The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read: (And Your Children Will Be Glad That You Did)

For a child to achieve maturity, the parent-child relationship must be renegotiated, such that the new relationship is roomy enough to allow for the child’s increased capacities. But no one needs to leave anyone.

Growing up – and the lesson of the ‘good-enough’ parent – is in part a process of learning that our own desires are not the centre of anyone else’s world. We can be needy and manipulative, bullying or seducing others into pandering to us, but we should expect to be resented for it. Where our behaviour is positive and less self-centred, though, some

Children internalize protection, safety, freedom, success, and self-esteem from nonnegotiable rules and negotiable rules. Despair and failure come from rigidity, criticism, marshmallowing, and abandonment.

Parents must rear their children toward that one day when the child begins to seek his or her freedom, when the insect, whether an ugly moth or a beautiful butterfly, seeks to abandon the cocoon. During the years between infancy and adolescence, the winning argument will have already been made. The winning argument will have been love; the losing a