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How to Be The Grown-Up: Why Good Parenting Starts with You
‘Parenting doesn’t come with a manual, but if it did, it would be this one.’ MYLEENE KLASS'How to Be the Grown-Up has already become my favourite parenting handbook. Every parent needs this.’ DAISY LOWEDrawing on her years of experience as a clinical psychologist, as well as her growing and dedicated social media community, Dr Martha Deiros Collado's first book is the must-have toolkit for any parent.Martha understands the many modern-day parenting struggles and worries we all
How can I make my child listen to me?Can I stop a tantrum in its tracks?What can I do when my child feels sad?Why does my child only eat three very particular things without having a meltdown?What should I do when I lose my sh*t?With humour, boundless energy, wit and warmth, Dr Martha tackles it all; from how to talk about honesty and lies, death, co-parenting, consent, gender, attachment, boundaries, and tantrums, as well as the small but critical day to day challenges parents face. And she explains why beneath each dilemma, it's the behaviours and scripts we learned as children that shape the parents we become.This deceptively simple and always empathetic guide promises to become the new word of mouth 'must have' for parents or any grown-up interested in what makes a healthy, happy, confident parent and child.‘Martha is my go-to expert for parenting. This book is full of real life examples, lived experiences, useful strategies and so much reassurance.’ Charlotte Stirling-Reed, bestselling author of How to Wean Your Baby‘Down to earth, anchored in compassion and completely do-able, Dr Martha gives real answers to all the questions every parent wants to know.’ Suzy Reading, chartered psychologist, author of Stand Tall Like a Mountain‘This book is an essential guide for all parents. Empowering, empathetic and educational. It has helped me to think more deeply about my own parenting, and understand myself better.’ Clare Bourne, author of Strong Foundations
How can I make my child listen to me?Can I stop a tantrum in its tracks?What can I do when my child feels sad?Why does my child only eat three very particular things without having a meltdown?What should I do when I lose my sh*t?With humour, boundless energy, wit and warmth, Dr Martha tackles it all; from how to talk about honesty and lies, death, co-parenting, consent, gender, attachment, boundaries, and tantrums, as well as the small but critical day to day challenges parents face. And she explains why beneath each dilemma, it's the behaviours and scripts we learned as children that shape the parents we become.This deceptively simple and always empathetic guide promises to become the new word of mouth 'must have' for parents or any grown-up interested in what makes a healthy, happy, confident parent and child.‘Martha is my go-to expert for parenting. This book is full of real life examples, lived experiences, useful strategies and so much reassurance.’ Charlotte Stirling-Reed, bestselling author of How to Wean Your Baby‘Down to earth, anchored in compassion and completely do-able, Dr Martha gives real answers to all the questions every parent wants to know.’ Suzy Reading, chartered psychologist, author of Stand Tall Like a Mountain‘This book is an essential guide for all parents. Empowering, empathetic and educational. It has helped me to think more deeply about my own parenting, and understand myself better.’ Clare Bourne, author of Strong Foundations
- GenresParentingNonfiction
320 pages, Hardcover
Published June 1, 2024
155 people are currently reading
475 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 4, 2024
I’m quite conflicted on this book. It focuses on a wide variety of topics, but I felt it doesn’t delve into each one enough to really fix the problems you are having. The scripts are useful, but don’t take into account that your child may keep doing the unwanted behaviour even after validating their feelings, following the scripts etc. The book is not heavily evidence based. A few studies are used as examples but all are quite small: I found it a bit of a slog to finish. In my opinion this would be better in a book format rather than audio so you can refer back to it later on.
One part I found very conflicting is the chapter on sleep. The author is a critic of sleep training, but doesn’t provide any useful advice to help parents manage sleepless nights, just asking us to expect/understand that children won’t sleep through the night for the first 4 years. She also said sleep training increases SIDs. From reading Prof Emily Oster’s book - crib sheets, she says there is no proof of this. It is a very bold statement, especially as post partum anxiety can really make parents worry more than they need to so I think the facts need to be checked and accurate statistics shared when stating this.
The overall message of the book is helpful. But it feels extremely child-centred and I think it neglects the fact that sometimes the parent needs to be the one in charge, and we don’t always have time to validate & tune in to our kids. Sometimes we just need to interrupt the choas without too much talking.
One part I found very conflicting is the chapter on sleep. The author is a critic of sleep training, but doesn’t provide any useful advice to help parents manage sleepless nights, just asking us to expect/understand that children won’t sleep through the night for the first 4 years. She also said sleep training increases SIDs. From reading Prof Emily Oster’s book - crib sheets, she says there is no proof of this. It is a very bold statement, especially as post partum anxiety can really make parents worry more than they need to so I think the facts need to be checked and accurate statistics shared when stating this.
The overall message of the book is helpful. But it feels extremely child-centred and I think it neglects the fact that sometimes the parent needs to be the one in charge, and we don’t always have time to validate & tune in to our kids. Sometimes we just need to interrupt the choas without too much talking.
May 25, 2025
Sometimes, adults are so focused on becoming (or rather being perceived as) good parents that the well-being of a child is sidelined. This book is a great reminder on how to be the best for the child. It teaches about developmentally appropriate expectations and reasons behind children's behaviour and how to respond. It's not a guide or rule book that will solve the problems, but more of a helping hand to perceive these "problems" through a mindful and caring way. "Parenting is bidirectional: you are both shaping and being shaped by the child in front of you."
March 10, 2025
“ They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you”
I had to think of Philip Larkin’s poem This be the verse sometimes while reading this inspiring book.
Nevertheless, I have not listened to Larkins’ advice and have a kid myself now.
Ever since i had to change a diaper the first time in the hospital I have pondered over the question: How to be the grown-up? Ah word that until recently did
Not spark a lot of enthusiasm with me.
Martha Deiros Collado answers this question clearly, combining experiences from her clinical experiences as a therapist and as a mother with the latest peer-reviewed scientific research, tackling important issues as the foundations of psychology, feelings, handling tantrums and meltdowns, discipline, skills for living like eating and sleeping, big topics such as sex and death and sustaining relations with the rest of the family. For me her book boils down to a quote from the introduction:
“Succesful parenting is not about raising children who meet all their milestones on time, are well behaved, polite and compliant at all times, eat everything of their plate, rarely complain or protest and get top grades. Succesfull parenting is about how you choose to show up in relationship with your child, how you regulate your emotions , how you model the lessons you want your children to learn and how willing you are to reflect on your mistakes and to apologize, repair and accept, that sometimes, your child might be right.”
For me it means unlearning a lot, but i feel empowered to do so. Would recommend this to anyone who deals with children or adults.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you”
I had to think of Philip Larkin’s poem This be the verse sometimes while reading this inspiring book.
Nevertheless, I have not listened to Larkins’ advice and have a kid myself now.
Ever since i had to change a diaper the first time in the hospital I have pondered over the question: How to be the grown-up? Ah word that until recently did
Not spark a lot of enthusiasm with me.
Martha Deiros Collado answers this question clearly, combining experiences from her clinical experiences as a therapist and as a mother with the latest peer-reviewed scientific research, tackling important issues as the foundations of psychology, feelings, handling tantrums and meltdowns, discipline, skills for living like eating and sleeping, big topics such as sex and death and sustaining relations with the rest of the family. For me her book boils down to a quote from the introduction:
“Succesful parenting is not about raising children who meet all their milestones on time, are well behaved, polite and compliant at all times, eat everything of their plate, rarely complain or protest and get top grades. Succesfull parenting is about how you choose to show up in relationship with your child, how you regulate your emotions , how you model the lessons you want your children to learn and how willing you are to reflect on your mistakes and to apologize, repair and accept, that sometimes, your child might be right.”
For me it means unlearning a lot, but i feel empowered to do so. Would recommend this to anyone who deals with children or adults.
November 19, 2025
Tbh this score might be due to me reading other parenting books beforehand and so I’ve already covered much of the content.
That said, things I liked:
- flagging up the pseudoscience of the triune brain which is a cornerstone of many parenting books (I’m looking at you, There’s No Such Thing As Naughty).
- reframed how I thought about self-regulation strategies. They’re not a reset button, they just give a small decrease of pressure so situations don’t exceed coping capacity. I previously thought they didn’t work as I wasn’t magically back to factory settings
- kids can’t be taught self-regulation like you’d teach a skill as that’s too cognitively advanced - instead you need to co-regulate (the regulation tricks are for the parent in the moment (although it’s also modelling them for the child long-term) so don’t expect them to ‘work’ on child).
Drawbacks
- Lack of specificity of advice- for example, it includes scripts on how to navigate emotions with kids, but at what age are these scripts appropriate? Some would be harmful for young children and there’s no acknowledgement of need to match response to stage of development. Like telling a small child that mammy is scared because we’re on a plane and it might crash is gonna freak small children out. Like keep that to yourself.
- The focus on unpicking inter-generational trauma as a individualised, psychological exercise (in order not to recreate it) really lacks an acknowledgement that those relationships often still exist in the present, and can materially inflict more harm. Is it sufficient to unpick your childhood trauma when you’re actively bringing your child round those who caused trauma in the first place without any interrogation of the impact on the child? There’s no framework for assessing risk, nor any emphasis placed on the health/ danger of wider family systems or tools to address these concerns.
- there’s a weird bit about if strangers come up to you on the street, and have a go at you about your parenting you should be empathetic (assume they’re being triggered by their childhood). Teaching your kid that we should emphasise with radgies rather than stand up for yourself is crackers (and potentially dangerous if they inherit the mentality that abuse isn’t a problem as long as it can be explained away).
That said, things I liked:
- flagging up the pseudoscience of the triune brain which is a cornerstone of many parenting books (I’m looking at you, There’s No Such Thing As Naughty).
- reframed how I thought about self-regulation strategies. They’re not a reset button, they just give a small decrease of pressure so situations don’t exceed coping capacity. I previously thought they didn’t work as I wasn’t magically back to factory settings
- kids can’t be taught self-regulation like you’d teach a skill as that’s too cognitively advanced - instead you need to co-regulate (the regulation tricks are for the parent in the moment (although it’s also modelling them for the child long-term) so don’t expect them to ‘work’ on child).
Drawbacks
- Lack of specificity of advice- for example, it includes scripts on how to navigate emotions with kids, but at what age are these scripts appropriate? Some would be harmful for young children and there’s no acknowledgement of need to match response to stage of development. Like telling a small child that mammy is scared because we’re on a plane and it might crash is gonna freak small children out. Like keep that to yourself.
- The focus on unpicking inter-generational trauma as a individualised, psychological exercise (in order not to recreate it) really lacks an acknowledgement that those relationships often still exist in the present, and can materially inflict more harm. Is it sufficient to unpick your childhood trauma when you’re actively bringing your child round those who caused trauma in the first place without any interrogation of the impact on the child? There’s no framework for assessing risk, nor any emphasis placed on the health/ danger of wider family systems or tools to address these concerns.
- there’s a weird bit about if strangers come up to you on the street, and have a go at you about your parenting you should be empathetic (assume they’re being triggered by their childhood). Teaching your kid that we should emphasise with radgies rather than stand up for yourself is crackers (and potentially dangerous if they inherit the mentality that abuse isn’t a problem as long as it can be explained away).
October 9, 2024
It is no secret that parents of young children are trying to parent in a very different way to how their parents parented them. This book helps the reader to dive into the parenting they received and how this has moulded them as adults, and how they can use their experiences to support their child(ren) in a way so many parents of this generation needed but didn’t receive.
Dr Martha has hit the nail on the head with this parenting book with a difference to a lot of ‘typical’ parenting books by beginning with the parent rather than the child. So many books and advice has offered nothing but methods of trying to control children rather than treating them like humans. By looking into our own childhoods we can parent our children and help to heal our child selves consecutively. We can lean into our children’s thoughts and emotions, supporting them wholeheartedly to enable them to be able to fully express and process their emotions safely AND hold boundaries at the same time. We can all hope this generation with the help of Dr Martha and her book will blossom into adults who are not afraid to express how they feel and to be stable and happy!
I have followed Dr Martha within her Instagram community for quite some time. I have listened to her very helpful podcasts and I watched many of her reels and stories. Martha is an incredibly likeable and empathetic therapist who offers a lot of her advice for free and without judgement. Her community almost makes her feel like a helpful friend who lives in your phone! She regularly shares tiny snippets of her personal life to show that she is too only human and she gets it wrong sometimes too! But repair is the far more important than the mistake.
Her community is a spare space for all parents who hold the same values. I would urge any parent to follow her and watch and listen and see what feelings are brought up. Her findings are evidence based and everything Martha says just makes sense!
Thank you for writing this wonderful ‘handbook’ on parenting! Something you can come back to and open at any chapter when you’re feeling unsure. A great gift idea for new parents also!
Xx
Dr Martha has hit the nail on the head with this parenting book with a difference to a lot of ‘typical’ parenting books by beginning with the parent rather than the child. So many books and advice has offered nothing but methods of trying to control children rather than treating them like humans. By looking into our own childhoods we can parent our children and help to heal our child selves consecutively. We can lean into our children’s thoughts and emotions, supporting them wholeheartedly to enable them to be able to fully express and process their emotions safely AND hold boundaries at the same time. We can all hope this generation with the help of Dr Martha and her book will blossom into adults who are not afraid to express how they feel and to be stable and happy!
I have followed Dr Martha within her Instagram community for quite some time. I have listened to her very helpful podcasts and I watched many of her reels and stories. Martha is an incredibly likeable and empathetic therapist who offers a lot of her advice for free and without judgement. Her community almost makes her feel like a helpful friend who lives in your phone! She regularly shares tiny snippets of her personal life to show that she is too only human and she gets it wrong sometimes too! But repair is the far more important than the mistake.
Her community is a spare space for all parents who hold the same values. I would urge any parent to follow her and watch and listen and see what feelings are brought up. Her findings are evidence based and everything Martha says just makes sense!
Thank you for writing this wonderful ‘handbook’ on parenting! Something you can come back to and open at any chapter when you’re feeling unsure. A great gift idea for new parents also!
Xx
May 1, 2024
I have been listening to Dr Martha’s podcast, Talking Sense, for a while and also follow her on instagram. In my opinion, her knowledge and insight into children and parenting is second to none. I have learnt so much from her and honestly believe myself to be a better parent for it.
So when I saw she was releasing a book, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy! And I absolutely wasn’t disappointed. I’ve learnt even more from Dr Martha from this book.
She covers such a vast range of themes from emotions and feelings to big topics such as talking to your children about consent, sex and death (all such important aspects of parenting, in my opinion). What I think is so interesting about Dr Martha is that she really focuses on our behaviour and attitude as parents rather than most parenting books which focus on the children’s. Good parenting absolutely does start with us.
Parenting is the one of the hardest aspects of life and none of us are perfect. I constantly make mistakes (and so does Dr Martha, she admits!) but the beauty is in knowing that this is okay and actually inevitable, as long as we reconnect and repair with our children afterwards.
A book I would absolutely recommend to any parent or caregiver! Thank you Dr Martha for imparting your wonderful wisdom. 👏🏻
So when I saw she was releasing a book, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy! And I absolutely wasn’t disappointed. I’ve learnt even more from Dr Martha from this book.
She covers such a vast range of themes from emotions and feelings to big topics such as talking to your children about consent, sex and death (all such important aspects of parenting, in my opinion). What I think is so interesting about Dr Martha is that she really focuses on our behaviour and attitude as parents rather than most parenting books which focus on the children’s. Good parenting absolutely does start with us.
Parenting is the one of the hardest aspects of life and none of us are perfect. I constantly make mistakes (and so does Dr Martha, she admits!) but the beauty is in knowing that this is okay and actually inevitable, as long as we reconnect and repair with our children afterwards.
A book I would absolutely recommend to any parent or caregiver! Thank you Dr Martha for imparting your wonderful wisdom. 👏🏻
March 10, 2024
Written by a clinical psychiatrist working with families with children, she offers advices based on science and gives concrete examples on exactly how the advice and technics can be implemented. The approach is not new or revolutionary, but based on the science of today and gives a great overview and concrete tools on how to approach children to help them evolve into confident, emotionaly fulfilled and self-confident adults. It explains authoritative / gentle parenting, in an understandable way, and it also gently invites us parents to look at our own ideas and understand where our reactions come from.
To me, it helped me connect parenting strategies together across multiple aspects of parenthood, and I found the concrete examples very useful. I will for sure give this one a reread soon, as some techniques needs a bit more reflecting on and with my son being 1,5 years some techniques will be more useful at a later stage. I do think this is a book for parents of children all ages, I found it very useful with my toddler.
Highly recommended!
To me, it helped me connect parenting strategies together across multiple aspects of parenthood, and I found the concrete examples very useful. I will for sure give this one a reread soon, as some techniques needs a bit more reflecting on and with my son being 1,5 years some techniques will be more useful at a later stage. I do think this is a book for parents of children all ages, I found it very useful with my toddler.
Highly recommended!
October 13, 2024
A good starter book for exploring these topics, so perhaps a lower rating as I have seen a lot of these discussed online/podcasts/in my own research. I just feel the examples seem too easy to solve and not what I have experienced myself around children and their behaviours/needs. But there are some good parenting reminders around how we can respond to situations and language to use, and how things seem from a child's point of view.
April 28, 2024
3.5 stars
This book focused on ways to parent and be the grown-up in a way that allows children the ability to understand why you are doing what you're doing. This will be one that I go back to so that I can refresh my knowledge when I need the information more than I currently do.
This book focused on ways to parent and be the grown-up in a way that allows children the ability to understand why you are doing what you're doing. This will be one that I go back to so that I can refresh my knowledge when I need the information more than I currently do.
June 18, 2024
A book full of really informative foundational knowledge!
If young people are involved in your life in some way, it's an important and accessible read.
I have found Dr Deiros Collado's work so helpful whilst completing my Art Psychotherapy training.
If young people are involved in your life in some way, it's an important and accessible read.
I have found Dr Deiros Collado's work so helpful whilst completing my Art Psychotherapy training.
July 13, 2024
This book is excellent. Dr Deiros Collado discusses how to do the best for your child without forgetting yourself and your needs. Highly recommended for parents of children of all ages. (The section on adolescence is extremely helpful.)
December 26, 2024
One I will return to, I did struggle to read a parenting book at the end of parenting days but it was worth it
May 8, 2025
Absolutely brilliant. Very practical and supportive, helpfully chunked into themes for easy access in stressful times.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews