Ep. 80 Neurodiversity Affirming Social Stories
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What are social stories and how were they originally created?
What's up, everyone? And welcome to Making the Shift for Autistic Kids.
We're an SLP couple from California with four boys.
And we're here every week to bring you neuro-affirming tips, tricks, and tools. Are you ready to make the shift? Let's do it!
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Making the Shift. Today, we are talking about social stories. We hear about social stories so often. I see them posted all the time in Facebook groups, people looking for social stories for their autistic clients or children. And I thought that would be a great topic for us to talk about. So we are going to be talking about social stories, what they are, are they neurodiversity-affirming stories? How can they be neurodiversity affirming? We're going to talk about things that reasons why they are great. We are going to be talking about things that we might accidentally do when we are creating them that are bad or harmful for our kids. And then we are going to write one together and we're going to break that down and talk about it.
So if you're not familiar with the concept of social stories, it's essentially a story, a book, or it could be, you know, a visual sequence of pictures. They were created by Carol Gray in 1990, and the purpose is to help kids through different situations. So helping them know what to expect when they are going into a new situation. They're very often used now for kids who, you know, might be nervous about new situations or for kids who might have challenging behaviors in certain situations. So we're going to get into some of the nuances there. But I think it's important to say that they were created to be positive, okay? I think it's important to say that they were not created to be used or in a way that's going to be hurtful for kids or misused in a way that might be harmful in any way, right?
So they're well-intentioned and now it's our job to make them neurodiversity affirming because I will tell you, there are a lot out there that are not. So the question of are social stories neurodiversity affirming to use, the answer is it completely depends. It depends on how they're written. It depends on how they're used. And we're going to be breaking that down today.
Why can neuro‑affirming social stories be beneficial for autistic children?
So first of all, I want to talk about why they're good. Why do people use them? There are a lot of autistic people in the autistic community who support the use of them in ways that are supportive. So why are they good or in what ways can they be good? One is just helping a child know what to expect. And this can be tough because we're constantly putting our kids in situations that they've never been in as they grow up and they go to new environments and they experience new things. And therefore, it can be very helpful for people to know what's to be expected. And some people need this more than others. I mean, adults, like I could tell Chris, hey, we're going to go to a party tonight and I'll pick you up at eight.
I'll meet you at the house and we'll leave. And he'll be like, okay, cool. If he said that to me, I would be like, who's going? Is there food there? What should I wear? What, how many people do you know? Like I would have a million questions, right? So I think a lot of this is also just dependent on personality. How much does this person, is it in them to want to know what to expect coming up? And of course we all have individual differences there and totally depends. The other great thing about social stories is that they're typically visual. So usually I have pictures. I have this one I used in a social post, which is me drawing, which I probably have done this in the past, but I probably never do this now that...
Canva is so easy to go throw things on there and get beautiful pictures. So a lot of our neurodivergent kids are visual learners. So just to have the visual and a way to tell the story in a way that is visual can be really great. Okay, they can also be really great for validating the feelings that a child might have and addressing the feelings or, you know, hesitations a child might have about an upcoming event.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What are social stories and how were they originally created?
0:08–2:50
2
Why can neuro‑affirming social stories be beneficial for autistic children?
2:50–6:06
3
What common mistakes make social stories harmful or non‑affirming?
6:06–9:55
4
How should social stories respect a child’s feelings and bodily sensations?
9:55–15:11
5
Why must social stories preserve a child’s agency and avoid prescribing behavior?
15:11–16:47
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The NeuroAffirm Podcast
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Ep. 124 Building Rapport Isn’t Enough...How Therapists Become Part of the Intervention
Ep. 123 Not Seeing Progress in Speech Therapy? Start Here.
Ep. 122 Screen Time Considerations for Autistic Kids
Ep. 121 The Biggest Sensory Mistakes SLPs Make
Ep. 120 Why Anxiety is So Common in Autism (And What Actually Helps)