Good Kids

"An old soul" ... "a delight to have in class" ... "so mature for your age"
If you grew up as a Good Kid, you probably heard these words a lot. You spent your entire childhood trying to be good, earn your place, hold everything together, and be easy and lovable. And it worked! All it cost was a childhood of bottling your emotions, putting everyone's needs before your own, and constantly watching everyone around you for the slightest sign of upset.
Written by a trauma therapist and parenting expert, Good Kids unpacks the "Good Kid" persona and the effects of relational shame trauma. This form of trauma doesn't always come from outright neglect or abuse; it grows in subtle, wordless exchanges, in how your emotions were ignored or dismissed, in the unspoken rules that taught you that not upsetting anyone was more important than how you felt.
But you don't have to keep dragging around all that shame and self-doubt. You can rest. You can practice taking up space and having needs, preferences and opinions - without apologizing. And you can guide your own kids through those same messy human moments that we weren't allowed to have.
 
You can stop shapeshifting and start coming home to who you really are, and it all starts with ditching being a Good Kid.

Maggie Nick, LCSW is a trauma therapist and parenting expert. She received her Masters in Social Work from Indiana University and her Bachelors in Sociology with a double major in Psychology from Virginia Tech.
Maggie is the founder of Parenting with Perspectacles, a parenting while reparenting framework that supports parents of toddlers to teens. Her work provides them with the tools to make it through and thrive through the hardest, most impossible moments of parenting by helping both their child and their inner child feel seen and loved. Maggie is also the Co-Founder of The Parenting with Trauma Project and The Estrangement Project.
Online, Maggie helps people from 80 countries around the world to understand themselves on a profound and healing level so they can be the parent they needed to their inner child and their actual child.
Maggie lives in Florida with her husband, two children and beloved dogs.