Gordon Neufeld Quotes

Gordon Neufeld — Canadian Psychologist

Gordon Neufeld, Ph.D. is a Vancouver-based developmental psychologist and author of the book Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers that has been translated into 10 languages. The Neufeld approach is based on the attachment theory formulated by John Bowlby. He developed a theory of attachment that includes six stages in the development of the capacity for relationship, the construct of polarization that explains both shyness and defensive detachment. His model of attachment is universal in both its application and implementation... (wikipedia)

Digital intimacy ruins the appetite for the real thing. So, when kids are gaming or even when spouses are gaming, they lose their appetite for genuine intimacy. Kids lose their appetite for getting their intimacy needs, their hunger for significance and attachment, with the family, and it erodes the relationship between them and their parents.

Many people think that discipline is the essence of parenting. But that isn't parenting. Parenting is not telling your child what to do when he or she misbehaves. Parenting is providing the conditions in which a child can realize his or her full human potential.

Children need to trust and depend upon those who are responsible for them.

I started my career in parent education with the idea that we needed to let our kids go. I believed that parents were suffocating for their children. There was no room for individuality and personhood.

Peer attachments are not the problem themselves. It's when they compete with adult attachments that the problems emerge. It's just like when siblings get attached to each other. If they start revolving around each other, then the parents can't do anything with them because it's a competing attachment.

Gordon Neufeld Quotes

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