Hi! Welcome to the ranch.
Just one little administrative thing. A subject of "Help" isn't really that useful. I've changed it to a more meaningful subject line of "Eight Puzzle Algorithm Help" for you.
For context I googled this page:
https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr10/cos226/assignments/8puzzle.html
It might be your actual assignment, or just one similar.
However it explains the "EightPuzzle" and the "Manhattan method" you are asking about.
Your questions:
1 - How to reference "parent board state"
I think that just means you need a variable of type : "BoardState" which represents the state of the board just before the last move.
Keeping track of that prevents you from just "undoing" the move you just made.
You can check if two BoardState variables represent the same state using the "equals" method - which I presume you need to implement.
2 - "Manhattan method"
This is defined as:
"The sum of the distances (sum of the vertical and horizontal distance) from the blocks to their goal positions, plus the number of moves made so far to get to the state."
My suggestion: break the problem down.
Can you work out how far a block is from its "target position" ?
So if you have '1' in position '1' and it should be in position '4' - how many vertical/horizontal moves is it away from its target position
Draw a picture :-)
Once you figure THAT out, the rest should be easy.