Book SummaryThe Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, by Philippa Perry

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read

Do you want to cultivate a healthy relationship with your child? Do you wish you had the tools to understand them better? In The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, Philippa Perry offers guidance for strengthening your bonds with your child and raising an emotionally secure individual. She argues that you can improve your parent-child relationship no matter your child’s age by examining how your parents’ style of parenting impacts your own, listening to your child, and meeting them with respect and understanding.

Perry is a British psychotherapist, writer, and TV and radio presenter. She worked in the mental health field for 20...

The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read Summary Developing Your Parent-Child Relationship

According to Perry, you shouldn’t view a child as someone to manage, but rather as an individual with whom you plan to maintain a close bond for the rest of your life. Maintaining this bond full of love and connection requires you to regularly confront your emotions, understand how your past affects your present, and recognize how your actions affect your child.

Characteristics of a Strong Bond Between Parent and Child

According to some parenting experts, the following are characteristics of a strong parent-child relationship:

1) Showing your child that you love them unconditionally. If they don’t feel like they have to earn your love, they’ll be able to make mistakes, learn, and grow in a healthy way. To do this, you must be emotionally available for them (which means confronting your own emotions and past experiences, as Perry suggests).

2) Offering your child respect. This means listening to their needs, setting clear expectations with them, and explaining the consequences when they don’t meet those...

The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read Summary Shaping Your Child’s Other Relationships

In the last section, we discussed different methods for forming a close bond with your child. In this section, we’ll explore two areas of parenting Perry identifies for helping your child develop healthy relationships with themselves and others:

1. Assessing how you speak about yourself and how that might influence your child
2. Modeling healthy conflict resolution so your child feels safe and secure

Area #1: Assessing How You Speak About Yourself

According to Perry, the way you speak to yourself has a big impact on your child’s relationship with themself. Children model their behavior on the behavior of their parents, so if you tend to speak negatively about yourself, your child will likely develop that behavior as well.

For example, say you have an inner belief that you’re not very smart. Even if it’s not true, it makes you feel deeply insecure. Therefore, anytime someone compliments you for your cleverness or skills, you make a self-deprecating comment diminishing your intelligence. Likewise, anytime you make a mistake, you take it as evidence that confirms your self-assessment.

You don’t treat or think of your child the same way, so you don’t think about...

Shortform Exercise: Reflect on a Past Parenting Experience

Reflect on how you could have applied Perry’s advice to a parenting experience from your past so you’ll feel ready to apply her insights to similar situations in the future.

Describe a parenting challenge that you wish you’d handled differently, or describe a childhood experience of being parented that you wish your parents had handled differently. (For example, maybe your child cried because you wouldn’t buy a toy, and you snapped at them for being ungrateful. Or, maybe your parents never disagreed in front of you, so now you have no idea how to solve conflicts with your partner.)