‘Stay close to your children’ of Gabor Maté and Gordon Neufeld It is a book that deals with the importance of parent-child relationship and the risk of peer-to-peer influence in shaping children’s personality.

The book is released on Thursday March 20th.

Read, the excerpt from the exclusive pre -publishing at skai.gr

Because now, more than ever, parents are important

Twelve -year -old Jeremy is bent over the keyboard, with eyes nailed to his computer screen. It is eight in the evening and has not yet studied for school, and his father’s repeated recommendations to “finally start reading” from one ear come in and come out of the other. Jeremy is busy with MSN Messenger. He exchanges messages with his friends, gossiping who likes who he likes, clarifies who is a friend and who enemy, quarreled over who said something to school in the morning, he is informed of who is considered the last nice and who is not. “Stop to swell me” erupts his father, who, once again, comes to remind him of his lessons. “If you did what you should, I wouldn’t get you,” his father renounces. The argument escalates, the tones go up, and after a while Jeremy screams: “You don’t understand” nothing “by closing the door. The father is angry, angry with Jeremy, but mainly with himself: “I did it again” he thinks. “I don’t know how to contact my son.” He and his wife are worried about Jeremy: he has always been a cooperative kid who is now impossible to control, and even advise him. His attention is focused solely on contact with his friends. The same conflict scenario is repeated at home several times each week, and neither the child nor the parents are able to respond to new ideas or actions to get out of the deadlock. Parents feel weak and powerless. They never used punishment, but they are now increasingly prone to strict reprimand. And when they are finally punished, their son becomes even more bitter and challenging. Should children raise so difficult? Was it always? Older generations were often irritated by the fact that young people showed less respect and discipline than they used to, but today many parents know instinctively that something is really wrong. Children today are by no means as they used to. They are less likely to take their parents as an example and they are very afraid of being tangled in anything. They also seem less innocent, less naive – they lack, one would say, that inhumane admiration for the world, which leads to the exploration of the miracles of nature and human creativity. Many children seem overly sophisticated, demonstrating a pseudo -care behavior, with a feeling of satiety. They seem to be easily bored when they are not with each other or when they do not deal with technology. The creative lonely game looks like a faded memory. “When I was little, I loved the game with the mud I was getting out of a ditch near our house,” recalls a forty -two -year -old mother. “I was pleased with her texture. I liked to make different shapes or just holding it in my hands. Today, however, I can’t make my six -year -old son playing on his own, unless it is the computer, the Nintendo or a video game. ” And parentality seems to have changed. Our parents were more confident about themselves, with more confidence, and they influenced us more, either positively or negatively. For many today, the parental role does not seem natural. Today’s parents also love their children, but only love is not enough. We have exactly the same things to teach, but our ability to transcend our knowledge has been significantly reduced. We do not feel strong enough to guide our children to maximize their potential. Sometimes they live and behave as if they have dragged them away a Siren song that we are unable to hear. We are afraid, albeit imperceptibly, that the world has become less safe for them and that we are powerless to protect them. The gap created by children and adults sometimes seems bridging. We strive to look worthy of the image we have formed for the right parent. When we do not achieve the results we want, we beg our children, we welcome them, bribe them, reward them or punish them. We catch ourselves addressing them hard even for our own ears, foreign to our nature. We feel that we are cold in times of crisis, at just those moments where we would like to employ our unconditional love. We feel hurt as parents because we feel rejection. We blame ourselves for our failure in their education or our children because they are difficult. We blame television responsibilities because they distract them or the education system because they are not strict enough. When our incompetence becomes unbearable, we turn to simplistic, authoritarian formulas that are in line with the mentality of “make it yourself” and the rough solution that characterizes our time. The importance of parental role in developing and maturing young people has been called into question. “Does parents matter?” It was the title of an article in Newsweek magazine in 1998. “The role of the parent has been overestimated” supported a book that gained worldwide interest that same year. “They have made you believe that you have a much greater influence on your child’s personality than you are essentially. “01 The issue of parental influence may not have been so important if things were going well with our children. The fact that they do not seem to hear or embrace our principles may have been accepted if they were indeed self -disciplinary people with self -discipline and confidence, if they had a positive sense of what they were and if they had formed a clear picture of the direction and purpose of their lives. But we see that these qualities are absent from many children and young adults. At home, at school, in one community after another, young people who are in the process of growing have lost their balance. They have no self -control and are becoming increasingly prone to alienation, drug use, violence or simply in a more general absence of purpose. It is harder to teach them and even more to handle them than their peers even a few decades ago. Many have lost their ability to adapt, to be taught by negative experiences and to mature. Today, more than ever, children and adolescents receive medication for depression, anxiety and a multitude of other diseases. The crisis that young people are experiencing is alarmingly reflected in the growing problem of school bullying and, in some of its extreme manifestations, such as the murder of children by children. Such tragedies, though rare, are the most noticeable outbursts of more general discomfort, common phenomenon in today’s youth culture. Responsible and dedicated parents are indignant. Despite our love and care, children look extremely stressed. Parents and adults in general no longer seem to be the natural mentors of young people, as has always been the case with humans and all living creatures in their natural environment. Older generations, parents and grandparents of the Babbi Bumper Group are looking at us in question. “Nowadays, no manuals were needed with instructions for upbringing children,” they comment on obvious confusion. How oxymoron is this, given that now we know more about children’s development and have easier access to seminars and books to raise them than any other generation of parents?

Stay close to your children is a book that offers a deep understanding of children’s psychology and gives tools to parents to build stronger ties with their children. It is especially useful for parents who are concerned about the influence of the environment on their children and looking for ways to help them grow confident and stable values.