Good Kids: Why You Suffered in Silence and How to Break the Cycle

by Maggie Nick

"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.

Genres: Self Help

334 pages, Paperback

Expected publication January 27, 2026

Reviews

[Tiffany]

Pub Date Jan 27 2026

Thank you, John Murray Press US | Sheldon Press, for this ARC!

As always, all thoughts are my own! 🖤✨

[Barbara Boyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maggie Nick's Good Kids will speak to many adults who want to raise their children with a healthier, more supportive parenting style than they experienced but need to heal themselves to do so.

For readers who pick up this book, their parents probably behaved as Nick describes—doing the best they could with what they knew but falling short and creating long-lasting relational trauma and shame. It’s hard to write a general prescriptive description of any psychological trauma when there are so many nuances and Nick offers many examples. We’ve all probably had one or two of the experiences described because no parent is perfect.

It took me longer than expected to read this book. I would read a few sentences then have to stop and let the ideas sink in. Initially I struggled to identify with the behaviors described; I have the psyche that results from being raised as a good kid but (perhaps) not to the extreme described. Then I got to the emotionally reactive description and stepped back into my childhood. I was a more rebellious kid while my older sister was the good kid; she took the brunt of our mother’s behavior, while I tended to mirror it—acting out, yelling back, which Nick explains is a release mechanism for children. Reading made me consider my friends’ parents and families, and no, not all families were like mine. There were supportive parents, safe relationships, and those kids grew up to recreate what they knew. I escaped by moving far from home, yet as we all know, wherever you go, there you are. Through the decades I've done a lot of healing.

Today, we know so much more about child development and want to adopt behaviors that will help our children (and grandchildren) avoid the anxiety/anger/shame we experience as adults because of the traumatizing parenting style of our parents. Of course a book can’t replace therapy but Good Kids shines a light in the shadows of our childhoods to understand—and change—our adult behaviors and support our children in a healthy way, so they grown up to be resilient, secure kids who know how to regulate their emotions and build loving relationships.

The writing and messages are repetitive at times, especially in the early chapters, and yet the repetition effectively drives home Nick's points. I was anxious to read about solutions, which begin in Chapter 6 with tools for self-regulating. From chapter 7 on, I found myself beginning to relate and reflect. In particular, the second half of the book encompasses prescriptive narrative for parenting your child and reparenting yourself to heal through your relationship with your child. I would have liked a "how to parent your parents" section that addressed the time of life when roles shift and children end up in a caretaking role; perhaps that is Nick's next book.

I appreciated Nick's honesty about her own struggles, reiterating the message that we should pass on to our children: no human is perfect, we all make mistakes, and I love you all the same.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sheldon Press for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

#netgalley #goodkids #sheldonpress

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good Kids, written by trauma therapist and self-proclaimed good-girl Maggie Nick, is a book about healing the hurt we experienced in order to parent our children with the intentional care that many of us never received. This book reaches into your soul. It slips past all of the barricades and fortresses erected from a lifetime of trauma. It reaches and extracts the quietest, most unassuming splinter, and finally, after waiting to catch your eye, whispers gently, "See? This is what has been hurting you. You were never the problem."

For some of us, these will be the most loving words ever spoken to and about us. While reading this masterfully crafted guidebook, I lost count of the number of times I got choked up. As a mother who was unmothered, Good Kids is slowly opening my eyes to the fact that I actually was always lovable…and that my kids are too. Maggie Nick confronts all the ways in which we were programmed to believe something was wrong with us. She coaches us how to, not only lovingly reparent ourselves, but also how to disrupt these cycles as we parent our own children.

It would be perfectly reasonable to think a book of this nature would demonize parents from previous generations. However, this couldn't be farther from reality. Good Kids speaks to the truth that the generational trauma our parents passed to us was, at some point, also passed on to them.

This book will make you feel seen and loved in the most healing of ways. The tenderness with which Maggie Nick painstakingly illuminates, unbandages, and treats the wounds inflicted by our caregivers slowly opens the door to the idea that you are actually worthy of love and deserve to feel good.

Good Kids lays the groundwork for what we should have experienced as children and devotes the latter portion to specifically addressing our children's needs. I have been a mother for 8 years. For the first time, I have practical tools and strategies at my fingertips to help me parent with confidence and love instead of from trauma and triggers. The book also normalizes the idea that parenting perfectly is impossible but that our mistakes do not define our parenting abilities. In fact they provide the opportunity for us to model for our children what healthy repair looks like.

I think every single adult should read this book…especially if you have kids. Get ready for a parenting and reparenting revolution. Good Kids is that powerful.

[Chelsea Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a "recovering good kid", this was so validating and I will be recommending to many! This book offers a compassionate and insightful analysis of the "good kid" persona and its often-hidden origins in relational shame trauma. This is for anyone who grew up feeling they had to suppress their needs and emotions to keep the peace and earn love. The clinical expertise and personal anecdotes are accessible, making that a major strength.

My only reason for not going higher than 4 stars is that the book can have a broad scope. The author covers a range of topics related to healing from relational trauma, from identifying the signs of a "good kid" in adulthood. I didn't mind as much, but it can be a daunting amount of information for some individuals.

Despite that, I definitely recommend this read. The message is ultimately of hope and self-acceptance. This book shifts the perspective from viewing your "good kid" traits as a personality flaw to understanding them as learned trauma responses.

Thank you NetGalley and Sheldon Press for the opportunity to be an early reader and offer a review!

[Annie Reads The World · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this ARC.

I'm so glad I read this book. It made me feel so seen and understood and it was so nice to not feel alone in this.

I cried a lot while reading through this book and it did bring up a lot of tough memories. It was a tough read, but so, so worth it.

I would recommend this book to everyone who was a "Good Kid", but especially to those that are now parents/ planning to become parents.

It's one of those books that you won't just read once, but that you'll refer back to over and over again throughout your journey.