Social Stories

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I was wondering how many of you use social stories for your kids and how successful they are to you? We use them all the time as my husband travels a lot and when I went to the hospital for surgery....stuff like that. It is really helpful to my 5 year old Autie and she really likes it if we put lots of pictures in it of her. My older daughter gets really creative with them and makes them into little books and laminates them. My daughter has us read them over and over to her until she reads along with us, they are very comforting. I had one therapist who helped older kids by letting them write their own stories about things that they were having difficulty with. My son, who is seven, likes to draw his stories and then have me write the words.

My son really dislikes them. What he likes are schedules. Why one and not the other, I have no idea. He dislikes anything that makes him feel like he's being treated like a little kid, so perhaps he associates them with that.

For special situations, we write a list of rules and expectations and that is pretty successful.

He is (was?) hyperlexic and has always been very responsive to written words, though he likes illustrations too. His latest interest is comic books, in fact.

My kiddo is 5 and loves them. He likes knowing the clear expectations through stories. I write really funny or silly ones that get the point across too. When he is having a hard time grasping a concept in the moment, we can talk about characters from our stories and remember how they handled the problems. They have been invaluable to us.

How old was your daughter when you started using social stories? My little girl is 3, verbal but quite delayed.

I think the first one we did was when she was around three. My husband had to go to France....at that time she didnt have many words either or request but I would read the story to her several times a day and it seemed to calm her. She will now ask that you read her the stories and she enjoys counting down the days to when he comes home. She is a bit obsessed with numbers and always knows what day it is.
They still use a schedule for her at school but we dont use one at home anymore. If anything changes in our schedule we do a social story or we give both my kids fair warning. My older son also shows little interest in social stories but he does like to draw the pictures.
We will be moving there in August so I will probably go back to using a schedule for awhile to get them accustomed to all the changes.

I use short verbal social stories sometimes.

We were walking past a vehicular accident scene. Their was an injured man on the grassy area beside the sidewalk being tended by medics. We had no choice but to walk past.

I stopped my son and explained this way:

"There has been an accident and someone is badly hurt. Their are ambulance attendants helping him. We will walk by silently and respect that man's privacy. After we have walked by, we will talk about what we saw."

My 5 year old seemed to understand this and we walked past, He was quiet and didn't point or ask questions. As promised I spoke about what was happening and what we saw.

Also, when we go to a restaurant or amusement park or ??, I talk about what is going to happen and suggest the best behaviour. It seems to keep him on track.

I guess this is not a formal "social story" but having these little "heads up" seems to work with my kid.

We used them a lot when my sons were little and found them very helpful. We didn't know anything about Carol Gray or autism, just that making "books" of upcoming events or new routines seemed to really help (and was fun!).

My sons are now 10 and also sensitive to anything being "babyish" and would not enjoy or benefit from them now. (we know this for sure because the OT recently suggested a graphic novel style social story using their fav Star Wars characters, and my sons thought it was ridiculous and annoying)

When our son was 4 we used the Wonder images, but now we use the Sclera pictures which are also used for adults and are not childish at all.
The Arasaac and Mulberry symbols that i have added to Picto Selector are in between them. Some will find them childish because they use colors i think.