Martina Nova on What Couples Get Wrong About Parenting Alignment

Debbie:
Hey, Martina, welcome to the podcast.

Martina Nova:
Hey Debbie, thank you so much for having me.

Debbie:
Thank you for joining me to talk about your new book, which I really enjoyed. I was just, should have saved all of my gushing for after I hit record. I was just telling you before we started how much I enjoyed it and just thought it’s such a unique book in this space and really important. And now once again, I’m talking all around it. So let me just not bury the lead listeners. We’re going to be talking about Martina’s new book called Same Page Parenting, Align with Your Partner to Raise the Best Kid. And it’s such an important topic. I get questions all the time about how do I get on the same page with my partner. So I’m excited to get into it. But I would love to hear a little bit about your story and why you came to write this book in the first place.

Martina Nova:
Absolutely, thank you so much for asking. So I wrote it for a few different reasons. I’d probably say one of the first reasons that I wrote the book is so I’m a clinical counselor and I work a lot with couples and individuals and young parents, but I also work with couples who have parents that are teenagers and even individuals who have adult children. And one thing that I noticed that kept coming up is even in my work with couples, we would have arguments or we would have disagreements about things that seem to be about specific topics in the here and now. But since I’m a trauma therapist, I would oftentimes slow things down and try to peel back the layers and say, okay, why does this feel so big for us right now? What was it like for you growing up on this particular topic? How were you dealt with when it came to XYZ topics and therefore what was interesting that I found is so many couples don’t have conversations about a lot of things that aren’t just things like what kind of formula are we going to buy for our baby or what time do we wake up at night to feed our baby or what kind of stroller are we going to buy but other topics that are tied to our upbringing, our values, our culture and not to say we can prepare for every single disagreement we’ll have as parents because so much gets thrown at us that we didn’t even expect. But getting on the same page in how I understand it is more around how do we slow down and understand each other and unpack the baggage that each of us is bringing from previous relationships, from upbringing. And you don’t have to go to therapy to get some of these questions out. And so that’s what I was trying to do is bring these therapy level questions that I would ask my clients in sessions and say, hey, here’s a book, sit down with your partner or with your co-parent and we can chat about what kind of life do we want for our kids and how are we going to make sure that we show up in alignment and how we approach certain things so our kids aren’t left guessing.

Debbie:
Yeah. And it is again, such a helpful and unique way that you laid it out. And you are providing a very kind of simple framework for talking about things that are so important that I think we just don’t even realize we should be having discussions about. So would you — you’ll do a much better job than I will. So would you explain how you organize the book and because it’s very predictable in terms of like, this is the concept and here’s how we go through it. So would you walk us through that?

Martina Nova:
Of course. So in my book there are 13 chapters in total and each chapter has three subtopics relating to the bigger chapter. It first starts off by talking about, in general, the introduction. Like, what is parenting? Why is it actually a privilege for us to be able to sit and talk about some of these emotional pieces to parenting when maybe there are so many reasons why generations before us or our own parents due to privilege or access to resources or war or immigration or other types of intersectionalities, maybe haven’t had a chance to sit down and say, how do I want to respond to my kid when they’re having a tantrum? Instead, we’re just surviving day to day. So first we’re acknowledging even just to be able to have these conversations is a privilege in and of itself. And the answer is going to look different for every single couple, every single person. And then each chapter itself, there’s chapters such as reclaiming your voice as a parent in social situations, having boundaries with family, parenting in the digital age, reimagining gender roles and family structures, blended families. What if our kid wants to wear a skirt to school? And how do we feel about that? Or a dress if I have a son and my partner says, I don’t think that’s appropriate. Okay, let’s talk about it. There’s postpartum mental health. There’s even topics like teaching safety and consent, how we model conflict styles and repairing. And my last chapter is on neurodivergent parenting, whether us or our kids are neurodivergent in some way. And so each chapter starts off with some psychoeducation around that topic, what it is, why it’s important to talk about, what I’ve seen in my clinical practice of how it shows up for folks. And then I actually dive into a personal story of how I connect to that topic itself, whether it’s something I’ve struggled with. I have two kids myself. And so I’ve either dealt with every single one of these topics on my own in some way, shape or form, or I’ve talked to girlfriends about it. So I think the personal story really helps as well to show, yeah, I’m a clinical counselor. I teach this stuff all the time, but I also am struggling and I struggle because we’re human beings. And after each personal section that I share my own story, I include more resources because this book isn’t to tell you exactly what to do. It’s to say, if this is a topic that’s important to you and interesting to you, here are some really good books that you can dive into and learn more about. And in the meantime, I divide conversation starters by the age of your children. And therefore there’s a whole section on before you even have kids pre-pregnancy. Let’s evaluate and talk about our upbringing and what has influenced how we think about these topics. And then it goes into when we’re pregnant, here are some conversations we can have. When we have toddlers, young kids, teenagers, adult children, since each stage is so different. So it’s really a really cool book because you could use it at any stage of parenting. You can read it as a grandparent, you can read it as a friend, you can read it as a counselor, you can read it as a co-parent. It’s really designed to just help get us curious about the why and where do my ideas come from and how might I show up when it comes to certain of these topics. And unless we know where some of our programming comes from, we’re just going to operate on automatic and we may repeat some of the patterns we may not even want to from our own upbringing.

Debbie:
Yeah, I think that’s what I loved about it so much. And I appreciate that you tied it to what a privilege it is to even consider these questions. But you know, we talk a lot here about just being intentional and how we show up. And this book is basically a handbook for being intentional because it invites you to explore these topics, maybe before they’re even an issue. And so many of us are just reacting to things that are happening. And we haven’t had the chance to do this. And I love that idea of even pre-kids. I thought that that was so cool that you’re like, okay, here’s before baby, here’s during pregnancy, here’s after pregnancy. That’s just so straightforward and clear. I can imagine having some of these conversations before even having kids. What a game changer that would be because you don’t know what you don’t know. Now you’re encouraging people to explore these things and as you said, just get curious.

Martina Nova:
We think that maybe parenting starts when the baby is here, but there’s so much more to it than just when our baby is actually in front of us because we’re bringing the baggage that we don’t even realize how we were parented, what society tells us we should do, and pregnancy and postpartum. It introduces so much advice. So this is also a good idea to slow down and comb through and maybe lead with integrity and intention as to what do we want and how do we see this maybe fitting in our life before we get swarmed and buried by what other people tell us we should be doing as well.

Debbie:
Yeah. So you just mentioned some of the things that are probably an answer to my next question, which is why is getting on the same page harder for a lot of couples? I mean, you mentioned baggage. There is so much pressure from the outside world that we may not be expecting. And it can be really confusing when we’re getting feedback from these different stakeholders or people who don’t even have a stake in anything, but they have strong opinions about things. What are some of the other things that parents may not realize are interfering with their ability to be more aligned.

Martina Nova:
Yeah, great question. Going off of what you said Debbie, I think most couples assume that if we have love and if we have shared values, we’re going to naturally translate that into aligned parenting. But parenting doesn’t just activate our values, it activates our nervous system, our childhood and our coping strategies. And so what looks like a disagreement about something small like bedtime or screen time is often actually two different internal worlds colliding. Right? One partner might be prioritizing structure because chaos felt unsafe growing up while the other is prioritizing flexibility because control felt overwhelming in their childhood. And most couples haven’t had explicit conversations about this ahead of time. They’re reacting in real time, often sleep deprived, overstimulated, and we’re trying to regulate a child while also managing our own emotional responses. So it’s not just a communication issue. It’s that parenting resurfaces so many unspoken expectations, identity shifts and emotional triggers that people didn’t even know that they were carrying.

Debbie:
Okay. So a lot of what you just shared as you were answering that question about, you know, how this shows up or the things that we may not be expecting are going to be challenges. I’m thinking for the listeners of the show, like having this more extreme version of parenting that we certainly weren’t expecting. You know, most of us were like, I didn’t realize that this was the journey that I was going to be on. So could you speak to the unique kind of maybe more intense challenges that parents of neurodivergent kids might be facing when coming together and trying to find that alignment.

Martina Nova:
Absolutely. This is such a big one. I feel very close to this because I have ADHD myself. My kid’s dad has ADHD and I’m quite positive my son has ADHD as well, although he’s still quite young. So I’m living this and I’m seeing it in a lot of folks that I work with. So when you’re parenting a neurodivergent child and if you’re neurodivergent yourself, that gets amplified because now you’re not just navigating preferences, you’re navigating real differences in how your child experiences the world. And with neurodivergent kids, we see sensory processing differences with sensory needs, transitions, emotional regulation, rigidity, and all of that can require so much of a more nuanced, responsive approach. And so if we’re trying to figure out, for example, how childhood and upbringing even influences this, if we’re seeing neurodivergency in both a parent and a child and a child is exhibiting behaviors that maybe we had when we were younger and we were responded to in a very particular way, if there was lack of knowledge or education around that particular neurodivergency, for example, with myself, with my ADHD, if my parents responded each time I was clumsy, knocked something over, was messy, lost things with shame and said, why are you doing this again? What’s wrong with you? Why are you being lazy? Why can’t you just keep up? Why do you keep breaking things? Then I internalize that and that becomes my own way of speaking to myself. Shame-based. And unless we open some of this up, we may inadvertently then carry that and speak to our kids like that. And that becomes their internal narrative. And so if we pause and we reflect on how does my own potential narrative urgency show up in my parenting relationship with my kids, but also how does my kids’ nuance and how they see the world require me to be so much more regulated. It adds a whole other layer of challenge than if your kid is more neurotypical.

Debbie:
Yeah. And what I hear so much, and I imagine this happens in the families and couples that you work with, is if you have this mixed neurotype family where everybody’s got different stuff going on, adults have their baggage that they’re bringing into it, the kids have their own neurotypes and everyone’s responding differently. And a lot of times, again, this comes up a lot in my community, the parents are not on the same page. And they are not just in how they think about what the response should be or their beliefs about the behavior or whatever is going on, but also in terms of their own nervous system experience of what’s happening. So could you talk a little bit about, you do have a whole chapter on this, but what are some of the kinds of questions that parents raising, you know, in a mixed neurotype household might explore together to have a better path moving forward.

Martina Nova:
Yeah, absolutely. So I would probably say if we’re understanding and trying to talk about the dysregulation, first of all, that could happen in a mixed neurotype family. That’s a big one. And some of the questions we could ask one another would be things like, if we’re doing the historical unpacking baggage part of it, it would be, what did discipline look like growing up and what felt okay or not okay about it? Because that hits at neurodiversity in a way because what do we discipline? We discipline what we believe is bad behavior. And what do we believe is bad behavior? It’s gonna be different if our kid is overwhelmed and is defiant, seems to be defiant or seems to be pushing back, but they’re really just dysregulated and need support. So not just what did discipline look like growing up, but why would we get disciplined? What kind of things would I get disciplined over? What kind of behaviors were unacceptable in my home growing up? How did my parents lean in to try to understand me and what was going on for me? Did we use emotional language at home? Was there an opportunity to learn tools on hitting? I know you’re frustrated because I told you you can’t have any ice cream and you hit me. I can’t let you hit me. But you know what you can do when you’re frustrated? You can stomp on the couch, or we can push the wall together really hard, or we can take a couple deep breaths, or we can roar like a lion. So once we figure out what opportunities was I given or maybe not given to explore what was going on in myself, then I can figure out, even if everyone in the house is a different neurotype, we can try to say, what kind of behavior are we going to see as bad? What does it mean to be a good parent, a bad parent, a good kid, a bad kid? And how do we want to respond to that in a way that is more around regulation and less around correcting bad behavior? Cause that’s one of the biggest things I see my families and couples and kids struggling with as well as we’re not being bad. We’re just overwhelmed and we need help. So unless we strip that back and figure out what kind of support did I get growing up or what kind of support did you get growing up? Did you even get that support? What did that look like then, we may continue to repeat some of that.

Debbie:
Yeah, and I love that so many of the questions are focused on values, right? And you know, when I’m thinking of a conversation I had with Dr. Ross Green about parenting from values, and he’s like, most parents know kind of inherently what their values are, but they rarely parent from that place. And so I feel like these questions also help you kind of bring those back to the surface and apply how does this particular value actually show up? And are we parenting from that place?

Martina Nova:
Absolutely, yes.

Debbie:
So then in terms of these examples of the types of questions that a couple might ask, I’d love if you could talk about what this would look like in action. And you mentioned earlier you could go through this with a therapist or there are different ways. As I was reading, I’m like, this would be a really interesting book to both read separately and then come together, like pick a chapter and then like once a week sit down and just have discussions. And of course you have to have a willing participant on both sides. I imagine for this to actually work, but yeah. So when you think about this book in practice, what is that? What are some of the different ways that looks like for you?

Martina Nova:
I would probably say we’ll go through a few examples. So one example might be if we’re going to have a check-in, a relationship check-in once a week. A lot of different couples therapy structures might recommend something like this. I know that the Gottmans will say let’s have our kind of relationship sound house. What are we going to talk about this week? Some things we appreciate about one another, some things that was a struggle, some things we’re needing. So if we’re following a structure where we’re having a check-in once a week on a Sunday, on a Saturday, we’re gonna wanna have it on a particular day of the week so that we know that it’s coming. And one of the things that we can do is say, we’re going to spend the week going through one chapter. And you could go sequentially, but at the beginning of my book I say, not all these chapters are gonna be relevant to every single person. And so you can also choose ahead of time looking at the table of contents, which chapter maybe feels like it could be appropriate for us right now. And we’re gonna meet on that particular time and we’re gonna come with the answers to that stage of parenting of that chapter. And each stage of parenting has four to five questions. So whether or not you want to decide to answer all of them or you pick one or two, the goal would really just be, I’m going to sit down with my partner and I’m going to hear what they have to say about this topic and they’re going to hear what I have to say. And we can get curious about one another’s responses, where it comes from. We don’t have to fix anything and we’re not looking to solve or agree or just say, okay, this is how we’re going to do it forever. But it’s more just about the curiosity. So that would be one way to do it is to have a particular time of the week, a chapter, a set of questions that we do that and we can repeat if the scenario allows. But another way to do it as well is to not just do it in isolation while our kids are asleep, but if there’s a question that comes up and we think, huh, if it’s for example, a question around gender and gender expression and how would I feel if my son wanted to wear a dress to school, for example. If after having that conversation with my partner, we recognize, okay, one of our shared values are that we want our kids to feel safe and comfortable in their own skin. And for us, it’s important that they can express themselves how they want to. Growing up, maybe we didn’t have that opportunity, but we want to do something different for our kids. So maybe we’re actually going to be okay with it. Maybe that’s a question that we can have a dialogue in front of our kids about. So the next day, while we’re having breakfast, you could turn to your partner and say, hey, I wanted to ask you this question. You know, I think a lot of people think painting nails or wearing dresses is just for girls, but don’t you think boys should be able to do that kind of stuff too? And then we could ask our kid, is that something you’d be interested in doing? So we can get our kids involved with these questions. It’s not just for the parents. And that way we’re not just aligning with our partner, but we’re also showing our kids it’s normal to have conversations like this with one another. And it’s okay to dive into deep topics and that the kids feel involved and they feel part of the community and they feel like they have a say in what they do. So those, in addition to what you’ve mentioned as well, we can have these conversations with our girlfriends. We can have these conversations. One of the biggest things that I want to keep pushing is for men to have these conversations with one another in spaces that feel safe and collaborative and constructive, maybe in a group therapy setting. If it’s safer to have somebody mediate that with people you feel like there’s trust in already. You can also have it with your co-parent. Myself, I’m a co-parent so I don’t live with my kid’s father but we talk about a lot of these topics as well. And we try to make sure that we show up for our kids so they feel like we are a united front and that we’re doing what’s best for them, not just what we were taught automatically by our parents.

Debbie:
Yeah, that’s great. And I really love that suggestion of having it be a bigger family conversation. It is such a respectful thing and insightful. Our kids are often way more clued into things than we realize anyway. So to remind them that we want to hear what they have to say, that their opinion matters, and also to share some of ourselves, perhaps in a more vulnerable way, can foster connection. So I really love that idea. Okay, so I did, you know, there were a number of chapters and then within those chapters, those kind of sub topics that I thought were so interesting, and I’m just gonna name a few that jumped out at me as being like, yeah, this is a really important conversation to have. I mean, you have raising social and justice minded children. I thought that was so important. And I think that’s part of the bigger culture of the family, but understanding that that’s an important value. People pleasing and parenting, I would never have thought to explore that. And that is such an important factor for so many of us. You’re nodding your head. So this comes up a lot in your work. Is there anything you want to share about that one, in particular, people pleasing and what happens when we don’t talk about this stuff?

Martina Nova:
Oh gosh, I’m so happy that you asked that question. Because this is one of my favorite things to work with. So people pleasing, I work a lot with people pleasing, which we can see is to its extreme forms, it’s a trauma response of fawning. And what that means is where we try so hard to avoid the distress that other people are feeling by over accommodating and over functioning and overworking and sacrificing ourselves and not getting our needs met, et cetera. And whenever I work with folks individually or in a couple capacity, we say people pleasing starts with parent pleasing. And such an important part of the book because we don’t realize it, but sometimes we may be trying to raise kids who are pleasers. And there’s a difference between a kid who is respectful and kind and regulated and a difference between a kid who recognizes that, okay, it’s my job to make sure that mom feels okay. I have to talk to mom about her relationship with dad. How am I gonna make sure that they’re not gonna fight today? What do I need to do to keep safe? This is so much of the internal dialogue with adult clients I’m working with today. And I see struggles in romantic relationships because someone will be in a relationship with someone for a decade and they’ll say, I’ve never really felt like myself because I’ve always believed that I have to do things for other people to make them happy because I can’t stand it when people are disappointed at me or with me because if my mom was disappointed, I would get shame or if my parents would get disappointed at me, if I wouldn’t be able to help them solve their issues at home or talk about the finances with them or they’d get angry at me for not being able to emotionally support them when I was nine years old. Like there are so many reasons why this kind of parentification happens and there’s some cultural expectations, there’s lack of resources, there are a lot of reasons. And I just want people to be aware. Are we raising kids who are pleasing us or are we raising kids who are independent and sovereign and can make decisions and can we handle if our kid disagrees with us or doesn’t do what we want them to do? That was such a big part and an important piece of the book as well as let’s try to be more intentional with raising pleasing kids.

Debbie:
Yeah, because all those things you described as the toll that this takes on a parent who is feeling like they can’t disappoint other people, that is like a fast pass to burnout, which is something, a very real challenge for so many families raising neurodivergent kids. So yeah, I do think it’s really important. But again, it’s not something I certainly never would have thought about before I was kind of unpacking it with my therapist and starting to realize, oh, I have this tendency, right? So I could see the value in really talking about this stuff ahead of time. Okay, a couple other ones that I really liked and were surprising. Well, one is, you know, social media. And you do talk about digital screen habits. And I was thinking as I was reading that, like, those are the things that kind of creep in. And we don’t realize they’re a problem until suddenly they’re a huge problem. So I love kind of proactively exploring technology and digital screen habits. But then I was also thinking about social media within the parents’ own use or how they feel about sharing images of their kids. Could you talk a little bit about what some of those conversations might look like?

Martina Nova:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, within the last half a decade, there’s so much information out there around the danger of sharing certain images of our kids online. And there’s a lot of fear that can come with, whether it’s just lack of consent, we’re not getting their consent and therefore these images could be online forever. They are online forever. Anyone can grab them. Even if we have a private profile, people can still find ways to access it. If we’re posting pictures of our kids in the nude but put little emojis over their private parts, these kinds of things are also, they seem harmless, but it’s harmless until it’s not until it gets in front of somebody who could be dangerous with. And therefore, the chapter, it’s not meant to scare, but just for us to become aware of how do we feel about sharing our child’s image online and if this is something that we feel strongly about, do we also want to tell our family about this? To grandparents who may not recognize or think about similar potential dangers in the future, or just respecting our kids’ autonomy or privacy. But a lot of conversations that maybe we don’t even think twice before we share an image, but now it’s out there forever. So aligning with our partners, aligning with our friends even, I’ve had friends message me before saying, hey, is it okay if I post this picture? I know it’s summertime and the kids are running around with their tops off in the sprinkler. What do you think about that? And I thought that was also just such a respectful thing to do is you could do whatever you want with your kid. But if my kid is in it and you ask me, that means a lot. And I appreciate that. So not just within our own family unit, but we can use this with our friends as well and say, what’s important for us? Is this something we’re worried about? Is it not? Do I feel strongly about it? And if I do, then let’s talk about it.

Debbie:
Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. Okay. I’m going to start to wrap up, but I did want to ask you, you know, you mentioned earlier that you broke down, you know, these kinds of discussion prompts or things to be exploring again, pre-baby, during pregnancy, post-baby toddler years, and you kind of go up through all the way to conversations with adult children. And I loved that you included that because I feel like our relationship with adult children or young adult children is really not touched upon in so many parenting books. It’s like, we’re done. Okay, raise the kid now. And we know that that’s not true. The parent-child relationship will always be there in some form. So I’m just wondering, could you walk us through a little bit of your thinking of why you included that section?

Martina Nova:
Absolutely, yeah. So I work with folks who, the couples work I do would be less the folks with adult children. It would be more the individual work that I do with parents. But I would notice a lot of the time there would be so much frustration or confusion around different values that their adult kids are now having in their family, or even different dietary consumption habits. For example, I had a client who was so angry one session saying, I just don’t know why my kid is trying to do this vegan thing. This vegan thing, it’s so stupid and I don’t understand it. And we grew up on a diet of meat and potatoes and we come from Europe and this is so important for us culturally and they’re veering away from culture and this is not okay. And they’re still trying to find ways to get their kids to conform to what they want. And so some of the questions I included with the adult kids would be questions around, why don’t we just pause and reflect for a second? Are we giving our kids space to try things out on their own, even as adults? Like, how can I respect my kid’s decision? And what is it like when it sits with me that it’s different than what I tried to instill in them? Or some values that feel different now. Or I have a lot of parents of adult children who are trans or who have different lifestyle choices. And so a lot of these questions can also just be for us to reflect and see at the core of it. I want to make sure that my kid, even as an adult, still feels safe and comfortable to talk to me. And if I have a really strong opinion towards one part of their life, it may rupture our relationship a little bit. So let’s soften it for a second and see where am I holding on really tight or where are my values clashing with theirs and can I get curious about that and maybe let them have a little bit more space so our relationship isn’t worth rupturing over this. That’s where it came from.

Debbie:
Yeah, so good. It’s so important. Yeah, because we want to have long relationships with these humans that we’re raising. I mean, you know, that’s the goal, right? I was thinking of the conversation I had with Dr. Ken Ginsburg about lighthouse parenting and that we’re, you know, yeah, we’re raising these kids now we want to be close with them, but we want to have relationships with them when they’re in their 60s and we’re in our 80s. Like we want to have these enduring connections. So I really appreciate that. Okay, so I’m going to ask one last question because I’m thinking about listeners who are like, well, this is all well and good. And like my partner is just like completely not on the same page, isn’t willing to engage in these types of conversations. And they really are feeling disjointed in how they perceive certain, you know, whether it’s behavior stuff or, you know, how to address certain things. So I’m just wondering, what is your advice or what would you say to parents who are just feeling really stuck with a partner who isn’t on the same page?

Martina Nova:
So I’d probably say two things. One is you have access to resources and if you have access to the support, if you’re the one who’s trying to get the conversations but they’re not happening, I would encourage that particular person to seek therapy for themselves first and foremost. Because what that can do for you is it can give you a space first to voice your frustration or to voice what is it specifically that really is standing out to you that you wanna talk to your partner about that feels really big and can we maybe massage it out and talk it through with somebody else first and just to see what is that going to do with the urgency to change. Because maybe we really want to talk to our partner about division of labor and about the mental load and we want them to take on more. But if we go to therapy and we recognize, well, how much control am I actually holding onto and not letting them take on more? Or in what ways could I contribute to this being differently right away? Perhaps. So it’s a control that I can have that maybe if I think my partner is the only one who could change that, I could go to therapy and my therapist could help challenge me with some of that. And then going forward, if we’re having a really resistant partner who gets really defensive or reactive to some of these questions, which by the way, some of the questions were meant to be reactive because they’re gonna be bringing up really sensitive topics, then what we’re finding here is we have some communication issues. If our partner is open to going to therapy with us and we can have a mediator go through some of these questions, then that could also be very helpful because then if our partner feels stuck or if they say, this is stupid, I don’t want to talk about it, we have somebody else to help guide the conversation a little bit more. If our partner isn’t willing to do any of that and we’re in a partnership where we feel really alone and we don’t have a choice to leave, and this is, I’m not talking about partnerships where there’s abuse or neglect in some way, but we feel really misaligned or there isn’t space for conversation, then it’s how can I resource myself or have these conversations with other people? Because kids really need one regulated aligned parent to get more of those positive social outcomes. And so I can only control myself. And if I can only control myself right now, what do I need to be better? How can I show up better for my family and my kids? Because we’re not always going to have willing partners, but that’s what I would say.

Debbie:
Yeah, I so appreciate that answer. Thank you for that. I think it’s so helpful to hear this is something that comes up all the time when I speak to groups and it’s just it’s really hard, you know, and I always acknowledge that it’s really hard if you feel like you’re in this alone and you don’t have a partner who’s willing to meet you halfway. But I think your advice is so helpful and practical. So thank you for that. Okay, so I’m gonna just name your book again. It is called Same Page Parenting, Align with Your Partner to Raise the Best Kid. And where would you like listeners to, yeah, connect with you, learn more about your work?

Martina Nova:
Yeah, so I have a website where all my resources are listed and all the information on how you can get access to the book is there. So my website is novacartherapy.com. I also have an Instagram at Nova Care Therapy and Same Page Parenting itself is available through Amazon, at Chapters, Barnes and Noble, Audible, Powell’s Books and some local retailers as well. So you could always have a look through that link on my website and see if it’s available somewhere near you.

Debbie:
Awesome. Thank you. And listeners, as always, I will have links in the show notes pages so you can easily follow Martina and learn more about her book. But thank you so much. This has been such an interesting conversation. And again, congratulations. I think it’s such a wonderful resource and I’m really grateful that it’s out there.

Martina Nova:
Thank you so much.