Where can I find 'social story' exercises/materials?

Post Reply New Topic

I am unsure of the proper term for the type of material I am looking for. I am trying to assist an online friend whose child was recently diagnosed autistic. From my own neuropsychiatric evaluation I remember a session with 'social stories'. The psychologist read a very story that involved a social situation. Based on the information in the short story I then had to describe how one of the characters felt and why. Does this ring any bells?

I would be extremely grateful if anyone knows links to exercises similar to this or if you have materials you developed on your own. The child in question is eight years old and attends a regular public school. Theory of mind problems are her greatest struggle.

Many thanks!

Carol Gray's website http://www.thegraycenter.org/social-stories

http://www.bcasc.org/cms/files/10_1_Soc ... 141472.pdf

http://www.autism.org.uk/living-with-au ... story.aspx

These may help.

What you probably want is any of the Social Thinking materials by Michelle Garcia Winner. Check out her website: http://socialthinking.com/what-is-social-thinking Your friend can also look for "friends" or "social communication" classes for her child run by a speech therapist. Her curriculum is all about developing theory of mind, and for the elementary school age kids has a superhero theme where the villians are characters like "One-Sided Sid" who causes people to only talk about themselves.

The term "Social Stories" is more about a technique where an adult writes a story to read to the child that explains in detail things the child may not understand, or to help prep them for an upcoming event. My son's school often writes social stories for upcoming field trips, for example, and sends them home for us to review before the trip. This can be helpful for kids who have a lot of trouble with change or are very anxious. The classic book on this is: The New Social Story Book, Revised and Expanded 10th Anniversary Edition: Over 150 Social Stories that Teach Everyday Social Skills to Children with Autism or Asperger's Syndrome, and their Peers... by Carol Gray. Some story titles from the book are: Why Do I Need New Clothes?, Why Are Gifts Important?, and Using "Excuse Me" to Move Through a Crowd.

Thank you so much! These are terrific resources. It is very frustrating that there are almost no such materials (or any information for that matter) available in less spoken languages. However, the parent in question has a decent command of English so I hope these will still work for him to translate or use as a basis for developing his own.

Feel free to keep the links coming!

The Garcia-Winner material is the best I have found, but I have found that I have had to expand on the explanations. We have only done Social Detectives so my commentary may not apply to other things she has put out.

For example, The Social Detective book gives some good reinforcing information on how authority figures expect your "eyes, ears, body and brain" to be "in the group." However, it does not acknowledge that for some AU/AS people looking at someone can actually reduce real focus. So, I have told my son that the reason the book says this is because this is the expectation that most other people will have. Others will think he is not paying attention even when he is--and gave instructions about how to fake eye contact.

So, sometimes I think it could use more thorough explanations than it gives. It may be that the Superflex curriculum goes into that. I don't know. We have not invested in that curriculum, although I do have one of the comic books. I have not read it with my son, yet.

I really wish there was an actual psych book for AU/AS kids that explains how most NTs think and worded it in a way that was more clear about why a child on the spectrum may not intuitively get that. I was going to try to make my own PowerPoint but I have not been able to, yet.

I was thinking about how I would've responded to being put through such exercises as a child.

I suspect I'd have missed the point altogether, and viewed them as irritatingly dull fictional mysteries that bore no relation to everyday social situations. And I'd have been game about working them out during the sessions, but been uninterested in looking for, noticing, etc. these things irl.

Looking back, I'm astonished by how often I got told by teachers and others that I "had to" learn to do this or that. Had to learn to organize myself and manage my time. Had to learn to follow various social conventions, focus, pay attention to surroundings, etc. I ignored most of this stuff, but the kicker's that the grownups turned out to be wrong just about all the way down the line. And that's because even though it's true I was a tiny hot mess, they were knocking themselves out trying to get me ready for lives that they would've enjoyed. They assumed that that's what I'd want, and that was totally wrong. I think generally, too, when people say you "have to" do something, unless there's a legal requirement they're generally speaking out of a very limited point of view.

So I blew them off. To an astonishing degree I've been left alone to be myself and do what I want, and been able to make my living this way. I make it very plain up front to people I work with that I'm useless politically, and I avoid dressing for success, not just because it's uncomfortable but because I don't want to be mistaken for someone who's good to bring along to schmoozing luncheons. Or a future leader of anything. This happens all the time, meet some people, they decide I'm a wonderful catch to add to their marauding team, and it takes forever to disabuse them of the notion that I belong on *any* team. It still takes me forever to figure out what's going on around me, but -- well, here's the thing.

By ignoring everything else, and also by being bright/talented and focused on the things I'm interested in,, I've made myself useful doing a thing few people can do. It's accidental that it's marketable, but that doesn't matter. The point is that there are lots of people who're good with time management and chitchat and politicking, and they can do that part, and they more or less leave me alone to do my part.

I've done almost nothing right. Was not strategic about college applications, turned down plum opportunities, been involved with the wrong guys, I could go on. It hasn't mattered. I'm (to my own shock) better off financially than most of my college classmates, I have a wonderful daughter, I have a cv larded with prestige lines, and have accidentally wandered into dream job after dream job. It'd be nice if the dream jobs paid more money, but I get by.

I don't try to work out what people are thinking very often anymore. I don't guess at "social game" outcomes. For one, there are too many possible variations; for another, I'm not that interested; and finally it's simpler just to ask, if I am interested. Nor do I try to guess at whether my doing something is going to upset someone else when the situations are complex. Knowing that anything I do is likely to be unexpected (because I'm not after the same things most people are), I just tell other people ahead of time that my goals may overlap theirs, but aren't the same as theirs, and that I'll come off hella highhanded but not mean it at all. I broadcast what I'm doing and let others pick up and catch me if I'm about to f**k with their programs. What it means is that I'm not a good match for work and social situations where people aren't straightforward, or are too scared to be straightforward. Apart from that, though, I seem to be in good shape. I am (I think) generally friendly and positive at work, and that goes a long way. But it also comes from refusing to pay attention to and do all those many things people told me to do when I was a kid.