Philippa Perry

Even if your child does need some guidance, there’s not much point in doing it when you’re angry. If you give it then, they will hear only your anger and not what you are trying to tell them.

I am interested in how we can relate to our children rather than how we can manipulate them.

I opened my mouth
and my mother’s words came out.’ Of course, if theirs were words that made you feel wanted, loved and safe as a child, that would be fine. But so often they are the words that did the opposite.

One issue might be that as a child you felt that the people who loved you perhaps didn’t always like you.

not so unusual to feel jealous of our children. If you do, you need to own it, not act out negatively towards your child because of it. They don’t need parental trolling.

Think back to your childhood: were you made to feel ‘bad’ or in the wrong, or even responsible for your parents’ bad moods?

We would never shout at our child or threaten them or make them feel bad about themselves
in any way.

it is all too easy to try to repair your feeling of being wrong by making someone else feel wrong, and the victims of this are, far too often, our children.

One of my earliest memories is my mother looking in the mirror and picking fault with herself. And when, years later, I did the exact same thing in front of my astute teenage daughter, she told me she didn’t like it when I did this, and I listened and remembered how I hadn’t liked it either.

Partly due to these labels of ‘good mother’, ‘bad dad’, or vice versa, existing, to avoid the humiliation of being in the bad role, we get defensive about anything we may be doing wrong.