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The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read will help you step back and focus more on the big picture of parenting to foster a strong relationship with your child so they can grow up emotionally and mentally healthy.
The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read will help you step back and focus more on the big picture of parenting to foster a strong relationship with your child so they can grow up emotionally and mentally healthy.
Sometimes when our kids do stuff we just don’t understand why. But to understand them Perry says we need to step back and realize we need to look at the biggest influences in their lives: ourselves. We have the biggest influence on them and they watch us closely, so if we want to really understand our kids, we need to first understand ourselves.
What we learned as kids can have a huge impact on our reactions and parenting style as adults.
When we make negative associations as kids, this can carry on into our adult life. An example of this is of a dad who began to feel angry every time his 18 month-old didn’t eat or dropped food on the ground. When the author helped him look into his past, he realized the reason he felt this way was because his parents would punish him swiftly for this kind of behavior.
Those negative experiences he had as a kid carried into his parenting and clouded his judgment.
So what do we do if we can’t change our past? We can do this by looking into our past and sorting through the good and bad experiences. When we think about the experiences, we should think about the way we felt about it then, and how we feel about it now. When we understand this, it will help us become more compassionate parents.
Whenever negatively charged emotions come back, it’s a sign we should explore our childhood to discover why we feel the way we do about it. If we use these times to reflect and realize why we react the way we do, it will help us to be more empathetic parents.
If you’ve read our summary on No-Drama Discipline, this one won’t be entirely new to you. But I chose it because it is so essential to a child’s development. Sometimes as parents we have to calm some pretty ridiculous-seeming tantrums over things like not getting ice cream for dessert. Ridiculous to us, yes, but to the child, those feelings are entirely real. Have you ever talked to someone who tries to tell you how you should feel when you’re just trying to let out your frustrations? That’s a little bit how kids feel when we tell them they’re unjustified for crying over the ice cream. Instead of going with your instincts to get angry or ignore, seek first to acknowledge and understand. Perry isn’t trying to tell you that…
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Get the complete summary in the appOur responses to parenting situations are closely linked to how we were parented.
Validating all of your child’s feelings will be more productive and healthier for the child.
Our parenting can encourage sound mental health in our children.
"The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read" is a strong fit if you want practical ideas around communication skills, culture, future—especially themes like our responses to parenting situations are closely linked to how we were parented; validating all of your child’s feelings will be more productive and healthier for the child. The MinuteRead summary distills these concepts into a focused read, whether you're deciding whether to buy the book or applying its lessons at work.
After volunteering with the Samaritans, Philippa trained as a psychotherapist. She worked in the mental health field for several years before writing her graphic novel, Couch Fiction which lays bare the process of psychotherapy, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2010. Her second book, How to Stay Sane, was written for a series published by the School of Life and Pan Macmillan in 2012. Her third book, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (And Your Children Will be Glad That You Did) will be p…
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