can see the point of all the attention I give to Toby now; it’s to make him feel good, not just now but in the future. Toni and I are filling him up with love and, hopefully, that will mean he has love to give when he’s older, so he will feel valuable. I have no relationship with my own father. I know Toby is getting from me what I didn’t get from

what fosters goodwill? There seem to be two main ways to do it: (1) responding to bids for connection or attention, and (2) finding solace in each other rather than seeing the other, or others, in the family as adversaries.

you treat your child’s sadness, anger, and fears not as negatives to be corrected but as opportunities to learn more about them and to connect with them, you will deepen your bond with them. Then, there is every likelihood you will increase their capacity for happiness.

These small, day-to-day interactions generate goodwill and reciprocal treatment, and without them our relationships cannot be sustained. So this is the key to a successful partnership: be responsive and interested.

speak in I-statements and not you-statements. Don’t react; reflect. You don’t always have to reflect before reacting—I’m not advocating that you lose all spontaneity—but if you feel annoyed or angry, I think it is a good idea to pause and understand why.

Think back to your childhood: were you made to feel “bad” or in the wrong, or even responsible for your parents’ bad moods? If it happened to you, 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.

If you are a repressor, your natural inclination is to push away strong feelings and say “Shush” when you are confronted with them, or “Don’t make a fuss, nothing’s the matter,” or “Be brave.” If you dismiss a child’s feeling as unimportant, they are less liable to share any subsequent feeling with you,

Outside of your awareness, their behavior is threatening to trigger your own past feelings of despair, of longing, of loneliness, jealousy, or neediness. And so you unknowingly take the easier option: rather than empathizing with what your child is feeling, you short-circuit to being angry or frustrated or panicked.

do we bring our appreciation to the people close to us or do we dump our anger onto them? These familial relationships are influential in determining how a child’s personality and mental health develop. Children are individuals, but they are part of a whole system too.