Social Stories - what level of language does a kid need to use them?

[TotalChaos]

DS, 4.8, is about a year or so behind with language. Would there be any benefit to getting one of Carol Gray's books? Or are they more suitable for older children? I feel he would respond better to a story with visuals than to me trying to "reason" with him.

Ds2 used a social story for toilet training when he was about 4yrs old. It had simple sentences and a picture/symbol on each page.

I don't know exactly how far behind his understanding of language is but his CELF test results were well below average.

The SALT wrote it so I don't have the Carol Gray books but he seemed to understand it. It's worth a try I think.

Make sure there are plenty of simply accessible pictures with the social story and stick to the formula:

Statement: I am ..... and I live ....

Issue: Sometimes ...... and I .... this makes (mummy) cross. Mummy does not like it when .....

resolution: When (x happens) I will try my best to (do y). Then Mummy will be pleased.

Never coerce or force - but you know that, and don't promise 100% outcomes - but you know that! Good luck. Remember the visual.

Thanks ladies, that's useful to know. I'm completely duff at creative stuff, so don't feel up to concocting my own stories.

HI TC, MiniNova is the same age (april 04) and I have been trying to find some social stories etc on the net to try and aid his understanding (way behind in comprehension.) I was trying to find one about biting. I found these, you coud print the pictures out and make you own, adpat etc

loads of sample stories if you are lacking inspiration

need I say more, this is fab

I've got this book
(Am a salt.)
It's great and very readable.
I've lent it to a few parents who have liked it.

I'm very into being quite specific about what is and isn't 'on'.

Peaople with comm. disorders need clear unambiguous direction and it;s often best to err on side of caution.
MY ABA training has taught me that too many salts are airy fairy and hippy dippy with intervention.

these links are fantastic, novacane! thank you!

Thanks Moondog and Novacane, will check out those links in a mo.

Moondog - that link doesn't work - when you link to winslow it tends to just give you the front page - what's the book title. I agree about direction - DS is (famous last words eh...) good at dealing with systematic rules, it makes sense to him.

Er, I still use them now so I think they're useful for some people at any age.

It's like the big situation we've just had over a certain thread on mumsnet that I will not mention (in case I hide under the desk), where the only way I could reason it through was to draw a picture of lots of people and then tick only a few people who were saying distressing things. That way I could see that there were a lot of people who weren't saying rude things. Otherwise I'd have panicked myself into a complete shutdown. (We're very good at Catastrophic Thinking ) The knack at my age is to find a quiet corner to do that in, so other people don't realise I'm using it as a coping strategy (takes some explaining!)

Trouble is, I need to keep using it, because my brain loses the 'common sense' to tell me that I've already panicked over something until I've reminded it a few times. It's why really stressful situations take so much out of us when compared to other people who can just rationalise it and switch it off.

In some ways I think of mumsnet as being a bit set of verbal social stories - if x happens then y appears to be the acceptable response (wedding invites/presents etc).

Thanks very much for your input Amber, it's as ever very useful hearing how you "see" things. Do you see the catastrophic thinking etc as part and parcel of the AS, or as part of a comorbid anxiety problem?

that's such a good idea for putting a stressful situation into perspective, amber.

When I did the NAS course on social stories, I was taught that they can take many forms but they're essentially for one purpose, to inform and reassure. You learn to write them based on the individual's needs and abilities, but you can do them very simply with just pictures, or with lots of detail for children who like to see a lot going on. My ds likes his social stories full of clutter, which would horrify most children with ASDs, but it's what works for him.

I was given the example of a hospital appointment letter being a form of social story. It gives you all the information you need to manage the appointment - date and time, how long you'll be there, transport links, who you'll see, a map and anything you might need to bring with you. There might be a phone number for further info if you need it. Having that information helps us to cope with the event, which is what a social story sets out to do. Some of it, like the map, is visual because that is easier to understand than written directions.

Anything that you can present visually could be a form of social story. I like Amber's illustration of identifying who's saying rude things so she can see that not everyone is doing it. It reminds me of Tony Attwood's Scales Of Justice which we use a lot to understand shared blame. Visual thinking becomes a way of life after a while, I think.

"Do you see the catastrophic thinking etc as part and parcel of the AS, or as part of a comorbid anxiety problem? "

The anxiety is part of the AS, so I'd say it's impossible to split the two.

Because our brains don't have a 'filing clerk' to stare into the filing cabinet for "things that aren't actually an emergency at all", we don't know how serious something might be. We just know it Might Be Very Scary.

And because we can often only visualise one person at a time in our brains, we can't reason that there's lots of people who can help us - we just get fixated on the problem, the rude person, the thing that isn't right. With no fast wiring connecting the bits, there's just no way to switch off the amygdala bit of the brain, so it keeps panicking.

(The amygdala is an ancient bit of the brain whose job is to spot angry faces or scary situations and decide how long to panic for. So something truly scary happens or if an angry face comes into view, we can't find out how serious it is. So... the amygdala presses the Big Red Panic Button and just keeps pressing it until someone, somewhere, gets the info across to it to say "no, it's not that serious, just calm down".)

Social stories do that. So do other visual things that show a scale of how serious it is. But it has to be accurate, or we lose confidence in the stories/symbols. If you say "oh it's fine" and it isn't, that's even scarier.

Wrapping ourselves in something very enclosing is a quick way to switch off the panic button too. Using words to calm us down is more tricky, because if our brains are using our eyes to look for the danger, they won't use our ears properly at the same time.

streakybacon - thanks for the explanation. In particular I think the hospital letter analogy is a very good one - food for thought.

amber - thanks for you taking the trouble to answer. Partly I was asking because I definitely have OCD, and may or may not have Aspergers, and a lot of what you were saying about catastrophic thinking etc rings a bell with how I've felt at times. But I suppose that it can be like a Venn diagram where certain symptoms of say OCD/anxiety overlap with Aspergers.

Is it the amygdala that's responsible for the fight or flight response then?

Yup, as I understand it, the amygdala certainly does tell the rest of the brain and body to run/fight/get frightened silly/shut down into a state of non-response and hope it all goes away.

ASD is a 'cluster condition'. There's lots that look like OCD, lots that looks like dyspraxia, lots that looks like Sensory Processing Disorder, lots that looks like an anxiety disorder, etc. Just depends which bits get the best wiring. Most women are misdiagnosed as having one of the other things because often we handle social things with more desperation to get it right than men do, so we look like we're coping with eye contact and being smiley and polite (when we haven't a clue why we're having to do this artificial stuff really) and people think "smiling - making eye contact - definitely not an ASD".

These links look good. I'm beginning to think that DD could use some social stories. We still tend to draw pictures to help her understand thing but I'm trying to verbalise a bit more too.
Moondog - slightly off topic - we bought one of those family planners you were recommending and it's going down a treat! However, it's challenging my drawing skills sometimes as I have to draw things we've done during the day so DD can remember! She's also started singing a little song with days of the week (funny how they all put things to music) and has started counting to 31 all the time, so I think they must be doing this at school too!

Amber, I'm struck by what you say about words not necessarily calming you down during panic, because DD certainly responds VERY BADLY to me trying to talk to her when she's in meltdown!

Brioche,

Yup. Don't use words if possible. It's like pouring water on an electrical fire. In theory it should work, but all it does is spread the electricity wiring overload even further into our brains and it hurts. (Hurts is the wrong word, but there isn't a word in the English language that describes it).

Get them to somewhere really calm and low noise, see if they can be wrapped in something - a coat, a thick warm jumper, a blanket...or in a corner where there's walls to press against. Put something calming within reach - a favourite toy, book, whatever. Let them panic safely (which often looks like aggression but it's more desperate attempts to get away from the pain). Then use quiet visual stuff to explain what happened, and what they can try next time to help themselves to cope. And see if there's something that was said or done that needs to be done differently for them next time?

Writing and developing social stories
Caroline Smith

It always jumps to homepage on that site.Most odd.....

Put 'social stories' into search bit and it will come up.

thanks for the book info.