Based on the bestselling book
by Gordon Neufeld, PhD & Gabor Maté, MD
Now brought to the world as a documentary series.
A new series from the award-winning creators at (thrive) Films
“ I always thought that loving my child was enough - but the love that the parent feels doesn’t go anywhere unless the child is able to receive it ”
A 3 part journey into the root of everything.
For decades, the mainstream parenting conversation has been owned by one framework: behaviourism. Do something we like — reward. Do something we don't — punish. All built on the same logic B.F. Skinner used to train pigeons. All branded "evidence-based."
What was lost in that takeover was a different question entirely — not "how do we change this behaviour?" but "what does this child need in order to grow?" Developmental science was eclipsed not because it was wrong, but because behaviourism was easier to package and sell. Episode one traces that history, and begins to restore what was taken.
When attachment to adults is weak or absent, children don't stop needing to attach. They attach to their peers instead. Peers are not developmentally equipped to hold that role — they cannot provide the safety, the continuity, or the unconditional regard that only adults can offer. So children sacrifice themselves to belong. They abandon their instincts, suppress their emotions, and conform to peer culture with a desperation that looks, from the outside, like attitude. It is not attitude. It is attachment hunger.
This is the root of bullying, school violence, adolescent disconnection, and the epidemic of anxiety we are living through. Not devices. Not culture. Attachment absence.
The solution is not a technique. It is a condition. Children do not need to be managed into good behaviour — they need to be held in relationships deep enough that development can do its work. That work involves tears. It involves rest. It involves frustration that doesn't get fixed, and sadness that gets to exist. These are not signs that something is wrong. They are signs that something is moving.
Episode three turns to what becomes possible when adults understand what children actually need — not compliance, not performance, not a child who behaves. A child who grows. A child who stays. A child who, when the world gets hard, still turns toward you.
There is a generation growing up more anxious, more medicated, and more disconnected than any before them.
Two Voices. One urgent truth.
Developmental Psychologist, Theorist, Founder - Neufeld Institute
Dr. Gordon Neufeld is a Vancouver-based developmental psychologist — a foremost authority on child development and a leading interpreter of the developmental paradigm. Over more than fifty years of clinical practice, university teaching, and personal reflection, he developed a comprehensive theory of attachment that places the deep human need to be oriented toward a caring adult at the root of everything children do, feel, and become.
His bestselling book Hold On to Your Kids, co-written with Dr. Gabor Maté, has been translated into more than 15 languages. Through the Neufeld Institute — a worldwide charitable organisation devoted to applying developmental science to raising children — his work has reached parents, educators, and professionals in more than 140 countries.
He has spent his life asking the harder question: not how do we manage children, but what do they need from us.
Physician, Author, Trauma & Addiction Expert
Dr. Gabor Maté is a retired physician, bestselling author, and one of the world's leading voices on the relationship between early childhood experience, trauma, and adult health. After twenty years of family practice, he spent over a decade working with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside — an experience that forged one of the most compelling bodies of work in contemporary medicine.
The author of five books published in 43 languages, including The Myth of Normal and In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. Awarded the Order of Canada. Creator of Compassionate Inquiry, now practised in over 80 countries.
As the co-author of Hold On to Your Kids, he brought the attachment framework into conversation with the broader story of why modern society is making people sick. He speaks not as a theorist, but as someone who lived the cost of disconnection — and found, through this work, a different way to understand it.
“ There's so much depth to Neufeld's understanding of the child and human development -nobody on the planet even comes close. ”
Why this series matters
We are in a cultural crisis — losing our children to peers and screens.
For much of the last century, mainstream parenting advice has been strongly influenced by behaviourist ideas. Drawing on B.F. Skinner's work in operant conditioning, many parenting approaches have relied on rewards and consequences to shape children's behaviour. These techniques, originally developed through research with animals such as pigeons and rats, were later adapted and marketed to parents as evidence-based methods for managing behaviour.
There is a reason Hold On to Your Kids — written twenty years ago — still holds. Dr. Gordon Neufeld's work has never been mainstream because it is not behavioural. It is rooted in human development — in what it actually takes to raise healthy adults, not simply well-behaved children. For forty years, he has quietly held the answer while the rest of the conversation moved in the wrong direction.
This series delivers it to you.
Not another parenting method. An education — in the roots of child development, and in how we as a culture have been quietly led astray.
So that you can find your way back and Hold on to your kids.
A movement.
It is the centrepiece of an education and mental health initiative, delivered across three channels designed to create lasting change: the film, the live events, and the community that gathers around both.
Every episode streams on Thrive.one — supported by a conference with world-leading experts, and weekly circles that keep the conversation alive between releases.
Wraparound study resources, educator toolkits, and our curriculum for schools, family centres, therapists, and mental health leaders worldwide. The academic and clinical companion to the series.
Bring the series to your school, clinic, or community. Host a circle. Partner with us to carry this into the places it is needed most.
The Village supporting the film
Most films end when the credits roll. This one is designed differently.
Built around three episode launches, HOYK creates a living ecosystem on Thrive.one — a reason to gather, go deeper, and bring someone new in every week of the campaign.
Episode release
Each its own launch moment — not a drop, a gathering. Every release opens a new conversation across the community.
Online conference
Keynote + expert panel + open Q&A. Recorded and available for all members.
Weekly Circles
Parent, educators, therapist & reflection perspectives — led by Neufeld Institute faculty and certified facilitators.
Resources
Discussion guides, professional toolkits, past recordings — get access on Thrive.one.
To all those who carry this work
This series was born from love — and, honestly, from urgency.
For years, we have watched the conversation around children's mental health grow louder and more desperate. And all the while, the answer has been sitting quietly in Gordon Neufeld's work — waiting, patient, profound.
We made this film because we believe that answer deserves to finally be seen.
But more than that, we made it because of people like you.We never wanted to simply release this into the world and walk away. Passive viewing was never the point. Real change is. And real change doesn't happen on screens — it happens in schools, organisations, and communities, carried forward by people who show up every day and do the quiet, essential work.
It requires people who already know what it costs to hold this framework in a world that keeps reaching for quick fixes. People who have sat with families in their hardest moments and offered something deeper than a shortcut. People who understand — better than anyone — what it would mean for this work to finally reach the ones who are still searching.
That is why we want to offer you early access — to help gather community around these urgent realities, to deepen the conversations, and to explore what wrap-around care and real support can look like when the right people are in the room together.We are so grateful for the work you do. And we would be deeply honoured to carry this forward with you. If this stirs something in you, please reach out — we would love to hear your vision and find out what becomes possible when we build this movement together.
With love and deep appreciation,
Merissa & Gary
Parents, therapists & the filmmakers behind Hold On to Your Kids
Thank you for your submission!
Join the Village
This series exists because children need adults who won't let go.
Your membership makes it possible — and brings you into a village of parents, educators, and practitioners who are holding on together.
Already a member? Your membership includes early access to all 3 episodes, live post-episode circles — all inside the community you already belong to.
Thrive Films is the independent studio behind Hold Onto Your Kids— self-funded and self-distributed so the message stays pure and the social change stays the point. Every film we make lives on Thrive.one, our global delivery platform built around community, where weekly and monthly circles led by experts, elders, teachers, and wisdom keepers from around the world open access to the lived wisdom our elders carry.
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