About three years ago, or even longer, I spoke to Faye, our Kent team lead and a clinical psychologist, about writing a book to help children understand and manage their emotions. This is when Bot-bot the Robot was born, and we drafted a storyline which followed Bot-bot from his birth to his brand new experiences of the world and of his accompanying emotions, with Mummy and Daddy Bot-bot on hand to explain to him what those emotions meant.

I was on a family holiday in Canada about 2 years ago, and told a cousin about Bot-bot and I read the story to her young sons. They seemed to enjoy it, and so, too, did my family member, who is a play therapist. Some time after the holiday, she contacted me to say that one of her children had drawn a picture of Bot-bot to be able to visualise him. This made her think that the idea really had some legs, and so, after she had made a few phone calls to people she knows, she emailed me to say that the charity she works for wanted to commission an illustrated version of the Bot-bot book in order to sell it to generate money for their charitable purposes! So, we needed an illustrator…and, like a deus ex machina, Colette, one of our Oxfordshire SLTs, told me that her daughter, Annie, had the skills and technical know-how to do this! A lot of conversations and far too many drafts later and ‘Bot-bot the Robot finds his feelings’ was finished.

However, Bot-bot was not finished! The great thing about him is that he can be put in any and every situation so that children can learn about his adventures – and about themselves – in a fun and engaging way. As such, with our Berkshire autism and behaviour specialist, Leslie-Ann, a second Bot-bot book was written (‘Coronavirus Confusion’) and, again, illustrated by Annie.

Both books are now available on Amazon for download on Kindle and in paperback form. If you know any children that you think might enjoy and benefit from Bot-bot, please do share these links with them, especially if they are working on the Zones of Regulation programme or are experiencing anxiety as a result of the pandemic:

Book 1 – https://cutt.ly/ZfxzpFH

Book 2 – https://cutt.ly/9fxzfJu