Inserting pages into parent page

Hello,

I am very new to wordpress and I am busily trying to create my site using the Advantico theme.

I have created a parent page which shows up in my menu at the top. I have then created another page and selected the parent page as the parent. The child page shows up under the parent when I hover over the icon but what I would like to be able to do is click into the parents actual page and have a picture and excerpt of each of the children on this page which can then be clicked on to go into their page. (Then if possible, not have the drop down when hovering over the parent in the menu). These pages will probably stay forever once setup.

Like I said I am very new so a step by step from the beginning would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your help!

Chris