The team at Special Needs Book Review was happy to receive copies of the wonderful children’s book, My Big Brother Bobby: A Story to Help Kids Understand Angry Feelings and Behaviors in Others by Rebecca Dauer with illustrations by Annie Zimanski. Congratulations to Ms. Dauer for self publishing her children’s book about a little girl with a big imagination who teaches other children how to understand angry feelings and behaviors in others.

The last pages of this beautiful picture book are great conversation starters for parents and teachers to share with their young children. There is a page with seven questions to discuss, one page of strategies to help a child calm-down when they get upset or really scared, and one page to prompt discussions about feelings.

Ms. Dauer has information about The Sibling Support Project that is a national effort dedicated to the life-long concerns of brothers and sisters of people who have special health, developmental, or mental health concerns.

Also on the last pages of Ms. Dauer’s book, I learned the mission of the Sibling Leadership Network is to provide siblings of individuals with disabilities the information, support and tools to advocate with their brothers and sisters and to promote the issues important to them and their entire families.

- See more at: http://www.specialneedsbookreview.com/2014/05/27/big-brother-bobby-understand-angry-feelings-behaviors-others/#sthash.uROHy5vc.dpuf

Two teenage boys wowed the Britain's Got Talent judges with their rendition of Faith Evans and Twista's "Hope," changing the rap verses to reflect their feelings about bullying.

The duo — Bars and Melody — delivered an emotional performance that brought audience members to their feet and tears to some of their eyes. The video from last week's show has since gone viral, attracting nearly 8 million views.

"I like the fact that they wrote their own song based on life experiences," judge Simon Cowell told ITV on the network's website after the audition. "People are going to root for them and they've got this great friendship that is so obvious when you watch them together.

But the good news doesn't stop there. It appears Bars and Melody has influenced bullies to apologize to their victims or stop their bullying altogether! To Read more please click on the link below: 

http://mashable.com/2014/05/14/britains-got-talent-viral-bars-melody-bullying-song/

Twin sisters Chloe and Claire Gruenke might have come in last place in their recent track race, but they deserve a medal anyway for the inspiring way they made it across the finish line. 

The 13-year-old girls, both eighth-graders from Trenton, Illinois, were competing in the 800-meter race at the Southern Illinois State track meet on May 10, when Chloe took a tumble, according to KTVI, a local news affiliate in nearby St. Louis. “I felt something pull and pop in my thigh and then around the first curve on the second lap it just hurt too bad and I couldn’t go anymore so I just fell to the ground,” she explained in an interview with the station. But she didn’t stay there long. Instead, Claire pulled her sister on to her back and carried the injured twin for the remaining 370 meters all the way to the finish line.


Twins have a special bond, of course, but Claire simply says her motivation for the move was “love and sportsmanship.” Piggybacking a human of equal size and weight isn’t easy, but she credits the roaring crowd for the surge of energy she got.

Of those supporters cheering in the crowd was the girls' father, Doug Gruenke. He tells Yahoo Shine that he knew that Claire wouldn’t leave her sister, and her actions didn’t surprise him, but he didn’t know if she would be able to carry Chloe the whole lap around the track to the finish line.

Coree Waltering, one of the twins’ coaches at Wesclin Junior High School, calls the good deed a “happy coach moment.” Another coach, Ted Crail, is thankful he happened to be wearing sunglasses because there were definitely tears in his eyes.

To Read more click here: https://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/twin-carries-injured-sister-across-the-finish-line-160401450.html_

Mindfulness is Buddhist practice adapted to mental health purposes. The essence of mindfulness practice is focusing on one thing in the moment–each breath you take, each step as you walk, the sights or sounds around you.

Elisha Goldstein, PhD writes about and teaches mindfulness, particularly an approach called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), captured in his recently published A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, co-authored with Bob Stahl. He talked to me via email about what Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is and how it helps:

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is a formal eight-week program with a daylong intensive that was created by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979 and has now been adapted to a workbook format to support people in doing this work. This program is in over 250 hospitals around the country and many more around the world supporting people with stress, anxiety, depression, chronic pain, alleviating stress related to medical conditions and much more.

To read more click here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/crisis-knocks/201003/mindfulness-based-stress-reduction-what-it-is-how-it-helps