Forcing a parent window to reload

I have a parent window and I want it to be reloaded when a form submission is made and processed in its child window.

1. process form
2. reload parent window
3. close child window

I've tried:

window.parent.reload(force);
window.close();

But that doesn't work. I don't want to force the parent window to reload everytime it becomes the focus so I don't think I can put any code in that file.

Is it possible to do what I want and if so, how?