Jake Likes to Play Games

Social stories are stories that are designed to help children understand social expectations. They are often customized to address a situation that a child finds challenging. For more on social stories, see the model book Using Book Builder to Develop and Write Social Stories.

This book is a model of the way Book Builder can be used to write social stories. Book Builder provides an authoring environment that can enrich a basic social story by including coaches that help the reader notice the critical features of a social situation.

Learning to predict the thoughts and feelings of others develops in early childhood. Children (and adults) base their predictions on the context of the situation and the non-verbal cues of the people in the situation.

For some children, particularly those on the autism spectrum, learning to read context and non-verbal cues must be explicitly taught. A social story is a good way to do this.

Developing an understanding of emotion is a skill set that children develop over time. Research has indicated that children who are engaged in conversations about emotion come to understand their own emotions and the emotions of others.

On the next couple of pages, the author describes Jake's feelings when both winning and losing. The coaches prompt the reader to think about how his or her own feelings when happy or angry. You can use Book Builder to provide prompts for discussion with the child about emotions and the physical feelings that accompany them.

Discussing the physical feelings that accompany emotions can provide children with clues to help them label emotions. This can set the stage for  them to begin to recognize emotions and develop strategies for regulating emotions and accompanying behavior.

On this page the book builder coaches have been scripted to aid the reader in beginning to think about the physical feelings that accompany different emotions.

On this page, Jake has to consider how his friend feels. The coaches have been scripted to help the reader predict the feelings of Jake's friend.

Understanding that another person's thoughts and emotions differ from our own is a skill called theory of mind. Theory of mind develops in young children over time, however, children with autism spectrum disorders, in particular, have difficulty developing theory of mind. Social stories were developed to enlighten people with autism spectrum disorders about the actions and feelings of others.

On this page, the coaches focus on helping the reader make a prediction about Jake's feelings. Predicting is another skill that is difficult for people on the autism spectrum. The coaches can be authored to provide support for gaining this skill.

The coaches provide a prompt, a hint and a model. This is a framework that has been used to help children develop reading comprehension skills. The author has used the framework to support the development of a child's prediction skills.

On this page, the author models another strategy for solving a problem. The coaches help the reader to think about the problem. In addition, the author introduces the word "friendly" to mean being a good friend and making friends happy. Once the meaning is established with a child, this new vocabulary can be used when the same or similar situations arise in the future.

On this page, the author provides some ideas about actions that exemplify the new vocabulary word in order to begin to create a concept of what by it means to be "friendly."

The coaches again provide a prompt to think of other ways to be 'friendly,'  a hint and, finally, model of ways to be 'friendly.'

In a social story, it is important not to describe actions definitively. For example, rather than write: "Jake smiles at his friend," write: "Jake tries to smile at his friend." This subtle change reinforces the idea that the child can try to act in a way that meets the social expectation even if he or she is not always successful.

On this page, Jake smiles despite still feeling angry inside. The page introduces the concept that sometimes a person may choose to hide his or her true feelings. Although this concept is fairly advanced, research suggests that children benefit from being exposed to and included in conversations about emotion. 

On this page, the child is provided with a scripted response. While many people wonder if suggesting that a child use a script when he or she may not "mean" it, there is research suggesting that such scripts do provide a social marker that help children better understand how others feel in a given situation (Chen & Smith, 2009). 

The suggested script, provides a model for a strategy of action. Even though the child may need prompting when the problem arises, the social story provides the child with an explanation of the social expectations in advance increasing the liklihood of success in the heat of the moment.

Here the page provides the reader with another strategy to use. The coaches serve their now familiar role for the child. Using the coaches in a consistent manner, provide the child with the ability to call on a particular coach that suits his or her needs. Children with autism spectrum disorders respond particularly well to consistency of routine making this particularly helpful with this population.

On this page, the author reinforces the concept of being friendly. The coaches help the reader to guess how Jake feels by prompting him or her, providing a hint for where to look and providing a model prediction that Jake is happy.

Carol Gray developed the well-known format for social stories. According to Gray, there are 10 basic criteria for social stories. One of the 10 criteria is that the conclusion not only summarizes the information from the book, but it also reinforces the concepts covered.

On this page, the summary (when Jake is friendly his friend wants to play games with him) also serves to reinforce the "moral" of the story.