:32And when you have immature creatures influencing each other, what you're going to get is immature development. And that's what we're seeing. Young people are immature longer and longer. They are having to stay home longer and longer. They're less capable of making way in the world, have more difficulty forming relationships. This is largely a product of the lost influence of the adults and the burgeoning influence of the peers, this burgeoning of an epidemic of immaturity, you might say. We'll be back after a quick break with more of my conversation with Dr. Gaber-Mattei and Dr. Gordon Neufeld.

13:10After an afternoon at the pool, my mom's skin needs a hydration reset. The perfect solution? Osea's Ondaria Algae Body Oil. It has an amazing citrus scent and a non-greasy texture, so my skin feels silky smooth and stays that way. Osea is clean, clinically tested skincare from the sea, so you can see and feel the difference from just one use. The Andaria Algae Body Oil is seaweed-infused and clinically shown to visibly improve elasticity and deeply moisturize. In an independent study of 53 women, after two weeks, 100 % of them agreed their skin looked firmer with Andaria Algae Body Oil, and 100 % agreed their skin felt softer, smoother, and more supple.

13:59Friends, I've got all the women in my life on the Osea train. Osea's award-winning Andaria Algae Body Oil is for skin that deserves more than lotion. And right now, we have a special discount just for you. Get 10 % off your first order site-wide with code FRESH at OseaMalibu.com. That's code FRESH at O-S-E-A Malibu.com. Being a mom means putting other people's feelings and needs above your own pretty much 100 % of the time. but our own needs and feelings matter. They need attention. That's why there's therapy, which is something anyone can benefit from no matter what their current situation is.

14:39And that is why there's Rula. Rula provides in-network covered mental health care for most major insurance plans. The average copay for Rula patients is$15. And depending on your benefits, your copay could be$0 per session. RULA partners with a network of over 23 ,000 therapists and psychiatrists nationwide, enabling you to find the right therapist based on your needs, preference, and state requirements. RULA is committed to helping you reach your therapy goals by carefully screening providers, monitoring quality of care, and supporting your progress throughout your journey. With a diverse set of licensed, experienced professionals, they make it easy to get the care you need.

15:23Take it from us, therapy is worth it. And thousands of parents are already using Rula to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance and helping them and their families. And so can you. Visit Rula.com slash WFH to get started. That's R-U-L-A dot com slash W-F-H. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get The best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller.

16:07Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. Dr. Neufeld, you have actually done some work with incarcerated youth and you said something in relation to that work that I thought made sense in terms of all of this, which was, you said, today's kids are equipped to function in a wounding environment. And you were talking about prison in particular, but I think that does sort of apply to what you're saying here, that our kids go to school or they're looking at their phones and they are equipped to function in an environment that wounds them.

16:40Yes. Our brains are equipped, of course, to reduce suffering. And they do so by inhibiting feeling. And feeling is the feedback mechanism of the brain. You can imagine a brain operating without any feedback, all of that it has to do. But what it does is because our suffering is in our feelings. When feelings are inhibited, we don't suffer as much and we are able to perform better. We are able to perform in this. So in our minds, from an adult-centric point of view, and from an expert point of view, the kids are doing better. We call it resilience. We call it all kinds of things which we shouldn't be calling it because we're watching the brain do what it does very well, which is defend against the vulnerability too much to bear, but at great cost because feelings are what make us human and humane.

17:31Feelings are what grow us up. And the brain is greatly compromised in its ability to perform its tasks. But yes, what is supposed to protect a child in a wounding world is that child's attachment with a caring adult. Because when the adult matters more, the stings, the rejections, all of the wounding matters less from others, that is. And that is the natural protection. And peer-oriented children are unshielded. And again, it's the very, it's the defense of their brain. These kids were incredibly defended, but absolutely stuck emotionally, developmentally, and many of them bearing two to six diagnoses that they qualified for as a result.

18:23You know, I can only add that in my work, I work a lot with traumatized adults, People that are really abused in childhood have been through horrendous times. The results on physical and mental health are both horrendous and well-documented. One of the impacts, as Gordon suggests, of emotional pain is a kind of emotional shutdown, an organismic self-protection against vulnerability, against pain. We're seeing that kind of shutdown in families where kids are not abused, where kids are not badly treated by the parents, where the parents really do their best, But because the parents have lost the contact and the kids have become peer-oriented and because the peer world is so hazardous, there's this emotional shutdown and defense against vulnerability in children who have not suffered the kind of adversity that some of my patients have.

19:13It's a strange phenomenon. You can see this in the cruelty of the peer culture. I mean, the rise in bullying and the horrendous things that kids can do to each other because their hearts are shut down. and their hearts are shut down because they've lost the protection of the adult world. So anybody listening is thinking, okay, I get this. I see this. I have to write this course. How early can and should parents start doing this work of connection and safety? Before birth. Before birth. You know, I can tell you already during pregnancy, the emotional states of the mother have an impact on the child's brain development.

19:51So, I mean, you can't start this work too early. And you know what? You don't have to tell a mother cat to do this or a mother rat or a mother orangutan. It's natural. It's natural. It used to be natural to human beings as well. It's really the toxicity of this culture that has interfered with that instinctive natural relationship. We have these parenting instincts, but instincts have to be evoked by the environment and really functioning in a society that doesn't evoke the parenting instinct. In fact, it inhibits it and even makes it wrong. So look at how many parents are told, just as a small example, not to pick up the kids when they were crying.

20:30And this goes back to Dr. Spock, who talked about the tyranny of the infant who wanted to be picked up. And his response was, just walk out, shut the door on the crying infant. Well, any mother or father who's tried to do that, their heart is breaking. But they're doing it because they're following the expert advice. That shuts down their own parenting instinct. It's our own peer orientation. well, I want the doctor to think that I'm being a good parent, so I'm going to override my own instinct. Partly it is, yeah. And partly it's our own helplessness in a face of a society that stresses us so much that we're looking for any kind of easy way out.

21:04I talk a lot about our loss of confidence as parents to be the answers to our children. And I'd say to be the answers, not to have the answers, not to know what to do, to be the answer. It requires a certain confidence to step up to the plate, just like in marriage, to be the answer to your partner. It's not to have the answers, it's to be the answer. And the relational needs of children, they don't go away to be invited to exist in another's presence, to be delighted in, to be significant to, belong to. These are relational needs that are with us as humans for as long as we live. And this was to think that these should be used against a child was ridiculous.

21:50They should be fulfilled. And who was to be the answer? I'd have so many parents coming to me and say, like, I feel embarrassed. My 12-year-old is still looking to me to be his answer. He should be looking to his peers. And you'd hear so many parents say this. No, you are very fortunate indeed. And what is hell, so to speak? What is hell is that when you've lost both the confidence and the ability to be the answer to your child. Because there's no fulfillment there anymore. It's work. There's no ease anymore. And one of the most satisfying feedbacks we get for this book from really all around the world is thank you.

22:32I've known what you're talking about in my heart, but everybody tells me I'm wrong. And having read your book, I have the courage to follow my own parenting guidance and instincts. So even if we don't convince anybody who needs to be convinced, which actually we have fortunately convinced many, but even if all we do is validate parents whose own gut feelings are crying out to hold on to their kids in the face of a culture that would pull them away from them, we'll have succeeded with this book. And we get that feedback all the time. The solution, it's so important, but the solution, to quote you both again, is that kids need deep attachment.

23:13They need to fall deeply into attachment. And our work as parents is to make it easy for them to do so. Yes, to make it easy and safe for them to do so. Not use their relational needs against them. And so that's part of being safe because when you're deeply attached, it sets you up for facing separation, which is the greatest wounding of all. And so believing that you really are your child's best bet, that you are best positioned to answer their deepest needs, their deepest yearnings, their deepest longings. And it's only when those needs are met is there the luxury to become their own person.

23:47That's when development spontaneously unfolds. We don't have to work at it. We don't have to push it. Like a plant, it flowers, it blooms when the roots are taken care of. And ours is root work. This is where we come in. And when our children are attached to us, it is so much easier to carry them, to take care of them. It's a dance that has been going on for tens of thousands of years. And it's a dance that, but we've been thinking that it's about what we do and not thinking about what creates it is the child's attachment to us. And that's why the idea of holding on to it, preserving it, making sure that we take care of their attachment to us, because in so doing, we enable us to do our own work of answering their deepest needs.

24:37By the way, I think I've had the thought, I think Gordon maybe agrees with me, that were we to retitle the book, were we to write it again, we might not call it Hold On, which denotes a bit of forcefulness, perhaps. We would call it Keep Them Close. They're meant to be close to us and we need to keep them close. We'll be right back with even more of my conversation with Dr. Gabor Matej and Dr. Gordon Neufeld, co-authors of the book Hold On to Your Kids. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You know those friends who support your preference for podcasts over music on road trips? That's the energy State Farm brings to insurance.

25:13With over 19 ,000 local agents, they help you find the coverage that fits your needs. so you can spend less time worrying about insurance and more time enjoying the ride. Download the State Farm app or go online at statefarm.com. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Who cares about your poops? Ollie does. That's why Ollie's science-backed gut health lineup helps support your family's regularity. From daily probiotics to fiber gummies, your kiddos will love. Find it all on ollie.com. That's O-L-L-Y.com. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

25:56There's an idea that you provide that our provision of this attention to our children and our attachment needs to be stronger than the pursuit. Can you explain that? Well, it's just, you think of just a hug, right? If you give a perfunctory hug, there's no letting go. The answer to letting go is to have a sense of security in the provision, to know that there's more than is needed. So if you don't have that, then you become preoccupied with it. And that's one of the tragedies of peer relations is there's nothing more addictive than something that almost works. And something that almost works is to know where you get it, but you never get enough.

26:33And so it gets you going. And that's exactly what you see. The provision has to be greater than the pursuit. That's a fundamental characteristic of a fulfilling parent-child dance because there's release in it. There's fulfillment for both. You have the great fulfillment of being able to make your child purr, so to speak, to feel satiated, to feel, ah, all is well. And they have the sense of being able to know that they're truly being held on to, they're truly being met. So they don't have to be preoccupied with getting it elsewhere. Even in adult relationships, what's it like when you have to keep looking for the relationship and you're not totally secure that it's available for you unconditionally?

27:18It's deeply unsettling. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. And I think I know the answer to this, but I'm going to ask if the beginning date for this work is before our children are born, what's the end date on this? I'm somebody with two kids in college who are sometimes home, but I'm often off individuating. How do I keep that connection and that safety going for older children? Well, you know what? You don't need to. It's not work. As far as I can tell, if you've got a relationship with your kids, it'll just... Look, my son and I are just writing a new book on adult child and parent relationships.