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

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"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.

334 pages, Paperback

Published January 27, 2026

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2656 people want to read

About the author

Maggie Nick

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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
Profile Image for Tiffany.
858 reviews95 followers
January 25, 2026
Thank you, John Murray Press US | Sheldon Press, for this ARC!

Good Kids by Maggie Nick is a guide designed for "cycle-breakers". Parents who grew up as "Good Kids" (children who felt they had to earn love through perfection or obedience) are now seeking to heal their own trauma while raising their own children.

Themes explored:

✨Healing the "Good Kid" Identity
✨Reparenting Yourself
✨Breaking Generational Cycles
✨Nurturing Authenticity
✨Parenting as a Pathway to Healing

My thoughts: A win for those in the midst of healing their inner child and for those who want to be the best parents they can for their own kids. No matter where you are in your season of life, this is an educational book that is able to meet you where you are. So many great knowledge tidbits. As someone who studied psychology in school and also witness those I know take the brunt of a parent’s poor behavior, this book really hits the mark. Well done!

Pub Date Jan 27 2026

As always, all thoughts are my own! 🖤✨
Profile Image for sbbigs.
113 reviews
February 20, 2026
Truly one of the best self help/ psychology books I’ve read in a long time. This book called me out in a way that made me feel so seen and simultaneously horrified that no one had put language to this previously. MANY people should read this book- therapists, parents, soon to be parents, and of course anyone who has ever been given the title of a “good kid,” or “people pleaser.” This book will genuinely help me be a better person and better therapist. Thank you Maggie Nick!
Profile Image for Jaime.
1,694 reviews108 followers
February 19, 2026
This was interesting, though I'm maybe not the exactly correct audience for it. I felt like I was a "good kid", but I couldn't ascribe any of the parental traits that lead to it to my parents. Am I suppressing something from my childhood? I don't think so, but maybe? Or am I just an oldest daughter/granddaughter who was a little bit parentified but not emotionally abused? Because of my disconnect, I felt like some of the assertions were a little too simplified and generalized. I also found some of it to be repetitive. I do think there is value here, especially for anyone who hasn't done any sort of mental health work for themselves and hasn't seen the patterns yet. I think the sections on how not to repeat the cycle are also worth it.
Profile Image for Barbara Boyd.
Author 24 books6 followers
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
January 13, 2026
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
Profile Image for Dea.
235 reviews3 followers
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
January 21, 2026
"Not all 'bad behavior' is indicative of something wrong. [...] Not all good behavior is indicative of things being right."

Must-read book for any "Good Kid" looking to break the toxic, anxiety-inducing cycle. Maggie Nick truly captures what it means to carry a world of unrealistic expectations on one's shoulders, from childhood to adulthood. She covers all the bases, such as "are you mad at me?" validation-seeking, blaming oneself for another's lack of control, and valuing oneself only through accomplishments and productivity.

"You still blame yourself because they blamed you first. {...] I know your parents felt like they 'never had to worry about you.' But I wish they had."

The author describes how even "good childhoods" can be riddled with relational shame trauma, and does it in a way that does not bash one's parents, but rather sheds light and awareness on how these environments arise and persist.

"Your worth isn't somethig your earn-- it's something that should have always been yours, until the world made you feel otherwise."

The last third of the book dives into alternative strategies to avoid instilling "good kid" mentalities in our own children, including highlighting the importance of "Circling Back," not shying away from apologizing to our kids, and not dangling love as a reward that can be taken away. She highlights how this should not cross over into permissive parenting; a parent should still be a leader, not a cruise director. Strong boundaries are a necessity, which requires parents to be comfortable with their children being mad at them and to allow them to express rather than suppress those reactions. I loved the examples and walkthrough, and overall, found the book to be immensely helpful and beautifully written.

"The goal is not to never mess up. The goal is to break the damaging cycles when we do."

4.75 stars rounded up to 5, mainly because some sections were a little repetitive, and I feel like the book could be equally impactful with 50 fewer pages.

"What kids need-- what any human in pain needs-- is for someone to see them hurting and choose to stay-- to see them, to sit next to them with their pain, and to trust that it hurts the way they say it hurts."

Thank you, NetGalley and John Murray Press, for the opportunity to read an advanced reader's copy in exchange for my honest opinions.

"You were a caterpillar doing your best to survive in a world that expected you to be a butterfly."
Profile Image for Katherine.
4 reviews
December 22, 2025
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.
Profile Image for Kuu.
487 reviews4 followers
February 10, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I'm too well-adjusted/therapised for books like these I find. This book didn't have any new insights for me at all, but then again I have spent years looking at the various ways in which being mentally ill, a girl and queer in my family environment has affected my family relationships and how I was treated vis à vis my sister and brother (and my sister and I have had PLENTY conversations on it). If you have already been through therapy for your family trauma or related issues, I fear this book will be pretty much useless, as it's a very basic "neglect and its effects 101", but for someone who is first now starting to grapple with the potential that their upbringing might have traumatised them, I would recommend this book.

I'd be very interested to see how my mum and my sister feel about this book, as their mental health journey has been VERY different from mine (I was forced to come to terms with my mental health because it simply couldn't be ignored anymore, I was hospitalised frequently, while no one else in my family had such extreme issues), and if maybe they would be able to find more value in this book than I was able to.

4 stars for the potential and because I acknowledge that I might not quite be the target audience, despite sharing the "good kid" experiences.
Profile Image for Debra.
511 reviews3 followers
February 26, 2026
Thank you @dartfeoggco and Sheldon Press for reducing out to me with this #gifted copy. These opinions are my own:

This book was written for me. I found myself resonating with the content on page after page. Some of it I was aware of and some of it hadn’t clicked for me yet, but putting it together in one package and giving these things names? I feel seen. Growing up with a good childhood and as a good kid doesn’t mean you are skating though life with no problems. In fact, if you are the people pleaser who just wants to cause as few problems as possible and get everyone’s approval, then you may relate to some of what Maggie Nick, LCSW, has to say in this book. She states things clearly and at a level that it doesn’t take a pro to understand. But neither does she tell you that everything is wrong with you and that it’s all someone else’s fault. I found her approach to be validating, compassionate, and one that facilitates the reader’s understanding of their own power over their own life. This book presents the “why” but also some potential “hows” too, as in how to move ok from here. North provides insight and validation and direction, whether this is all new or something you’ve been working on for a while.
Profile Image for Chelsea Walsh.
306 reviews6 followers
October 9, 2025
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!
276 reviews3 followers
January 24, 2026
“Good Kids are the caterpillars made to believe they should have been able to be a butterfly.”

Overall, there’s good information here but the writing was a bit lackluster. It covers emotionally immature parents, family systems, and attachment styles. If you’ve never read any book about these topics, this book may be a really great spring board to start with on your journey. However, if you’re looking for more than surface level information, look elsewhere. Some sections were really helpful and insightful. But most sections were shallow and repetitive.

I loved the sections on how to parent your own kids with all this in mind, like putting the puzzle together without triggering yourself or raising another Good Kid. It was the most practical “how-to” part of the book and it was the entire last half. Very helpful!

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.
Release date 1/29/26.
Profile Image for Abby.
40 reviews
January 28, 2026
Good Kids by Maggie Nick was an interesting and relatable read. I could connect with some of the experiences shared and appreciated the wide range of reasons presented for why someone might identify as a “recovering Good Kid.”

I found the book easy to read overall, though some sections felt a bit repetitive and could likely have been shortened. I also would have liked the references to be listed more directly alongside the relevant content in the chapters rather than only at the end of the book.

Despite these small critiques, this was a thoughtful and accessible read that may resonate with many readers.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
35 reviews3 followers
October 3, 2025
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.
81 reviews4 followers
February 14, 2026
Honestly it felt like she was writing about me and my life experiences and since reading I’ve been having the most random memories come to me, like the snack bars I used to eat at school and the specific colour of hair bands.
However, Maggie really knows her sh** and it’s easily understood, funny in some parts and so deeply real that I teared up.
Thank you for the ARC in exchange for an honest review
1 review
March 14, 2026
Wow… this book was incredibly validating and I felt like I am literally the person this book was written for. Definitely one I will be going back and digging into further with my therapist and highlighters. Such a good/necessary read but also emotionally heavy for me as well.
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