Dale Atkins - The Kindness Advantage: Cultivating Compassionate and Connected Children

Praise for The Kindness Advantage

In this day and age, kindness and connection are especially important. An accessible and informative guide, The Kindness Advantage is a must-read for parents of all ages.

Judson Brewer MD, PhD, Author of The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to
Smartphones to LoveWhy We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits

The Kindness Advantage is the perfect book. Building on scientific evidence about developing aspects of kindness, such as empathy, it gives clear, practical advice to parents and suggests engaging activities and stories for children. Nothing could be more important today than increasing compassion and decreasing polarization and acrimony. I am going to give this book to my son who has a young daughter.

Susan Fuhrman, PhD, President Emerita, Teachers College Columbia University

In times of discord and polarization, kindness is a family value that can often be overlooked and underestimated. But, in truth, few parental responsibilities carry more weightand bring more joythan teaching children the power of flexing their own kindness muscles. Steeped in research and brimming with practical tips, The Kindness Advantage provides parents with a blueprint for nurturing empathy in young children, while offering real-life stories that both instruct and inspire. This is a thoughtful guidebook for parents, care-givers, and any adults looking to help build happiness, raise good citizens, and create harmonious communities.

Myung Lee, Executive Director of Fund for Cities of Service

The Kindness Advantage by Dale Atkins, PhD, and Amanda Salzhauer, MSW, is exactly what we need more of right now. With empowering examples and science-based truths, Dale and Amanda share what it takes to foster kindness, empathy, compassion, and heart in our families. Parents will learn how to take on social questions and connect in a way that will improve the lives of their children and help create a more nurturing world. Highly recommended!

Amy McCready, Author and Founder, Positive Parenting Solutions

As a physician who uses mindfulness practices extensively in working with patients, health care professionals, and people dealing with all varieties of stress, I love that this book incorporates those practices into a guide for parents who are teaching their children to be kind. The authors wisely lead with the evidence that kindness leads to greater happiness, meaning, and wellbeing, and then provide a myriad of inspirational examples and ideas for children and parents. Grandparents, who are often crucial inspirational figures in childrens lives, may particularly benefit from ideas for intergenerational collaborations in kindness.

Patricia A. Bloom, MD
Certified Teacher of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
Clinical Associate Professor of Geriatrics, Mount Sinai Medical Center

Just like we see in kids who have the empathy advantage, children who are raised with the kindness advantage are happier, connected, compassionate, and will have what they need to become change-makers in their world. The Kindness Advantage offers parents the tools to teach these skills and more to their young children. With the extensive examples of activities provided in the The Kindness Advantage, parents can pick and choose what resonates with them to create a personalized approach to bringing kindness into their everyday lives.

Michele Borba, EdD, Author of UnSelfie: Why Empathetic
Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World

The Kindness Advantage is the ray of hope that we all need in this harsh, heavy, world. It is a blueprint of how to partner with the next generation to live our inherent values, to tap our organic ability to love, and to create a kinder culture. Many thanks to Dale Atkins and Amanda Salzhauer for bringing this much-needed gift to the world!

Rev. Susan Sparks,
Pastor, Comedian, and Author of Laugh Your Way to Grace

Dale Atkins and Amanda Salzhauers book, The Kindness Advantage, can serve as a partial antidote to these turbulent times. They remind us that kindness is both a moral behavior that can improve the status of the world, but also be advantageous to the individual who practices kindness. The books blend of significant and relevant issues in psychology, education, and humanism provides a myriad of practical suggestions to help us raise kind children. The book will serve as a resource to parents and educators. By teaching the components underlying kindness children can be provided a framework where we can both teach and weave these crucial lessons into the lives of children.

The section on relaxation, breathing, visualization and mediation is a gift to the children in our lives and ourselves. We cannot impart the lessons of kindness when we ourselves are agitated and distressed by the tumult in our lives and in our worlds. Likewise, children have difficulty being kind when they are in the grip of negative emotions. This section provides children and adults the tools to master negative emotions. We highly recommend this book to be read, saved and used as a long term resource in your child-rearing library.

Norma D. Feshbach, PhD, Professor, Chair, Interim Dean Emeritus UCLA and
Laura E. Feshbach, PhD

With optimism and compassion, The Kindness Advantage offers practical tips and real-world examples parents and educators need to teach empathy, compassion, and kindness to our children. Along the way, it also provides opportunities to reflect on our values and experiences as adults. This book speaks to the innate desire of every child to be good to themselves and those around them. Dale Atkins and Amanda Salzhauer make the case for kindness as the tool to radically transform our childrens lives, and our own.

Naila Bolus, President and CEO, Jumpstart

It is through kindness that we find inner peace, and understanding of our humanity, our interconnectedness. Thank you, Dale Atkins and Amanda Salzhauer, for gifting us with The Kindness Advantage, a guide to share this most powerful and important tool with our children.

Janet Slom, MFA, Founder, Mindfulness-Based Self Expression

The Kindness Advantage provides practical wisdom and good-sense guidance to help you scaffold your childs journey toward goodness of heart. This book is a gift which has arrived at the perfect time for our world.

Amishi Jha, PhD, Neuroscientist and Researcher

Before we expect kindness from others, we have to nurture it in ourselves. Thanks to The Kindness Advantage we now have the recipe to raise children that better the world not because of what they have done, but because of who they are. And, in the process, we can learn to become kinder people in an often divisive and complicated world.

Rabbi Sherre Hirsch, Author, We Plan, God Laughs

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available through the Library of Congress

2018 Dale Atkins, PhD, and Amanda Salzhauer, MSW