Building Social Skills using Social Stories-Part 2

Written by Christie Cacioppo M.A., BCBA

In Part 2 of the Building Social Skills Blog, we are going to talk about how to make social stories more effective.  If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, you might want to read it first here on Patch.com so you know a little bit about what a social story is and how to create one before you read about how to make it effective.  If you have read Part 1 already, welcome back.  To recap, social stories are stories that take a situation and put it in a way that can be easily understood by the reader.  They can cover all aspects of the situation as well as what to do and what not to do in the situation.  Social stories can be used for a variety of situations.  Some examples include:  riding in an airplane, dealing with emotions, and appropriate interactions with others.  There are certain criterions that need to be met before deciding if a social story is the right method for teaching.  Social stories need to incorporate certain components to be effective during teaching. 

In order for a social story to be effective, some teaching is involved.  Here are the steps involved to teach the situation using a social story. 

• Step 1-Read the story: The child can read the story to themselves, read it aloud, or you can read it to them.  If the child has reading comprehension skills, then they can read it themselves, but if they don’t you might want to read it to them.  It is best that this is a positive experience for the child, so if your child dislikes reading aloud you may want to read it to them.

• Step 2-Ask questions:  Ask the child questions about the story.  You can either ask them questions as you read each page about what was just read or you can ask them about the story at the end.   The more specific the questions, the more they are going to learn from the story and, hopefully, translate to the real-life situation when (or if) it happens.  Make sure that you ask questions with correct and incorrect answers.

• Step 3-Role Play: Act out the situation.  Start by being the child and the child being the adult, so that you can demonstrate the skills to your child.  Then, switch roles and allow the child to be themselves in the situation (more information about role plays below).

• Step 4-Feedback:  If they are having some difficulty with the role plays, that is ok.  Let them know that they are doing a good job trying.  Allow them to read the part of the social story where they are getting stuck as a reference and then continue to role play until they are able to engage in the appropriate behavior.

 All of these teaching steps are required to make a social story effective.  However, role playing is one of the most important aspects of social stories.  Role plays help bring the story to life.  You can’t just read the story to them or have them read it and expect them to change their behaviors.  The child has to practice the situation.  The more they practice, the better they are going to be when they face the situation in the real world.  It is like the saying goes, practice make perfect.  If the child does not have the opportunity to practice the skills that they are reading then they are less likely to exhibit them in real life situations (Thiemann & Goldstein, 2001). 

The role plays can be done when the whole story has been read.  They can also be done throughout the story so that the portion of the role play that is being acted out is relevant directly to the page being read.  Sometimes it is better to do it as you go.  There are a few things to keep in mind when acting out the role.

• In the beginning, you may want to act it out for the child to give them an example of what the response should look like.  Have them pretend to be the adult and the adult pretend to be the child.  Make sure that you are not only demonstrating what to do in the situation but also what not to do.  If they are only shown what do to then, when something is different, they might not know what to do.

• Next, they should be given the opportunity to engage in the response themselves.  This allows them to take what they read and what was demonstrated to them and apply it to what they would and would not do.  When you are the adult again, it helps if you give them the opportunities to exhibit both correct and incorrect behaviors so that they can tell the difference.  It is also good to talk about what the natural consequences of incorrect behavior might be in that situation.

• If the child engages in the incorrect behavior, make sure to give them feedback.  Give them praise for trying and let them know what was wrong and what the correct behavior should be.  Then let them try again.  When they get it right, provide lots of praise so they know that they did it right.

• Try to keep the role play as relevant to the social story as possible that way the child can make the connection between the social story and a real life setting.

Using other adults or peers is also a good way to help the skills they learn in the social story generalize to their natural setting.  Remember, your child is not always going to be at your side.  Sometimes they are at school, with their friend’s family or in another situation and around other children or other adults.  If they are not able to perform the skills that you are teaching them with others then the social story is going to be ineffective. 

To conclude, social stories can be an effective tool for teaching skills that might be difficult to teach, skills that the child does not have as many opportunities to engage in, or if it is unethical to repeatedly expose them to the situation in order to teach them what to do and what not to do.  Make sure to incorporate important aspects when writing it and practice the situation either while reading it or when the story has been read.

Have you had success with social stories in the past with your child?  If so, please leave your experience below. 

*Thiemann, K. S., & Goldstein, H. (2001). Social stories, written text cues, and video feedback: effects on social communication of children with autism. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 34, 425-446.