Emily Parker spoke with authors Gwyn and Jill Harding-Jones, who have been in-law children for over 30 years, and parents in-law for 10 years. They share their thoughts on how to make those potentially tricky relationships work.

For parents it's just a case of respecting that your child's house is their house; if they want you to take your shoes off when you go in to their home, it might not be what you do in your house, but just accept that as graciously as you can, because it's a small thing at the end of the day.

The bottom line is that so many relationships have gone so badly wrong over very small things and I think that everybody loses out there. The parents in-law lose out, the children lose out, and then when grandchildren come along, they lose out as well.

Jill: I think there's a lot to be gained. Everything in the book is common sense really, and we're not experts, we haven't got any qualifications in this, it's just stuff that we've learned along the way.

Gwyn: So we're talking out of experience and like Jill's just said, a lot of it is common sense, but it's just good to be reminded. Once you're reminded of it you say, "That's so obvious." It's not rocket science.

Emily: Building memories and quality time is something that comes across in the book as something that's really important to you guys. What have been some of the intentional decisions that you've made with your families to build memories together?

Jill: We have tried for quite a while now. They're busy and we're busy, so we try to have a date in the diary probably every four to six weeks. We call it family games night. We all get together, have a meal together and, as it says, we play games. We'll play board games or charades. We have a small granddaughter now as well, so that's changed the dynamics a little bit, but not a lot. It's just time to get together and have fun. We try to get together at birthdays and things like that, but obviously with them being a lot younger than we are, then sometimes it doesn't always work out because they want to do stuff with friends.

Emily: If anybody wants to buy a copy of the book how can they do so?

Gwyn: It's available on Amazon and it's available in paperback or in Kindle form.

I think it's great if parents in-law want to buy this book, and if it's really important for them to build this relationship then it's great if they want to buy it. But it's also great to give as a gift. When young couples get engaged, or even when they get married, on the wedding day etc., it'd be great if people gave this book to parents in-law.