The Peaceful Parenting Podcast

Peaceful parenting with calm and confidence for your spirited, highly-sensitive, strong-willed, or neurodivergent child- and support for YOU.

Author: Sarah Rosensweet

Welcome to the Peaceful Parenting Podcast, the podcast where Sarah Rosensweet covers the tools, strategies and support you need to end the yelling and power struggles and encourage your kids to listen and cooperate so that you can enjoy your family time. Each week, Sarah will bring you the insight and information you need to make your parenting journey a little more peaceful. Whether it's a guest interview with an expert in the parenting world, insight from Sarah's own experiences and knowledge, or live coaching with parents just like you who want help with their challenges, we'll learn and grow and laugh and cry together! Be sure to hit the subscribe button and leave a rating and review! sarahrosensweet.substack.com
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You, Your Partner and Same Page Parenting with Martina Nova: Episode 224
Wednesday, 15 April, 2026

👉 PSST- Dealing with anxiety in your family? Or want to know what to do so it doesn’t become an issue? Before we get into the podcast, I want to make sure you know about the workshop I’m teaching How to Become an Anxiety-Resilient Family: What actually helps kids handle anxiety (and what unintentionally makes it worse) All the details are HEREBack to the podcast— You can listen wherever you get your podcasts or check out the fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, Martina Nova, author of Same Page Parenting, talks about co-parenting, postpartum mental health, conflict, invisible labor, gender roles, and how couples can stay connected while raising kids.Know someone who might appreciate this episode? Share it with them!And if you love the podcast, FREE ways to help us out:1- Rate and review the podcast in your podcast player app2- “Like” this post by tapping the heart icon ♥️3- Share this with a friend. THANK YOU!We talk about:* 00:00 Introduction to Martina Nova and Same Page Parenting* 02:00 Why parenting conversations are about more than logistics* 04:00 Common issues couples do not realize they need to discuss* 06:00 Postpartum mental health for both parents* 08:00 How parenting brings up our own childhood patterns and trauma* 13:00 Why little kids can be so hard on relationships* 16:00 Feeling touched out, disconnected, and like roommates* 18:00 How to start rebuilding connection with your partner* 20:00 Conflict styles and how to handle conflict better* 23:00 Gender roles, invisible labor, and what kids learn from us* 29:00 Why involving kids in home life matters* 32:00 The deeper goal of the book: connection between co-parents* 34:00 Where to find Martina and her work* 35:00 Advice Martina would give her younger parent selfResources mentioned in this episode:* Martina’s website * Martina’s Book Same Page Parenting * Yoto Screen Free Audio Book Player* The Peaceful Parenting Membership* Evelyn & Bobbie brasConnect with Sarah Rosensweet:* Instagram* Facebook Group* YouTube* Website* Join us on Substack* Newsletter* Book a short consult or coaching session callxx Sarah and CoreyYour peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching sessionVisit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, “Weekend Reflections” and “Weekend Support” - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in the summer for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything’ session.Our sponsors:YOTO: YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can’t go where you don’t want them to go and they aren’t watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HEREEvelyn & Bobbie bras: If underwires make you want to rip your bra off by noon, Evelyn & Bobbie is for you. These bras are wire-free, ultra-soft, and seriously supportive—designed to hold you comfortably all day without pinching, poking, or constant adjusting. Check them out HERESarah: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Peaceful Parenting Podcast. Today’s guest is Martina Nova. She’s a clinical therapist and author of the new book Same Page Parenting: Align with Your Partner to Raise Happy, Confident, and Resilient Kids.Martina wrote this book because she realized, through her own experience as a parent and through her work with couples, that it can be really hard to find ways to talk about, and as she puts it, get on the same page with your partner about many of the issues that come up for us as we raise kids. We discussed some of these common issues, like how you connect after kids, how you handle conflict, and why relationships after kids can be so hard.We also discussed how we teach kids about these issues and others, such as gender roles, whether we mean to be teaching them or not. If you find this episode helpful, please share it with a friend.If you’re a fan of the podcast, please take a minute to rate and review us on your podcast player app. Remember, if you want the podcast ad-free, you can support us on Substack for less than $10 a month. Not only do you get the podcast ad-free, you get access to Q and As with me and discounts on workshops.You also get the satisfaction of knowing that you’re helping to support us as we change the world through peaceful parenting. We’ll put the link to support us on Substack right here in the show notes, or you can just search up my name and Substack and you’ll find us. Let’s go ahead and meet Martina.Hi Martina, welcome to the podcast.Martina: Hi Sarah. Thanks so much for having me.Sarah: Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do, and then tell us about your new book.Martina: Of course. My name is Martina. I am a therapist in Vancouver, BC. I’m also a mom of two little ones, and I’m a co-parent as well.So I recently wrote a book called Same Page Parenting, which I started thinking about toward the end of my last pregnancy, and it kind of developed when my youngest was really little. But it’s a book that I wrote in order to help a lot of people have conversations about parenting that we don’t realize we need to have.It’s not just about how many diapers are we gonna go through, who’s gonna wake up for night feedings, what kind of onesies should we buy, but things about how do we understand how our upbringing influences so many different categories of parenting, how we show up emotionally for our children, how society shapes our views on certain things, how our own neurodiversity might come into play when we’re trying to regulate ourselves and be there for our kids, or even some views about gender roles or other assumed expectations that we don’t even know would be helpful to talk about before or during parenthood.Sarah: I’ve always said that there should be some sort of test, or some way to know how your partner will be as a parent and the things that will come up, because you really can’t know. A lot of stuff comes up after you have kids that you wouldn’t even have known to talk about, or how having children was gonna affect you and affect your relationship. So this, as far as I know, no one’s developed a test yet, but this is a good substitute.Probably everyone listening to this already has kids because it’s a parenting podcast. But this would be a great baby shower gift or something for someone, for them to talk with their partner about all of these things before, when they have maybe a little bit more leisure and time to sort of figure out how they’re gonna handle things.One thing I do like about your book—the way it’s structured, I’ll just tell people, is you have a topic and then you have a sort of a brainstorm of questions for each age of parenting. Like, if you’re pregnant, these are some questions you might think about. If you have preschoolers, or if you have middle schoolers, or if you have adult children. And so you kind of go through all the ages and how each of the topics that you’re talking about, the kind of questions that might come up around that.So it’s—and you said in your introduction you can skip around, go to the chapter that you need right now. It’s a very interesting and different parenting book. It’s not like any other parenting book that I’ve ever seen, which is a good thing. I think it will be very helpful for people. I imagine you are getting good feedback.Martina: Thank you, Sarah. I appreciate you saying that and talking about the format as well. Part of it is, as a clinical counselor, I work a lot with couples, and a lot of the time people come to therapy because they want the therapist to tell them what to do, or they want the books to tell them what to do.But one of the things that I wanted to try to steer away from in the book is actually telling people exactly what to do. Instead of telling them, “This is how you should parent,” it’s, “Ask your co-parent, your partner, your grandparents, your community—whoever you’re gonna raise your kids with—what’s your idea about this? How do you wanna do it?” as opposed to me telling you exactly what to do. So that’s also what makes it different, for sure.Sarah: Yeah. I think your next project, you should do some cards or something. Do a deck of cards.Martina: A lot.Sarah: Like the Fair Play—you mentioned Fair Play in your book. Eve Rodsky was on the podcast years ago, but she has that deck of cards that go along with her book. So you could put out cards and quick references for people—almost like a conversation starter.Martina: I love it. Such a great idea. I’ll quote you if that ends up happening.Sarah: Okay, good.What are some of the things—I mean, this probably roughly correlates to your chapter topics—but what are some of the things that are maybe the most overlooked issues that come up when people have kids that sort of become sticking points or issues in their relationship that you’ve seen and that you write about?Martina: Good question. The first thing that comes to my mind—because I’m a therapist and I heavily work with trauma, so I’m biased—is mental health.A lot of the time, I know from personal experience and from a lot of clients I work with, things like baby blues or postpartum depression are handed to you in a pamphlet right after you’ve just given birth, and you’re told to look out for these signs. But you’re not being followed up with. Even midwifery care is about, “How are we physically doing? How is the baby doing? How are your stitches healing up?”But postpartum mental health for both partners is so important. And so I think that’s a really overlooked part of it because it’s not only the hormonal fluctuations and changes; it’s the lifestyle changes, the isolation that you’re gonna experience. It could be trauma that comes up from your past about being somebody that someone has to depend on fully. Or it could be not getting support from your partner because your partner’s also struggling with their mental health, but nobody’s talking about it because we don’t know how to talk about it. We don’t know what to look out for.So that’s, I think, one of the biggest chapters, is postpartum mental health for both—especially if we’re in a heteronormative partnership where, a lot of the time, the man in the relationship, it’s, “Well, we’re all good,” and the kind of conversations we have with our buddies are just very surface level. And therefore we don’t even get to talking about how are we really doing, what are we feeling, how needed, et cetera.Sarah: Yeah. I think a lot of people aren’t aware that those sort of postpartum feelings can affect the dads as well as the moms. So that’s a good thing to be aware of and be talking about too—how everyone’s doing and their mental health.You have the chapter on mental health, and then you also have a chapter on trauma-informed parenting. My partner and I, the other day, were talking about when we had kids. We were 30 when we had kids, and I sort of wish we had had them earlier. And he said, “I could have used more time, actually, to work on myself before having kids.” And I was like, “You know what? I think that there are certain things that just, no matter how old you are and how much work you’ve done, there are things that come out when you have kids that would never have come out before you had kids.”I think some of that stuff, for us, it only comes up when we have kids, no matter how old we are when we have them. Why do you think that is? And is there anything that anyone can do to be better prepared for the things that do come up when you become a parent?Martina: Such a good question. I think a few reasons. When we have kids, it challenges so many parts of who we are. It challenges not only, physiologically, biologically, how much sleep we get, how our schedules are shortened, the types of social connections we are now having or needing to cut. It also starts to challenge our own parenting of how we were parented as kids.If we don’t do a lot of that reflection work beforehand—and unless you regularly go to therapy or read a lot of self-reflection books on early attachment experiences and things like that—we aren’t gonna really reflect and see, “Okay, well, why do I feel so irritated when my kid pushes away the food that I make for them, or is defiant against me, or doesn’t listen to what I say? Why is that in and of itself so infuriating?”Unless we’ve dug in or asked some of the right questions beforehand, we are gonna go to our default, or how we were parented as kids from our parents.I think, if you add on top of that neurodiversity as well—ADHD, I have it, and I’m quite certain one of my kids has it as well—we’re also already going to be stretched so thin. So some of this work as well, especially with so many late-diagnosed adults coming out with different types of neurodiversities, we’re like, “Okay, so this is why I’m so irritated when my kid does this, because I also have this within myself, and this is how it was treated by my parents. And it wasn’t treated with understanding or compassion or space or regulation or tools. It was treated with discipline and fear.”So I think part of that is we don’t know what we don’t know until we’re faced with it and we feel distress and annoyance. But some of the things that we could definitely do is, if we can go to therapy, even if there’s nothing inherently wrong right now, we can go to therapy to help somebody understand the roadmap of our life.What’s your relationship like with yourself? What’s your relationship like with your parents? How were you raised? Was there any emphasis on emotions and regulation? How does society systemically push us into gender roles and expectations and tell us what we should be doing with our bodies postpartum to look good, to feel good, to feel connected? So I think unless we go searching for some of this stuff, it’s not inherently in any of our baby prep courses or any pamphlets.Sarah: I still think, though—and I think your answer supports my thesis—I still think that even if you’d done a lot of therapy, you’d done a lot of work, I don’t think anyone can be prepared for how they get triggered by their kids and by their own past and their own stories until they’re actually in that.I’ve had people who I coach who are kindergarten teachers, and they’re like, “I’ve been working with little kids for 20 years and I’m really patient and great with kids, and I have never once felt the rage that I feel toward my kids, toward any of my most challenging students that I’ve had in 20 years of being a kindergarten teacher,” because I think it’s just different somehow. There’s something in our own kids that bring up all of those unresolved issues.I guess I was curious if you thought that there’s any way you can resolve them beforehand, but your answer sort of tells me that probably not.Martina: Not resolve them, but become more aware of them. I’m a therapist, I do my own therapy, I work with a lot of people, but this morning I was getting so agitated with both of my kids. I literally had to just close the bathroom and deep breathe and look at myself in the mirror and be like, “You are about to lose it, so take a deep breath because this is really hard right now.”And I felt rage and I felt annoyance and I was sensory overloaded and there was defiance happening. I’m a therapist. I could, in theory, use all my tools in the present moment and just know how to validate and regulate. But no, I don’t know how to do that either as a therapist.Sarah: We’re all human, even therapists.Martina: Totally.Sarah: You’ve got little kids still, and my husband and I often reflect—because I mentioned to you before we started that my kids are grown up—and we often reflect, “It’s amazing that we didn’t get divorced when our kids were little.” It was through sheer stubbornness, I think. Neither of us wanted to throw in the towel at the same time. We’re both really stubborn people, and I’m glad that we made it through to the other side.I’ve noticed, just anecdotally, that having little kids is really hard on a relationship, no matter how many years people have been together or how good their relationship is going in. Why do you think that is? With your experience, or with your experience working with couples, why do you think it is so hard to make that transition and not even just the transition—I would say transition plus then life with small humans?Martina: Every relationship is different before having kids. But what I found and noticed is, once we have kids, it’s less about, “What can we do for one another to make the other person happy?” or “How do we respond to each other’s bids for connection?” or “How do we plan the next fun thing that we’re going to do?” It’s not just, “How do we fuel our relationship?”Especially in those early postpartum years, there’s so much strain that comes into, now we are needing a lot of things from one another, and we are asking for support. Sometimes the conversations that used to be about, “What are our dreams and hopes for our relationship?” or “What are we gonna do?” become, “Okay, I’m gonna need you to do this, this, and this.” So we become transactional. It becomes a lot harder.And again, intentionality—unless we are very aware and we learn about some of these terms or learn about how kids do start to make an impact in our relationship—we are gonna fall into roles where we are gonna feel maybe more like roommates.Or we are gonna feel like we are now existing to serve our kids, as opposed to, who do we say hi to first that walks through the door?Sarah: It’s so hard because, as I was reading your book, I realized that through trying to meet the emotional connection—physical and emotional connection—needs of my kids when they were growing up, it also met a lot of my emotional needs. Not in a weird, creepy way, but you spend a lot of time connecting with someone and cuddling with someone, and you can’t help but fill your own needs for connection and cuddling.I think my husband probably felt left out a lot. He was a really good dad, but I think he felt left out from me. Not left out of his relationship with the kids, but I think he was probably like, “Hey, what happened to my wife that used to be so cuddly and sweet to me?” And I just didn’t feel like I had much left over after meeting the needs of three kids.I hear you saying being intentional, maybe recognizing that that’s what’s going on. But is there anything else that you’ve seen successful couples do that make it through that time period?Martina: Yes, Sarah. That’s so normal. In some spaces we call it being touched out. And touched out doesn’t always mean, “I’m so touched out, I can’t fathom another touch on my skin.” It is, “I’ve had my sensory needs met for the day, and now this feels like too much for me.”Some of the things that would be helpful is, the essence of the book really is: the more conversations we can have about things like the invisible mental load, about how are we feeling intimately with one another—there’s a whole chapter on intimacy postpartum in the book as well that talks about how if sex was the main way that you connected before having kids, and now whether it’s for timing or hormonal or physical healing or for whatever reasons, that gets in the way afterwards—if sex is taken off the table for 1, 2, 3, however many months, or just reduces, we’re also not gonna feel close to our partner.If we don’t have the words to share or have the questions to ask, like, “Hey, have you been feeling connected to me lately? How are you doing? What’s going on? Is there anything I can do for you that would make you feel really special? If you don’t wanna be touched, do you wanna just share one thing that we appreciate about each other today?” So it’s about being flexible and talking about why else am I overwhelmed at the end of the day? What do you have on your plate that I don’t? And therefore, how can I help you with that? So we’re still a team and we’re still talking about these things, as opposed to letting it just slowly drift away and waiting for the other person to bring something up.Sarah: If someone’s listening to this and they feel like, “Oh, that’s me”—a lot of couples I work with have sort of turned into that teammates-roommates thing, and they don’t feel that connected to their partner anymore—do you have any suggestions for how to get back to a place where you’re feeling connected with your partner?Martina: Good question. Two things I would say. Firstly, if someone listening to this is reflecting, “I’ve actually felt really disconnected from my partner lately,” instead of just right away saying to their partner that this is how they’re feeling, I would first say, have that person reflect on, “Well, what would connective feel like for you right now? What is it that you miss about your partner?”Is it acts of service? Do you wish your partner would support you with more things? Is it certain types of physical activities? So I would probably get that person to first reflect on what do they feel like they’re missing.Then, when we can come to our partners and frame it in a way not of, “You don’t touch me anymore. You don’t talk to me anymore”—not the “you”—but we keep it to the “I”: “I’ve been reflecting lately and I actually feel really lonely, and I miss you and I miss us.”If our partner says, “Well, what can I do?” then you say, “Well, I think what would be really helpful is...” and then we can list the things, whether it’s maybe at nighttime we can ask each other a couple questions before we go to bed each night. Like, what was your favorite thing about today? What’s something you’re proud of for today? What do you look forward to tomorrow? What’s something you appreciate that I did today?These small rituals of connection that the Gottmans talk about a lot can be helpful in that moment as well. So that’s what I would recommend.Sarah: Nice.One other thing—I mean, this is sort of the flip side of connection—is conflict. You do have a chapter in your book about conflict. I think when we have kids, it’s like everything feels like it’s in a pressure cooker and we don’t realize that maybe our conflict styles are a mismatch until we’ve already kind of gotten into it.What are some ways that you find work for couples to handle conflict better?Martina: I like that you brought up conflict style, because it really is a style. We don’t realize it, but we have a default setting on how we deal with conflict a lot of the time.Part of the essence of the book as well is, if we can recognize, how do I usually approach conflict? Do I shut down? Is that my freeze response? And shut down doesn’t mean stonewalling, where I’m intentionally pushing you out. It’s, am I so overwhelmed with the conflict that I freeze up and my mind is blank and I actually can’t think? Or do I fawn? Do I people-please in conflict? Whereby maybe I’ll say, “Hey, could you help with the dishes more?” My partner shuts me down and I go, “Okay, never mind. It wasn’t even a big deal. I don’t need anything.”So we just placate, we take over. Do we fight back immediately? Do we attack? Do we criticize? What do we usually do?Firstly, I would say, if you’re listening to this and you’re trying to figure out, “Well, what is my conflict style? What do I usually do?”—do I do any of those responses?—you can only control your side of the conflict. So we can’t say, “Help teach your partner how to listen to you better or how to respond better.”But if it’s, “I’m noticing that in conflict I tend to shut down,” I’m going to learn some regulation strategies, or I’m going to mention it to my partner in a time where we’re not in conflict. I’ll say, “Hey, I notice I shut down a lot when we have conflict. It’s not that I don’t care; I’m actually really overwhelmed. So in those moments, I’m gonna try my best to tell you, ‘Hey, I’m flooded right now and I need a minute,’ and I’m gonna go splash some cold water on my face or squeeze a stress ball or do some deep breaths. Just so you know, I’m working on this.”Vice versa, if the other person also shuts down or gets defensive or reactive, there are a lot of scripts and a lot of ways we can approach conflict in a more structured way. But for now, it would be addressing what’s our nervous system response to the conflict that then makes us more present to have conversations that we can then repair afterwards.Sarah: I love that.Okay. You have a chapter on looking at gender roles. My husband and I had pretty—even though we’re both feminists—we had pretty traditional gender roles. He worked, I stayed home for the first 12 years with my kids. I was always worried that they weren’t gonna see me as important or competent as their dad, who was going out with a briefcase every day.It was interesting because this came up with a couple that I coach, and the dad stays home and the mom works. He was talking about that the kids think that he doesn’t contribute—“Mom’s the one who makes the money,” and whatever. Their kids are older.I thought, well, that’s really interesting. Maybe it’s not as much of a gender issue. It’s gender combined with capitalism, not just gender stuff, but capitalism too. Whoever makes the money is the one that’s more valuable. Sorry, I just started to go on a rant.Anyhow, it was something that I grappled with, and something that I think a lot of people do grapple with. What are some suggestions that you have for—I guess I don’t think it is, I mean it can be a couple relationship issue—but what I’m interested in is your thoughts on how it affects our kids. I wanted them to grow up and think women can do anything men can do, and not like, moms should stay home and dads should work, if we’re talking about a heterosexual relationship. But if you’re not living that, what are some ways that you can still instill those kind of values?And I guess you could touch on the money thing too. Whether your gender roles are traditional staying home and working, or whether one parent makes a lot more money and the kids think that parent is the more important parent. They may be related or not, but I would love you to talk about both, if you can.Martina: Such a good question. I love that you bring up feminism.First of all, let’s go with the first part about how do we instill diversity in gender roles and expectations when maybe we do follow a more traditional structure of what typically we would see.First off, I think both parents have a part to play here because we can’t control what messages our kids are going to receive outside of our home. But we can control, as much as we try, what we show them on the inside. So what that might mean is not just showing what visible labor looks like in a home, such as dad’s coming home with a briefcase—if we’re talking about heteronormative partnerships—coming home with a briefcase, dad’s the one managing the finances, let’s say. We ask dad, “Can we buy this? Can we do this? Can we go here?” We start to maybe go deeper into how do we perpetuate those ideas.As opposed to maybe we have rounds of appreciation at home, or we say, “Dad, thank you so much for going to work and for making money. It’s really helpful because it allows us to buy X, Y, Z. Mom, thank you so much for being here and taking care of our home. And look how much work it is to take care of a home.”This could be led by the dad, where the dad talks about, “Here’s all the incredible things that your mom does for us. She cooks, and cooking isn’t just cooking. She goes through the fridge and looks at everything we have and sees what’s expired. What do I need to buy for this recipe? She goes to the store, she gets what you guys need.” If we’re talking really traditional gender norms here, she’s going to be the one who’s taking the time out of her day, making sure that nothing burns, being really attentive to the food, plating the food—breaking it down to see, whoa, this is actually a lot of work to even just get a meal on the table.Sarah: So making the invisible labor visible, basically, as you’re talking about.Martina: Exactly. And we can do this with our young kids as well, with our young boys. How do we instill what does actually invisible labor mean and teach them and say the invisible labor is often the labor in the home that is routinely done while you’re at school, while you’re sleeping, that you don’t see? Here’s what it takes to run a home. And do you know who usually does that in our home? This is the person who does that. Isn’t that a lot?So we’re already showing our young kids so that when they’re partners one day, to not just see on the outside visibly what we’re noticing, but breaking down the invisibleness that they’re not there to witness.Sarah: I think, too, Michaeleen Doucleff’s book Hunt, Gather, Parent—do you know that parenting book?Martina: Mm-hmm.Sarah: She was actually on the podcast too. One of the themes of her book is that we’ve gotten so far into adult world and kid world. Kid world is the science center and birthday parties and going to the playground, and the adult world is all the work that we have to do at home to get meals and laundry and cleaning and stuff. She really advocates for bringing the kids into the adult world more than people do typically. I’m completely paraphrasing her work.But it strikes me that that’s one of the things that—I mean, she talks about it in the context of having kids be more helpful, that we can’t just do all the things and then expect them to wanna help us when they’re older, when they haven’t been involved all along. And it strikes me that that’s part of the answer too, in terms of when you want everybody’s job in the family to be seen more as equally important, is involving the kids in what the stay-at-home parent, or the person who’s carrying more of the domestic load, is doing. So the kids don’t see it as just something that happens when we’re napping, or when we’re at school, or when we’re sleeping.Martina: Absolutely. Being really intentional about it.I’ll see it in my practice as well, where I have grown men having such demand avoidance to doing anything related to laundry. Nine times out of ten, when we talk about growing up—what chores did you have in the home? Did you do your own laundry? Did you help around the home?—it’s no, we didn’t.So it not only helps our kids see it, it helps them when they grow up and they’re older to fight against some of that demand avoidance of, “Don’t tell me what to do. I’ve never done this. I don’t understand it. It feels really big. It’s uncomfortable.” As opposed to, “This is just something that I’ve now been desensitized to doing, and I understand how to separate my laundry. I understand what kind of detergent to use on wool.” Things like that, that unless we show them, you’re a hundred percent right, or we intentionally do it when they’re sleeping or when they’re at school, they’re not even gonna know.Sarah: I still don’t let anyone do my laundry. I just don’t trust that they’re gonna do it right. Whether it’s my kids or my partner, I like to do my own laundry. Putting it away, though—that is another thing altogether.Was there anything that I didn’t ask you about that you were hoping I was gonna ask you, that you wanna share about what you learned writing this book, or what you think is really important for parents who are listening to know about?Martina: Good question. I think the most important thing with the book—and the takeaway I’m hoping—is, every parenting book will say nobody’s perfect and no parenting strategy is perfect. But with this one specifically, the goal of the book isn’t that you’re going to read it and you’re gonna be so ready for every single challenge that comes ahead, even before you have kids.It seems like it’s framed toward parenting and how to be the best parent to your kids, which it is. But a bigger part of the book is actually, how do I become more connected to my co-parent, to my partner, to my spouse? And you can use these questions to talk with your family—how you want your parents to show up for your kids even, which is a whole other can of worms.Sarah: Yeah.Martina: But I think that’s a big part of it: when we become parents, we can feel so lonely in our relationship when we are not asking each other questions. It can really disconnect us. And our kids are watching us on how we model connection and conflict and conversations.So if there are some of these questions that you’re like, “I really liked how this conversation went,” why don’t we actually in front of the kids—if you have a conflict but only do the repair behind closed doors, your kids are never gonna see what repair is like. So let’s reenact that repair in front of the kids. You can use some of these questions and, if it’s age appropriate, ask them in front of your kids. They can see, “Huh, my parents are asking each other a lot of really cool questions. Maybe one day in my partnership we could ask each other some of these cool questions too, and we’re not just living alongside one another.”Sarah: Love it. As I said, I think this would be just an awesome baby shower present, your book. A lot of people will ask me that, like, “My daughter’s having a baby. Do you know any parenting books I should give them?” And I’m like, well, you don’t really need a parenting book yet when you have a baby. But I think your book would be a great place to start for people to just have these conversations. So, well done.Where’s the best place for people to go and find out more about you and what you do? We’ll put links in the show notes, and we’ll also put a link to your book in the show notes.Martina: Absolutely. So I have an Instagram account, NovaCare Therapy. My website is novacaretherapy.ca. Both of those places have some free resources. I’ve curated a feminist postpartum support guide that’s free. There are links to purchasing Same Page Parenting, which could be through Amazon, Audible, Kindle, your local bookstore if it carries it, but also I think Barnes and Noble has it. So a lot of different resources are listed on those websites.Sarah: Great.A question that I’ll leave you with, which I ask all my guests, is—and for you, this will be interesting because you’re not that far away from your younger parent self. You’re still your younger parent self because your kids are little. But if you could go back in time to your parent self of four years ago, what advice would you give yourself?Martina: I would probably say: learn more about nervous system regulation so you don’t feel like it’s your job to always manage the mood, but instead be present with your kids.That was a big part of it for me. I always felt like I had to manage everybody to be okay, but it’s okay if we’re not okay and become more comfortable with that.Sarah: Nice. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.Martina: Thank you, Sarah. I appreciate it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribe