Social Stories.... Whatz your "gut" say about thi

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You are a brilliant adult and presumably were an early and sophisticated reader as a child. Same scenario for some other posters here. For a brilliant early reader who is devouring novels, these would be absurdly and insultingly simplified. But there are many autistic children who can't read at the level you were reading at as a child and need something this simplified. For the record, there are many NT children with the same lower level of reading skills who also need instructions at this level, just not about how to say "hi" to other kids.

My daughter's school uses these. She comes home with them in her backpack about once a week. I don't use them at home. She doesn't truly need them at school either but she uses them as a help to rehearse things that are going to happen. At home she sometimes uses them on her own as rehearsal too. They are appropriate for her and her classmates. They would not be appropriate for you as a child or for many of the early readers here who could pick up social stories from novels which spell out social situations in sophisticated detail. But just because they wouldn't have been appropriate for you doesn't mean they are appropriate for nobody.

Yes, that's French child education for you...

Thanks for this perspective. I am working through some stuff and trying to language a wall I keep running into. This helps...

I remember watching a movie at school about a girl who was so lonely she died of a broken heart while getting off the schoolbus. It was during a cooking class in the seventh grade. I thought it was a confusing video and it freaked me out that someone could actually die from lonliness. Didn't change the mentality of the kids in the class though.

Is there something wrong with me or is the one "Riding The Bus To School" completely confusing?

I would be willing to bet that 80% of people clicked that one first....

Jokes aside, I cant opine because it wouldnt open for me, it just said I had to download into a zip file or something....

Ok, just opened the Fire alarm one.

If I had read that as a kid I would have been so irritated by it I would have probably gone and set the fire alarm off at school on purpose, just to defy the story.

Though most fire alarms have glass on them anyway so I dont see the point of that story at all.....

Toddlers? I'd probably struggle to follow them when I was five. I think the rest of my class would have been given such lessons. Year 1 and 2 may have been too old for it.

I don't think of it as dumbing down. We'd be given that kind of stuff in the early 90's.

The bus one was interesting because an autistic child might be confused when asked to walk all the way to the bus and listen to teachers. I'd probably not be able to do the two together.

edit: that read aloud one gave me flash backs. We were always told not to touch other kids and basically shut the hell up while the story was read.

Dude , I'm French and, no it's not......

I work with preschoolers, and I can think of plenty of kids I know who could definitely benefit from those stories. The vast majority of these children are actually not ASD, though some of them do have the "preschool student with a disability" label. The majority of children in the 3-5 age range respond best to simple repetitive language. Where I work in particular, many of the children have language delays, and/ or limited English proficiency. If you throw too many words their way, you lose them. Kids that age generally don't just tune out in those situations, they act out. The simple language is perfect for that population.
Those stories may seem overly simple, and they aren't appropriate for everyone. However, they are appropriate for many young children, and they serve a useful purpose.

Oh my goodness. I do think that these are degrading. Social stories certainly have a well established place in helping people with autism. But not like this. There are plenty of websites that offer (far less degrading) versions of the same situations.

I couldn't open the ones from the link either -- what program generates a .bm extension?

I wonder exactly what social stories are being used at school for my kindergartener. The resource teacher copied a bunch for me that were just atrocious -- I can't imagine them being read in anything other than a sing-song voice. Maybe they'd be ok if DS were reading them, but his reading skill hasn't reached that level yet. Here's an example (each line is accompanied by 2-3 line drawings):

Several of the stories are word for word copies, just substituting "biting", "hitting", "pulling hair", etc.

The ones in Gray's New Social Story book are better, but I'm still bothered by how they are written in first person. (I will this and I will try to that.)

Did anyone here have social stories read to them when they were in elementary school? What did you think at the time?

I respectfully retract my statement.

This is the pinnacle of patronization.