Kasl - If the Buddha had kids: raising children to create a more peaceful world

Praise for

If the Buddha Had Kids

Heartfelt and practical approaches to helping your child find his/her inner voice and personal path in life. More important, Kasl focuses her discussion on the most important aspect of successfully raising childrenself knowledge. I believe that parents of every age can benefit from this book. I did.

Toni A. Rehbein

What a beautiful, rich, and wise book on parenting. Charlottes interpretations and applications of the Buddhas teachings give deep relevance and power to parenting. I plan to read and reread it, hoping that it is not too late to reparent myself. Then I shall send copies to my grown children and all involved in formulating public policy.

Cynthia B. Aten, MD, former associate clinical professor of pediatrics and of nursing, Yale University

I have been working on a haiku book, called Tattoos on the Buddha, that has an introduction titled What Happened to Those Kids the Buddha Gave Piggyback Rides? Well, I think you found oneCharlotte Kasl. So cash in. Draw from her deep, beautiful, caring welland love more, hoot louder from joy; help a heart dancethen another & another & another.

Daniel Ladinsky, bestselling Penguin author of poetry and translator of Hafiz

Simple but profound. This is a book that encourages parents to care about all children, not just their own. It provides a model of parenting that could transform the world. I wish I could give a copy to every new parent on the planet.

Jean Kilbourne, filmmaker, media critic, author of SoSexy So Soon

A kind, practical, and wise guide for parents helping their children become confident, loving, and productive members of the human community. Her philosophy of child-rearing is right-onlove and responsibility!

Dorothy Hinshaw Patent, author of more than 100 nonfiction books for children

An insightful guide to peaceful parenting, covering everything from a childs relationship to food, technology, and money to helping a child feel understood. It is the one book every parent should read!

Linda S. Baechle, president, YWCA, North Central Indiana

Dr. Kasl provides a wonderful blend of Buddhist wisdom, practical suggestions, psychological research, and her own rich perspective of being a mother. Parents will find this book very helpful in their efforts in promoting healthy brain development.

John Arden, PhD, author of Rewire Your Brain

I wish I had read this before I had my kids, because Kasls wisdom would have saved many a situation. The many examples from her own motherhood and examples from her interviews would have greatly simplified my parenting. From the heart of a mother to the hearts of all concerned about peace.

Starshine, mother of four, middle school teacher for twenty-five years, Quaker, astronomer

Books on child-rearing abound, but this one is different. A unique, practical, and philosophical guide that parents will find inspiring, useful, and full of opportunities for opening new paths of relationship with their children. This is parenting through a different lensa hopeful and powerful lens that includes changing policy at all levels to create peace, for both the individual and our society.

Augusta Souza Kappner, president emeritus, Bank Street College of Education

Charlotte Kasl has given the world a great gift in this book. One sees the connection between how we raise all of our children and how we create a world of peace, justice, and true sustainability. She includes easy-to-follow advice on child-rearing, including a tender glimpse at her own life. But she also includes many opportunities for all of us to search our own souls and grow through exercises and inspiring stories of real people trying, failing, forgiving, and courageously growing in wisdom.

Betsy Mulligan-Dague, executive director, Jeannette Rankin Peace Center

Charlottes new book is a bright light reminding us that parenting, like all paths in life, is a spiritual journey. This is a must-read, even if you dont have children and just need a guide on parenting yourself!

Angela Shelton, author, performer

This is NOT at all the average parenting book. The result of embracing this wisdom is a growing bond of trust and caring between parent and child, plus the childs awareness of how love overrides a desire for more than we need, and even how the food habits they learn can either nourish or do damage to their brains. Such philosophy pervades this excellent book and makes us wish we could have been that wise much sooner!

Joan Mathews-Larson, PhD, author of Seven Weeks to Sobriety; Overcoming Depression Naturally, founder of Health Recovery Associates Treatment Program

This book serves as a meditation and journaling guide, a manual for opening up dialogue among kids and adults, a source book on the best and latest research on adult/child dynamics, and a review of the theories and frameworks that undergird effective peacemaking. Its a book you will mark up and use over and over again.

Carol Kuhre, founding director, Rural Action, Ohio

Inspired, inventive, and heartwarming. Ive thought for years that there is one clear way to fix the world: by doing a better job at raising our children. If the Buddha Had Kids rings true on every page, not just for making a household peaceful, lively, and fair but for making the whole world that way. Setting out on the adventure of parenting, you couldnt take a better volume along than Charlotte Kasls If the Buddha Had Kids.

John Thorndike, author, The Last of His Mind: A Year in The Shadow of Alzheimers

In this fine book, Charlotte Kasl traces the crucial roles of clear values and healthy family relationships in nurturing strong, empathic, and competent children. I recommend it to all parents who hold hope that their children will be part of a more peaceful world.

Jean D. Harlan, PhD, retired clinical psychologist

The world needs this book! Parents will benefit from Charlottes well-informed and down-to-earth guidance in raising children who are safe, secure, peaceful, loving, and bonded to the well-being of others as well as to their own.

Peggy McIntosh, associate director, Wellesley Centers for Women

What an insightful experience to read this book! Rich with imagery and brimming with ideas, every chapter provides guidance on raising children in the twenty-first century with love and peace.

Rhea A. Ashmore, EdD

Charlotte takes parents beyond good intentions by giving them the skillful means to bring out the best in themselves and, in turn, help their children express the best in themselves. For everyone who wants to feel more compassion.

Georgia Milan, MD, medical director, Womens Care Center, St. Patrick Hospital

PENGUIN BOOKS

If the Buddha Had Kids

C HARLOTTE S OPHIA K ASL , P H .D., a practicing psychotherapist and workshop leader for more than thirty years and a best-selling author, has had longtime connections to feminism, Buddhism, Quaker practice, and Reiki healing. She is an internationally recognized expert on trauma and addiction and created a sixteen-step empowerment model as an alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous, which is being used extensively in the United States and Canada. She has written numerous books and articles on relationships, joy, sexuality, healing, and addiction, weaving together many aspects of spirituality and psychology to bring a holistic empowering approach to all her work. She has led parenting groups and is a founding member of AttachThe Association for Treatment and Training in the Attachment of Children. Her books include If the Buddha Dated; If the Buddha Married