A book can help with
To other people, and to yourself, which is often the harder one.
Kindness isn’t something you can instruct into a child. Telling them to be nice produces compliance at best. What actually builds a kind person is seeing kindness done, feeling what it’s like to be on the receiving end, and slowly learning to imagine how somebody else feels.
That last part is exactly what stories do. A book puts a child inside someone else’s head for twenty minutes, which is empathy practice whether they notice it or not. And the best of these show kindness costing something small and mattering enormously, which is far more persuasive than being told to share.
Here’s what I’d reach for. Find your child’s age and start there.
Small kindnesses
For the very youngest it’s the simplest version: noticing when someone is sad, and doing one small thing about it.
Magic Manners, a large blue elephant in a cape, bounces through the everyday business of sharing, waiting and being gentle with people. It is bright, silly and rhyming, which is exactly the register a toddler takes kindness in best. Sturdy enough to be chewed and read a hundred times.
or on Bookshop.org
A bright board book showing children being kind in small, concrete ways: sharing, helping, waiting, including. It gives a toddler pictures of what kindness actually looks like in practice rather than as an idea. Cheerful, inclusive and sturdy enough for little hands.
or on Bookshop.org
Noticing other people
Now they can imagine how somebody else feels, which is where real kindness begins. These make that vivid.
Brian is the child nobody notices, drawn in grey while everyone else is in colour, until one new boy includes him and the colour arrives. It shows how enormous one small kindness can be to the person receiving it. Good for both the overlooked child and the one who could do the noticing.
or on Bookshop.org
Everyone carries an invisible bucket, and what you say and do either fills someone’s or empties it. It’s a simple, memorable idea that children take to straight away, and it gives a family a shared shorthand for kindness. Widely used in classrooms, and it does stick.
or on Bookshop.org
Kindness that costs something
Older children can grasp kindness that requires courage, and the harder business of being kind to themselves.
Chloe refuses to befriend the new girl, and by the time she understands what she’s done, the chance to put it right has gone. It’s unusual and brave in not offering a tidy happy ending, which is precisely why it lands so hard. A quietly devastating, unforgettable book about missed kindness.
or on Bookshop.org
Esperanza is good at kindness to everyone else, and then makes a mistake and is horribly hard on herself, until she learns to offer herself the same kindness. Self-compassion is rarely covered for this age and matters enormously. Good for the child who’s generous to others and merciless with themselves.
or on Bookshop.org
Kindness that costs something
Older children already know perfectly well what kindness is. What is more use to them is a story where it is inconvenient and somebody does it anyway.
Hector is the school bully and the book is narrated by him, which takes a little getting used to. He starts by tormenting a homeless man in the park and finishes somewhere entirely different. Raúf never lets him off, and the change is slow enough to believe.
or on Bookshop.org
Two boys who each think the other has it easy, told in alternating chapters across a single school week. Ravi has just arrived from India and Joe has an auditory processing difficulty. Neither is kind to the other for most of the book, which is exactly why the ending lands.
or on Bookshop.org
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Something to do together
A page for noticing one kind thing done for you and one you did for someone else, and a family kindness challenge to try for a week. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
Children learn kindness mostly by watching, from how you speak to the person at the checkout, and from how you speak to them when they’ve made a mess of something. Stories add to it, but the household does the heavy lifting.
So notice their kind acts out loud rather than only their misbehaviour, and let them see you being kind when it’s inconvenient. And do include the kindness they show themselves, since a child who is gentle with their own mistakes has far more to spare for everybody else.
For you, the grown-up
There’s a companion page for grown-ups over on the main Book Quote Therapy library, with books for adults on kindness and self-compassion.
Read the grown-up version →These pages are written for the grown-ups looking after a child: parents, teachers and carers. A good book can sit beside a worried child, though it never stands in for a real conversation, or for proper support when something feels too big to carry alone.