Books
Kind to me
A beautiful story of kindness and courage, teaching the all-important life skill of self-compassion at the beginning of children’s lives. Read this for yourself and the children in your life to promote coping and resilience in the face of any challenges being faced now or in the future.
A beautiful story of kindness and courage, teaching the all-important life skill of self-compassion at the beginning of children’s lives. Read this for yourself and the children in your life to promote coping and resilience in the face of any challenges being faced now or in the future.
Synopsis
Self-Compassion for Kids
Kind To Me tells the story of Zac, a 7-year-old, who is learning to be kind to himself: body, heart and mind. Zac practices mindfulness and compassionate thoughts, helping him to develop healthy core beliefs about himself. These include “I am OK as I am”, “I can learn from this” and “I am connected to others.”
Along the way Mum and Dad provide nurturing, guidance and containment. This helps Zac to regulate his emotions. Zac also speaks to his parents in the book to express his emotional needs. Danielle includes notes at the end of the book for parents on teaching and role-modelling self-compassion, as well as how to build emotional resilience in their children.
Who would love this book
For Parents, Teachers, Mental Health Practitioners and every child big and little
Children, Parents, Teachers and Mental Health Practitioners the world over are loving Kind to Me. Self-compassion and self-regulation are skills to teach our children from an early age to build their emotional resilience and actually maximize their emotional health throughout their lives. Parenting also requires a great deal of self-compassion and self-regulation. Children and parents can learn this skill together as they read this book. Includes additional notes explaining the role of self-compassion for strong mental health.
Understanding the Science of Self Compassion
Self Compassion for Strong Mental Health
With self-compassion, we give ourselves the same kindness and care we would give to a good friend. Self-compassion expert Kristin Neff describes it as “being open to and moved by one’s own suffering, experiencing feelings of caring and kindness toward oneself, taking an understanding, nonjudgmental attitude toward one’s inadequacies and failures, and recognizing that one’s own experience is part of the common human experience.” (Neff 2003 p. 224).
The scientific evidence is strong. The tendency towards self-compassion in the way we speak to ourselves and behave, and away from self-criticism, makes for STRONG mental health. Adopting a kind and compassionate stance towards ourselves (as we would a good friend) is linked to:
- a reduction in anxiety, depression, stress, perfectionism, body dissatisfaction and disordered eating (Zessin, Dickhauser & Garbadee, 2015; Kelly, Vimalakanthan, & Miller, 2014);
- enhanced wellbeing including an increase in happiness, self-confidence and motivation (Zessin, Dickhauser & Garbadee, 2015);
- improved resilience in the face of trauma (Hiraoka et al., 2015);
- better coping with chronic health problems (Sirois, 2015);
- exercising more and using alcohol less (Terry & Leary, 2011);
- healthier interpersonal relationships (Neff & Beretvas, 2013); and
- A stronger sense of connection to others and belonging (Neff, 2003).
From a neuroscience perspective, self-criticism triggers our flight/fight/freeze/fawn fear response, releasing adrenaline and cortisol. Self-compassion triggers the mammalian care giving system, releasing oxytocin and feel good opiates and putting us in the ‘rest and digest’ space –where we want to be spending most of our time.
Inspiration behind this book
This book needed to happen. My work as a clinical psychologist involves treating adults experiencing depression, anxiety, panic and trauma. Our brains have a negativity bias – meaning we give more attention to negative thoughts and emotions rather than positive ones. This is why difficult experiences tend to stay with us, as they usually involve a negative thought about ourselves combined with an uncomfortable emotion such as anger, fear or shame. This develops as early as 7 months of age. Therefore we need to work hard to cultivate positive beliefs about ourselves and positive emotions. Unhelpful beliefs such as ‘I am not good enough’, ‘I am weak’, ‘I don’t belong’ and ‘It’s not OK to show my emotions’ can start to develop at a very young age. This book is designed to address this, providing tools to work with difficult emotions and develop healthier thoughts to counteract the negative ones.
Knowing this, as a parent I wanted to teach my daughter and son about self-compassion. I really wanted to show them and not tell them, so the character of Zac was created as a vehicle kids could connect with.
Reviews
What People Are Saying
Just such a vital book for families needing to know how important kindness is for the wellbeing of children and parents. Sellick does a great job of validating this - it might seem obvious that kindness matters, but for too long a word like this has been treated by science and healthcare as too soft or folksy. For a well-regarded clinical psychologist to place kindness at the centre of child development and family wellbeing is a powerful statement, backed up further by the great explanatory notes at the end which refer to the work of Dr Kristen Neff.
Kindness has a neuroscientific underpinning, and it is a necessary part of any robust approach to child and family health. We already know that reading together is a solid child development intervention; Danielle Sellick adds value to this by making the core act of kindness the subject of the book itself.
This beautifully written book is a wonderful conversation starter for talking to kids about being kind to themselves and others. I highly recommend this resource to all parents!
Beautiful and enlightening - 5 stars. Children will adore the lyrical narrative, which in turn reminds adults and children alike of the importance of being kind to oneself first, so that we can be our best for others and face the world with courage.
An educational and entertaining children's book – 5 stars. The text inspires children on a subject being forgotten by parents, how not just to be kind to each other but to also be kind to THEMSELVES. Educational and entertaining.
An Excellent Read. My kids loved the main character Zac in this book. A great way to start conversations with kids about how to be kind to themselves and handle their emotions in a healthy way. Useful messages for parents too.
What a truly fabulous book, beautiful. My son and I loved it.
