About Dr. Gordon Neufeld
Dr. Neufeld is a developmental and clinical psychologist based in Vancouver, Canada, and author of the highly acclaimed best-seller, Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers.
With more than 30 years of experience, he offers a unique synthesis of developmental literature and has an exceptional ability to make children understandable. Dr. Neufeld is considered to be a leading interpreter and communicator of the developmental approach.
Dr. Neufeld lectures widely and conducts workshops for parents and educators across Canada. Topics and presentations include:
- Helping Kids Grow Up
- Attention Deficits
- Children and Attachments: A Working Model for Judges and Lawyers
- Harnessing the Power of Attachment
- Working with Stuck Kids
- Discipline That Doesn't Divide
- The Power to Parent
- Reclaiming Our Children
- Making Sense of Preschoolers
- Aggression and Violence in Children and Youth
Understanding the role of parents and
peer orientation
| In Hold On To Your Kids, Dr. Neufeld, along with co-writer and physician Dr. Gabor Mate, explains the crucial role parents play in the lives of their children. He introduces the phenomena of peer orientation — peers replacing parents in the lives of children, which he calls the most disturbing and misunderstood trend of our time. |
According to a press release on Dr. Neufeld’s website, "Peer orientation undermines family cohesion, poisons the school atmosphere and fosters an aggressively hostile and sexualized youth culture. It provides a powerful explanation for the increasing frustration experienced by parents and teachers these days. It clarifies, for the first time, the underlying dynamics of schoolyard bullying and youth violence. Its effects are painfully evident in the context of teenage gangs and criminal activity, in tragedies such as in Littleton, Colorado; Tabor, Alberta and Victoria, BC.
Its less dramatic but also pernicious consequences are felt in almost every home and classroom in the increasing alienation of children and youth from the nurturing adults in their lives. Peer orientation is an escalating trend that has never been adequately described or contested until Hold On To Your Kids: Why Parents Matter. Once understood, it becomes self-evident — as do the solutions.”
Book exercept
To understand more about peer orientation and its effects on our kids, families and communities, read this startling, but encouraging excerpt from the book.
Support for parents and educators
The Transformative Parenting team has trained extensively with Dr. Neufeld. We offer a variety of programs and services to meet the needs of parents and educators in our local community as well as others through telephone consultations and teleseminars.
