When my youngest was heading into kindergarten, I searched and searched for social stories that could help him prepare. He get anxious and worried so I wanted him to know what to expect. I also wanted to feel better about sending him into the unknowns as well. Some of the videos I found worked well and some didn’t. Some just made him more anxious.
In. my role as service provider to high school students, I wanted to try social stories with them. I know that sounds odd, but I was preparing one of my students with autism for a job interview. I found nothing that was already made that fit the true social stories framework. I decided to revisit the concept of social stories in general and see if the research on their effectiveness had changed.
The research reveled essentially what I thought so I decided to create my own versions for students heading into school for the first time or those who are switching schools. Before you use the back-to-school series with your own kid, I want to tell you the truth about this tool. Including the parts that are less flattering than what you’ll read on most parenting sites.
Where social stories came from
Carol Gray, a consultant working with students with autism in Michigan public schools, developed the concept of social stories. The foundation of the formal description of social stories in 1993 stated that what appears like misbehavior is actually a information issue (Gray & Garand, 1993). It wasn’t a choice to behave in a way adults or others would find negative, but it was a misunderstanding of what is happening, who will be there, what is expected, or how it ends. Essentially, meltdowns happen because a child doesn’t understand the context of a situation clearly.
Gray felt that if a child could understand the context- the who, what, when, and where of a social situation, they would behave within the confines of social norms. It isn’t about CORRECTING behavior. The focus is on understanding the situation. Gray developed a very specific format for social stories. A social story must
be in the first person
be in the present tense
be mostly descriptive sentences
The story describes the world. It does not issue instructions.
What the research actually found
Unfortunately, while Gray has some really great ideas, social stories are not a miracle intervention.
A meta-analysis was released in 2010 by Kokina and Kern (2010) that concluded that social stories’ effectiveness were low to questionable. I’m not going to bury the lead here. I admittedly was disappointed to read that because I so wanted social stories to be an answer.
BUT……the same analysis did find that social stories were more effective at reducing challenging behavior than teaching new social skills (Kokina & Kern, 2010). I read that as a win. Frankely, as a parent who has experienced meltdowns in the grocery store, any reduction is good news.
Another point to consider is that explicit teaching of specific social skills can be really stressful and less than effective. I worked with a student who had a goal of learning the back and forth nature of a conversation. We would spend time going to different people in the school and practicing. It was awkward and uncomfortable for everyone. I eventually had him analyze dialogue from scripts.
Two other studies drew similar conclusions. Karkhaneh et al. (2010) found limited evidence for social interaction improvement with social stories. Qi et al. (2018), a literature review, showed that the promise of social stories is there, but the studied have been too small to really draw conclusions.
The National Clearinghouse on Autism Evidence and Practice, the special ed teacher’s super suite of information, felt that including social narratives as a practice is supported enough to be an evidence-based strategy(Steinbrenner et al., 2020). As an educator, I would take that as the green light to use social stories in my own practice.
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Choosing The Right Social Story
So since we’ve decided that using them doesn’t cause harm and can sometimes improve things, now we have to talk about that structure that Gray developed. There is a difference between “social stories” with a lowercase s and Social Stories, the formated using Gray’s system. Most published studies used “social stories” which are narratives that don’t follow the structure. These versions are stories about situations, written by well-meaning adults that often use directive sentences telling children exactly what to do.
One of the more important parts of special education is the emphasis of fidelity as a variable. It is the first thing asked in an high- conflict IEP meeting. Let’s take a look at the things to consider when thinking about using social stories with a child.
Who social stories are for
Research on social stories is almost entirely related to children with autism. I personally just don’t think that this intervention is something only for children with autism. I wanted to use them for my own kiddo who was anxious about kindergarten.
A social story is likely to help a child who:
Is anxious about a specific, upcoming, predictable event. The bus. The cafeteria. The first day at a new school. Riding in an airplane. We often use stories about being brave, but that doesn’t really address the underlying anxiety. The unknown is what is creating the anxiety.
Does better with information than with reassurance. Telling my kid “don’t worry” or “you’ll be fine.” does nothing.
Needs to rehearse before performing. Plenty of kids cannot process a new environment and behave well in it simultaneously. Front-loading the environment frees up the brain’s ability to self-regulate.
Has language comprehension ahead of emotional regulation. This is very common in gifted and twice-exceptional kids. It is part of the reason many gifted individuals have a side of anxiety along with it. They can express themselves through language, but that doesn't’ mean they are emotionally regulated.
There is some research on social stories outside of autism. A 2018 study conducted in a small classroom found that social stories reduced disruptive behavior in children with ADHD (Greenway, 2018). The study was only on 3 boys over 4 weeks, but the study does exist. I can affirm that I have used social stories with students with ADHD that also reduced disruptive behavior. There for a while, my youngest watched the same one about how to act in class every morning on the way to school for a while.
To Use Them, Or Not To Use Them…..that is the question
I say try it. They don’t do any harm and all the studies show they do some good sometimes. There are some things to remember though:
make sure they follow the format that Gray first created
they are not for a child during meltdown
it is a rehearsal tool, not a de-esclation tool
its not meant to be a lecture
they are meant to be used on repeat
Think about a child walking into an unknown room. They are doing a threat assessment, navigation, social decoding, and self-regulation at the same time. That overwhelms the brain on large scale. A child who has heard six calm sentences about that same space eleven times is only running self-regulation.
What do you think about this question? Would you give social stories a try?
How this connects to the back-to-school series
This is exactly why I built the *What Happens When…* series the way I did. I used Gray’s formula and asked my kiddo what things are the most scary when the school year starts. He still has anxiety about knowing where to go on the first day and he’s been in the same school for 5 years.
Every episode is first person, present tense, and descriptive. Every episode covers one specific, concrete transition — riding the bus, the cafeteria, morning drop-off, asking for help, a classroom that gets loud. Nothing about being brave. Nothing about trying your best.
And every printable page in the companion pack uses the identical sentences as the video narration, word for word. That is not laziness — that’s the mechanism. Your child sees the sentence on the page, hears the same sentence in the video, and eventually says it back to you at the bus stop. 4 videos dropped today and a new will drop every Sunday for the next couple of weeks.
→ Watch the series here: What Happens When...Social Stories
→ Get the free printable companion pack: What Happens When Companion Pack
Start two weeks out if you have two weeks. Start tonight if you don’t.
Read the one that matches the thing your kid is actually dreading, and read it more times than feels necessary.
That’s the whole method. It is not magic, the effect is modest, but it could help reduce your kiddo’s back to school jitters.
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REFERENCES
Gray, C., & Garand, J. D. (1993). Social Stories: Improving responses of students with autism with accurate social information. Focus on Autistic Behavior, 8(1), 1–10.
Greenway, C. W. (2018). The efficacy of Social Stories in the classroom to reduce disruptive behaviours in children with ADHD. Acta Psychopathologica, 4(3), 17.
Karkhaneh, M., Clark, B., Ospina, M. B., Seida, J. C., Smith, V., & Hartling, L. (2010). Social Stories™ to improve social skills in children with autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review. Autism, 14(6), 641–662. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361310373057
Kokina, A., & Kern, L. (2010). Social Story interventions for students with autism spectrum disorders: A meta-analysis. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40(7), 812–826.
Qi, C. H., Barton, E. E., Collier, M., Lin, Y.-L., & Montoya, C. (2018). A systematic review of effects of Social Stories interventions for individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, 33(1), 25–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088357615613516
Steinbrenner, J. R., Hume, K., Odom, S. L., Morin, K. L., Nowell, S. W., Tomaszewski, B., Szendrey, S., McIntyre, N. S., Yücesoy-Özkan, S., & Savage, M. N. (2020). Evidence-based practices for children, youth, and young adults with autism. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, National Clearinghouse on Autism Evidence and Practice Review Team.
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