This book is for anyone who would like to improve their relationship with their parents. Anyone who seeks their support and acceptance, or simply dreams of calm communication without hysteria and manipulation. Anyone who feels drained rather than nourished by their interactions with their parents. Anyone who is unwilling to minimize these interactions because they feel a need for parental involvement or a duty to them.

Perhaps your parents think you're doing everything wrong. Perhaps they react negatively to your hobbies and interests. Perhaps you feel you haven't lived up to their expectations and they're ashamed of you, or you're overly dramatic, or you're too dependent on their opinions. Their constant negative reactions to your decisions and requests may have led you to conclude that you demand too much of them and that you need to care for them more yourself. Perhaps you believe your parents often act like children, and sometimes you're the only adult in the family. In a sense, you've had to play the role of parent to your mother or father—or both. Perhaps they complain to you about life or each other, as if you can (or even should) solve their problems.

Or perhaps you believe your parents don't value you at all, even if they love you. Their attitude toward you can be described as disrespectful, critical, demanding, hostile—in general, inadequate.

Since you've likely already tried countless sophisticated methods to improve your relationship with your parents, you find it hard to believe that you can end a critical, demanding, and dysfunctional relationship with them. Of course, if it were easy, you would have long ago figured out what to do and achieved your goal. It won't be easy. The solutions offered in this book require strategic planning and considerable persistence. But you can do it.