Social stories were oringially developed for use with people with Autism, in order to share information about social skills.
However social stories can be used with a range of people to help them understand social situations.
During the start of a new school term, we find oursleves supporting many parents and teaching staff in trying to understand the social behviours of children. We often engage in writing social stories to help alleivate the presenting difficutly of the child
Typical topics are;
- Understanding classroom rules
- Understanding why we we form a queue
- Understanding why we take turns
- Understanding why we don’t kick or hurt others
- Understanding why we are at school
- Understandig how to use the toilet
- Understanding bedtime rules
- understanding good sitting and listening skills
Social Understanding approaches assume to teach ‘appropriate social responses’ by describing a situation and not telling people what to do. Therefore these stories are carefully written to help teach children an appropriate social response, rather than directly telling them how to change their behaviour.
People with autism have difficulties picking up clues from their environment and from others around them and they also have difficulties with ‘Theory of mind’ – seeing something from another’s point of view. Therefore children need to be taught what appropriate social responses are.
Many parents describe teaching staff, as becoming frustrated by their child’s presenting behaviours, indicating that it is not an acceptable behaviour they will accept in the classroom. By working with teaching staff and training them to write social stories, we can support parents and teachers working together to tackle problem behaviour.
After a few short hours with a speech and language therapist, parents can become astute in writing their own social stories, which are always personalised to the child. Educational Psychologists and Autism Outreach Teachers can also offer parents and teaching staff support with social stories.
If you are just beginning to understand what social stories look like, the following books might help further support your understanding and provide you with some pre-written templates which you can personalise.
Finally a recent review appeared in the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapy bulletin about a book to help support parents and professionals to help children understand social routines. The book most definitely requires parents and teaching staff to personalise these routines to the child using photos of their own routines and appropriate wording for such routines.
