BARRY NEIL KAUFMAN is the author of twelve books on The Option Process® and The Son-Rise Program®, including the best-selling Happiness Is A Choice, a blueprint of simple, concrete methods to empower the decision to be happy. He also wrote the iconic Son-Rise: The Miracle Continues, as well as To Love Is To Be Happy With, Giant Steps, PowerDialogues, A Miracle to Believe In, A Sacred Dying, FutureSight and Out-Smarting Your Karma. Mr. Kaufman’s books are available in 22 languages, in over 60 countries. He has twice won the Christopher Award for his writing. He has also won the Humanitas Prize, along with his wife, Samahria Lyte Kaufman, for their screenplay of the award winning NBC-TV movie, Son-Rise: A Miracle of Love.
Mr. Kaufman, along with his wife, is the co-founder, co-director and co-creator of The Option Institute® International Learning & Training Center in Sheffield, Massachusetts, a nonprofit educational organization and worldwide teaching center for The Option Process. The Institute offers empowering personal growth E-Learning Training Courses and counseling services for individuals, couples, families and groups, using life-changing experiential learning techniques designed to greatly improve areas of self-empowerment, relationships, career, health… and all aspects of quality of life.
The Kaufmans are also the originators of The Son-Rise Program®, which is taught at the Autism Treatment Center of America™, a division of the Option Institute®. The Son-Rise Program methodology evolved when their son, Raun, was diagnosed with having a severe and incurable case of Autism. Refusing to give up on their son’s future, Bears and Samahria worked with Raun for over 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for more than three years, resulting in his full recovery from Autism. Raun went on to graduate from an Ivy League university and to become the director of an educational center for school-aged children. Later, Raun was the Director of Global Education and the CEO of The Option Institute for a period of time. Son-Rise: The Miracle Continues, the story of the Kaufmans’ work with Raun, became a bestselling book and the award-winning NBC TV movie based on this book was viewed worldwide.
The Autism Treatment Center of America also offers E-Learning Training Courses in The Son-Rise Program methodology for parents, professionals and caregivers of children and adults on the autism spectrum and with other developmental challenges, as well as consultation and counselling sessions. The Son-Rise Program was awarded “Best Autism Therapy” at The National AutismOne Conference. Over the past 40 years, more than 45,000 individuals, families and children from over 140 different countries have attended programs presented by The Option Institute and The Autism treatment Center of America.
In addition to raising their three biological children, they chose to adopt three more children from circumstances of trauma, as a way to express their gratitude for what they had learned in their journey with Raun. One of their adopted sons had been seriously malnourished, resulting in physiological, motor and other challenges. Bears and Samahria worked with him and he thrived, demonstrating a keen mind and a wonderful ability to learn. Another son, whose mother had died and who had his throat slit by his birth father, found support, guidance and love in the expanding Kaufman family. Their adoption of an eleven-year-old girl from El Salvador, also a trauma survivor, completed their immediate family. The Kaufmans have passed this tradition on to their own children, some of who have adopted children from similar situations, further expanding their multi-racial, multi-cultural family.
www.option.org
www.autismtreatmentcenter.org
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