Book Club: "The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will be Glad that You Did)

This is our first book club, all about "The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will be Glad that You Did) "by Philippa Perry.  Whether you've read this book, its on your "to read" list or you are looking for notes so you don't have to read it, this episode is for you. I share some of my (and listeners favorite and least favorite things) and how you can best utilize this book.   

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Transcript

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Welcome to the First Book Club episode on the book. You Wish your parents had read and your children will be glad that you did by Philip A. Perry, the book you wish your parents had read and your children will be glad that you did. Philip A. Perry Book Club episode. Before we dive into this book, I wanna take a moment to thank everyone for listening. If you're reading along, thank you for reading along. If you are listening because you wanted a summary to know whether or not you want to read the book or have just decided you're going to use this instead of reading the book. Thank you. I want to let you know that I now have a Patreon account, so if you are enjoying the podcast and would like to support it, There are a couple great options there, and you'll get lots of bonuses including episodes over the summer, because otherwise the season is going to be ending in a few weeks. There's also opportunities to make suggestions for episodes. We'll have some more interactive book clubs where people can actually get together more traditional style book clubs. So that's all on patreon.com. Slash evidence-based crunch and I will put a link to that on the show notes. And if you are enjoying listening for free, please continue to do that. That's awesome too. I know we had a gap between episodes. We had a holiday here and I sort of lost track of time staying home with my family, and then I got sick. I apologize if I'm sniffly. I will do my best to edit that out Without further ado let's dive in to the book you wish your parents had read. This book is by a person named Phillipa Perry. She is a psychotherapist in the UK and she is relatively well known in the UK and in Europe. So I hadn't actually realized that this isn't actually that popular of a book in the US or maybe it's less popular than some other books. So if you are listening, not in Europe, if you're listening in North America or somewhere else, this may be more of an introduction to this book. And the book focuses on parenting your children with a focus on remembering that children are people, they have the same needs, including emotional needs as adults. So that's a big focus of the book. Another focus, and the reason that I chose this book to be our first book club book. Is that it really focuses a lot on generational childhood issues and breaking cycles of parenting. So if this is a topic that's interesting to you, I can refer you back to an episode I did earlier in this season, specifically about hereditary trauma that was my main draw to this book when I had heard about it and when I dove in. That was what immediately spoke to me. How I'm going to do this episode is to go through a little bit of what she says, and I'm going to try, try to highlight what things I liked. And then what things I didn't really enjoy and I heard from some of you some things that you wanted to make sure were covered. Thank you for those who messaged me. That will be in part of this as well and I will leave the posts up about contributing. So if there's things you want that didn't make it to this episode, that post will still be on my Instagram and my Facebook. And you can still share more about this book. I'm trying to find ways to make these, book club episodes a little bit more interactive. The book starts off really discussing this idea of children having unique individual needs and that they are unique people and that there are many ways that parents can. Acknowledge these, these, the uniqueness of the children and how important this is. And part of that had to do with how you were parented. One of the first things that struck me with this book was this idea of how much, how we talk to ourselves. Reflects in how we talk to our children, but also how we were raised her first part is called Your Parenting Legacy. So looking at how you were parented can affect how you are parenting, and some of that has to do with healing your own traumas. Maybe that is actually. Repairing a relationship with someone maybe that is doing your own work and also noticing how you might be in a cycle that came from when you were a child. And that goes on in her next few chapters. She really focuses early on in this book about the importance of acknowledging and processing your own childhood experiences as a parent, that it is one of the most essential things you can do. She talks about how unresolved issues from your childhood can impact your parenting style. There was a part early in the book where she talks about how if you were always yelled at about something, when you're experiencing that on the other side, you may feel triggered. If you were always yelled at for not listening, then your child not listening might be a major trigger for you and you might react. You the moment they, they don't listen to you. You might react much stronger than you would about something else because it's the not listening feels very triggering. So being aware of these things is sort of the first step in dealing with it. So that can be around not listening certain things about mealtime. Transition times. It's different for every person, but starting to notice these things. She in the book goes through attachment theory. If you haven't already listened to my episode on attachment theory, I would recommend that the takeaway from that is that children need to feel secure in their relationships with their parents in order to thrive. She discusses strategies for building strong parent-child relationships based on trust and open communication. She looks a lot at focusing on how important it is to understand your own emotions A aspect of this chapter is the idea of validating feelings. So the idea that children have strong feelings, and as your parent, your job is to help be a container for those feelings. So you're not necessarily trying to make them happy all the time, but teach them the skills to be with these feelings. So they're, we often feel like our children need to be happy. But maybe that isn't exactly what we're looking for. Maybe it's more about teaching them how to not be happy. How, you know, something can be disappointing. I, I know you're disappointed. I'm not going to yell at you for being upset about this, but I'm also not going to give you what you want she talks about instead of distracting naming feelings. She has an exercise in this book. So throughout the book there's exercises to try. I did some of them. I didn't do all of them. In this chapter. She has an exercise that's called Feeling for Someone Else or Feel for Someone Else. And the idea is to think about a person or a group of people who have come to a different conclusion than you. So maybe someone who votes different than you. So the idea is to think about their circumstances, their hopes and their fears, putting yourself in their shoes and understanding why they would feel like this. And it's the idea of creating empathy in yourself. It can be a made up person, but the idea behind this is to start being able to do this with your children. This reminded me a little bit of doing a loving kindness meditation, so if that is something you've ever tried or would like to try, you can look up loving kindness meditations or meta meditations. I have some on my website. I can recommend others as well. That is a nice way to encourage this idea of being able to feel for others. It's the idea that your children have feelings. Even very young children, toddlers, have feelings that are strong and feel very real to them, even if they seem like something minor to you. And being able to help contain their feelings, not necessarily always giving them what they want, but also not getting angry if they're reacting in a way you don't like. She talks about the importance of apologizing. So this sort of goes along with that. It's this idea. Of mirroring. So our children are going to not so much learn what we tell them, but what we show them. So if you do make a mistake, we all make mistakes. She says that, which I really appreciated several times in the book, she notes nobody's perfect. One of the best things you can do is repair that relationship. You can talk to your children about what happened, and then they're getting the opportunity to see. That they don't always have to act perfectly, and they're still in a safe space with you. Within this same section, she has a whole chapter on parenting relationships. I'm part of a couple. I really appreciated that. There was a whole chapter here. She talks about this idea of cultivating goodwill. Which I thought was really, really great. Especially as an expat parent, very often your partner is basically your whole village, your whole team. I think this is especially true for new parents anywhere in the world who are often under immense stress. She talks about cultivating goodwill with your partner, and this is essentially the idea. She cites a couple studies that. You are better able to meet someone else's emotional needs when you have stronger day-to-day interactions that are generating goodwill and reciprocal treatment. So it's being responsive and interested with your partners. So giving attention, finding ways to appreciate your partner instead of trying to always one up them or find fault in their mistake. I thought that was very interesting. You don't see a lot of stuff about necessarily parental relationships and a lot of parenting books, so I really liked that. And she notes that being kind isn't the same thing as being victim or being unassertive. So this isn't just accepting if your partner does nothing and like praising them for that. Still, always share your feelings when you're angry, but it means explaining how you're feeling instead of blaming them. So, if your baby's not sleeping at night, this is, this can be an example directly from my time of new motherhood with my first child and. my child just not sleeping at all and being so tired all the time. And I was nursing, so I was the one waking up and feeling so angry at my husband who was working. He took his parental leave a little bit later, which was a mistake we learned from our second child. But it felt like he was getting to get out of the house and be well rested and my anger was all towards him instead of being able to say, you know, this is really hard and it's probably really hard for you too, and, We've done a lot of work since then and we're much better at being able to sort of be a team. So she doesn't, my issue with this, and I know I said I was gonna do all the, the pros first, but we're, I'm here. But she talks about how important this is, but she doesn't really give advice. She says that. There is lots of advice, but basically she just says, you need to aim to understand how the other person feels, even when they feel differently. So that is very good advice. But maybe you go read other books, maybe you see a therapist, maybe you do internal work and do work with your partner. But as is the case throughout this book, there's, there's a lot of advice, but there's often a step missing. That said, I really did like the chapter she had, the exercise she had about unpacking an argument. I haven't had a chance to do it yet because since I reread this book, I haven't had an argument with my husband, um, that isn't like a humble brag. We never fight. It's just that he's out of town. I've been sick when he's been home. We've. Been co-parenting really well, but I thought it was a really interesting exercise she recommends acknowledging your feelings and looking at the other person's feelings. Define yourself. So speaking in I statements, so not you didn't do the dishes, but I feel like I've done the dishes every time this week, or I have done the dishes every time this week. Reflect instead of reacting. She says, you don't always have to reflect before reacting, not advocating that you lose all spontaneity, but if you feel annoyed or angry to take a pause and understand why. Embrace your vulnerability rather than fearing it. Don't assume the intent of the other person. So that's a really important one that maybe not assuming someone's doing something just to get at you. Thought that was definitely a very interesting exercise and I really enjoyed that she had that chapter She also included parts of that chapter for when you are not parenting as a couple and still being able to, to do a lot of this work. One thing I really liked about this book is she gives parents a lot of permission to go easy on themselves. There was a lot about self-compassion and empathy, being strong and having this strong emotional connection with your family. She has a section that she talks about sympathetic magic. Which I really liked, where she, where she defines it. Sympathetic magic as symptoms are connected to something the mother ate or did during her pregnancy, or a lactation period. So this was in the chapter about pregnancy. Whatever rules you're being told to follow, whether they're scientifically proven, medical ones are folklore, they may be different depending on where you live in the world. And they continue to change. So I'm not suggesting you should ignore medical device, but do consider how it makes you feel. So this idea that symptoms tend to show up being linked to things that are in the culture. So, we always hear, don't eat raw fish. It will make you sick, it will make you this, it'll make you that. And then we go and look in a country like Japan, where pregnant women eat fish throughout their pregnancy and tend to be fine. So she's talking about this within the rules of pregnancy, and she says that whatever rules you've been told to follow, whether they're scientifically proven medical or folklore, they may be different on where you live in the world. I really liked that she's giving you permission to focus on what works for you, so don't ignore medical advice, but. Certain things are folklore, certain things are maybe outdated. We'll, I'm sure at some point talk even more about Emily Oster. She goes through a lot of these things, you don't see that in a book a lot, within that, she also talks to. The reader in that same pregnancy chapter about focusing on what can go right during a pregnancy. So if you're, especially if you're spending a lot of your pregnancy feeling like you're really scared and worried, you're hearing about all these things that can go wrong. She has a great exercise about how you're thinking about the baby. A little bit problematic. She doesn't really look at or acknowledge history of loss, pregnancy loss, child loss. She doesn't look a lot at fertility issues, but I thought it was still nice that she noted it. I also really liked that she has a focus on looking at what works now. So this is something that I'm definitely guilty of. I was very, very guilty of this with my first child. I shouldn't say I was guilty of it. This was something I did a lot with my first child, we'd find something that worked for something, but it felt like this was gonna last forever. he would only fall asleep if I was holding him for hours and hours, and I was just certain that I was going to have to hold my child all the way through university. And of course I eventually saw that that wasn't true. I mean, he's six now and he sleeps all by himself, but at the time, it felt like it was very easy to say well, if I do this, what about this? So she really encourages you that if you're finding something that works in your family and it's working right now, you don't need to worry about how it's gonna work in the future or what it's gonna look like in the future. I think this was definitely easier. Once my child got older and also once I had a second child, because you start realizing that everything's just a season. Everything's just a phase. But I think for a new parent in particular, this is really great advice. So those are all things I liked. Here's some things I didn't like as much. Like I noted. I really liked this mention of. Sympathetic magic. I really liked this idea that it can often feel like the advice we're given then we sort of make it so, and we should take almost everything with a grain of salt. But my heart fell when then just a few chapters later. I got to her chapter on sleep and she states, I believe our preoccupation in wanting to push our children, into getting to sleep by themselves too, as fast and as early as possible. Has the potential to harm our relations ship with them, and therefore has the possibility to interfere with their capacity for happiness later in life. So that was, I mean, she states it as something she believes, but it was also very, very definitive. It wasn't talking about, different cultures say different things, and this might be where you view would sleep, but our culture's view of sleep is wrong and it's going to screw them up forever. So I know we need to have an episode on sleep because it comes up with so many other topics and people have asked me about it. I've already noted that it's a more triggering topic for me. I think it, maybe it will be our season premiere for season two. It will give me all summer to get used to it. But I just found that I had been really feeling good about this idea of sympathetic magic and being able to sort of look at all this advice. It felt very close to the ethos of this podcast of there's advice, but there's also our own being. And then she said that, and. It really upset me. And then right after that she also talks about what she calls sleep nudging, which is very similar to many sleep training techniques. So she's viewing that. Anyone who says anything that sleep training is. Essentially cry it out that you're gonna leave your baby to cry all night if you're sleep training. And when we have views like that, what starts to happen is people hear sleep training, they hear is going to interfere with your child's capacity for happiness later in life. And then they don't look at anything that has the word sleep training in it, even though it can mean a lot of different things for a lot of different people. So in general that chapter. Did not sit very well with me. I've mentioned a couple of her exercises. There's a lot of exercises in each chapter. I didn't do all of them because I was reading this with an academic focus. I. I think all these exercises could be a positive or a negative depending the type of person you are. I know I've heard from people that they didn't finish this book because they felt like they didn't do all the exercises, so they stopped. So if you're the type of person that needs to sort of do everything, then maybe, it would be nice to have a note that these exercises are great, but don't let it hold you up. For other people doing this sort of thing is really practical and it could be really helpful. Some of her examples, some of her stories that she uses to make points are very extreme. The one that I've seen mentioned in other reviews is the story of the 10 year old who tried to commit suicide. That's in the story of his parents being really busy and not realizing that he was so unhappy. It's a very extreme story. It's a very upsetting story. The, child ended up being okay, the takeaway from the story seemed like it had a very important message, that it is possible to fix a ruptured relationship. I think the focus on naming feelings is very important, and giving kids tools to name these feelings are very important. But to me, that felt like a very extreme example especially if you were a new parent, I could see this being really, really terrifying. I've heard people critique her she talks about her own parenting very often, but she quote unquote, only has one child. I don't think parenting is harder or easier depending on how many children you have. I think everything's different for every family and every family size. My child was, my first child, was an only child for almost five years. I had some sense of what that felt like. I know what it's like to parent two children, but I know what it's like to parent my two children, not your two children. So I don't really like that critique on the face of it. But what I do think it highlights is, What I think is sort of the biggest issue with this book and many, many parenting books, which is what I just said, all children are different. What works with one child doesn't work with all children. This is my issue with almost all parenting books and the reason. With this, with her only one child, is she could talk about this amazing thing that worked with her child and if she had had another child, that doesn't mean it ha it would work with them. I've mentioned my first child would sleep, so I will mention it again that. Before I got better and realized you shouldn't talk to other people about your baby sleeping or not sleeping, people would give me all sorts of advice. Have you swaddled? That was going to be the original name of this podcast is have you tried swaddling, have you tried swaddling, heating the bed, feeding them this drowsy but awake, the three S's, whatever, all these different things, and none of them worked. And I, I read all these books. None of that advice worked. I was sure there was something wrong with me, something wrong with my baby, or something wrong with both of us. With my second she was a much better sleeper, but we had phases where she was a little fussy and somewhere in the back of my head, I would remember some of these strategies, like warming the bed for 10 minutes before I put her in there and it worked. She would be cranky. I would take her out of the bed, we'd heat up a hot water bottle, we'd put it in for 10 minutes, take it out. We put her back in. And she would go back to sleep. So I could see if that was my first child, I'd be like, oh, you have to heat the bed. That's all it takes. So this idea that, you know, just because something worked for your one child, this is something that's, that's one size fits all. I, I find very problematic. A lot of this parenting advice takes a lot of work. That's sort of the other criticism people have about her having one child, but all parenting takes a lot of work. So she would say, and I would probably agree, it's just about where and when you do the work. She talks about this idea of love bombing where if the relationship with one of your children is struggling, you take a day or a weekend where you spend time just with them and they get to make all the decisions and you just bomb them with love. You give them so much love, you tell them how amazing they are. Which is a really wonderful idea. It's also very privileged you're assuming there's two parents. You're assuming that the other parent can take care of whatever other kids there are. You have the resources to do separate activities, so it's, it's definitely a bit privileged. This book requires a lot of emotional work. Like any self-help book or any diet book, you need to be in the right place physically and emotionally to do this work that's in the book. Coming into this when you're in the wrong space would probably be for many people, very frustrating. Overall, I'm really glad I read this book and I'm really glad I got to share it with you. I loved the title of the book, so I think right from the very beginning I thought it was great. I think I would implement some of the things I really liked the start of the book. I thought her focus on how we were parented was really great. I wish there had been more of that in the book. And maybe less of some of the other things, but I think the idea of doing the work for yourself was really important. And often when I talk to people and they want recommendations for books, sometimes the books I recommend are less parenting books and more, psychology books, self-help sort of books that are just looking at doing the work for yourself. Because I really think that is very important. I would love to hear what you think about this book, so pop over to Instagram or Facebook. I have the post up for comments. I'd love to hear what you thought of my thoughts. I mentioned earlier, I have a Patreon account now, so if you would like to support me, please go ahead and check that out, and we'll have more book club books within that, as well as in some settings, a more interactive book club, we'll actually meet on Zoom once a season and get to discuss some books. The books aren't always gonna be parenting books. There's gonna also be novels about parenting. Maybe we'll do a movie. So there's a lot there. I noted earlier, we only have a few episodes left to this season. The next episode, or possibly the final episode is going to be on screen time. I have a very special expert coming to join us. You can join my newsletter. It's at emily gold yoga.com. I have things going on that are accessible anywhere in the world, so definitely check that out. And if you are in Brussels, you can join me in person for prenatal and postnatal yoga on Mondays. You can find that on my website as well@emilygoldyoga.com. And I've got more things for parents in the works. You can follow me specifically for the podcast Evidence-Based Crunch on Facebook and Instagram, and if you are enjoying this, please leave a review. It really does help so much. Thank you so much for listening. I thank you as always for listening. I love to hear from you. Love to hear your thoughts on this book and everything else. Thank you.