The New Social Story™ Book, by Carol Grey, is a guidebook and example book for writing the aforementioned Social Stories™. It's annoying as heck to keep having to look up how to type the TM symbol (™), so consider it a token of my highest respect for the author and her technique that I continue to use it throughout this review. (As a side note, I have linked the 15th anniversary edition here, but I read the 10th anniversary edition.)
Social Stories™ are a method of teaching autistic people, especially children, what to expect from a situation and what their various options are. They are meant to teach skills and options while encouraging positivity and self-esteem. While I've never personally had Social Stories™ used to help me deal with situations, I can tell from reading this book and its massive examples section that they would have been really helpful, if presented in a way that didn't damage my pride.
The first section of this book, more the introduction than the first chapter, given the page numbers (ennumerated in Roman numerals, rather than normal numbers), is a 71 page guide with 10 catchy rules for writing your own Social Stories™. These are actually rather important, as they are far more ways to write a Story wrong than right. These rules cover tones, perspectives, topics and subjects, vocabulary choices, tenses, sentence types, and even the balance of the types of sentences.
The rest of the book is filled with samples of well written Social Stories™, covering things like fire drills, self-monitoring, birthday parties, and feelings. I could have, I suppose, skipped the remaining 200 some pages and still given a decent enough review of this book, but as there are a lot of ways to be condescending in a book like this, I did read through the entire thing. Thankfully I did not find any condescending things to be annoyed at. I did, however, find some of the example stories had useful concepts attached to them.
One of these is Fort Able. The set of stories this concept is attached to describe it as a safe, secure place in your brain that is comfortable and full of all the things you like and enjoy. Their description suggests that there are three steps to get into every Fort Able, and that it has different rooms for these positive, safe things. A room for photos of favorite people and fun times, a room for favorite songs, movies, video games, videos, a room for scrapbooking anything else positive and enjoyable, and and a mental gymnasium for healthy thoughts to exercise and remember. In addition, Fort Able is guarded by people who care about the person: so family, friends, etc. The guards aren't just there to keep the place safe, they're also there to cheer you on when you succeed, and comfort you when you don't.
Following the directions, I mentally built my own Fort Able, a large pod made of thick brushed steel, with a very comfortable chair in front of a computer with a trio of screens- one for each section they outline your Fort Able having, sans the scrapbooking thing. I'm not really a scrapbooking fan, and the other categories seemed to have things covered. I ended up envisioning one room, rather than several, because I find it annoying and difficult to envision walking between rooms, and remembering where each one is in relation to the other. Chris (my spouse) and my parents are the only regular guards I envisioned, but the examples suggest a lot of my other friends and family would also qualify. I like the idea of counting to three, envisioning your feet hitting each step one at a time, before entering Fort Able. I'm kind of bad at keeping pictures and concepts like this in my head, but maybe this one will stay.
Another useful concept the book had to offer was its understanding of mistakes. Autistic people are more prone to black and white thinking than most people, so mistakes can seem like shameful failure rather than the path to success. I have, at this point, lost count of how many Social Stories™ have specifically addressed making mistakes, but each of them has pointed out that mistakes happen, should be expected, and are good opportunities for learning. I didn't personally grow up with that mentality, and indeed, one of my close relatives displayed a lot of perfectionist characteristics, some of which rubbed off on me. However, I think at this point in my life, I don't consider mistakes miserable failure so much as inevitable annoyances. That's an improvement, but not nearly as good as not getting upset about mistakes at all.
The last major useful concept I noted was that the book introduced change as a thing that is normal, to be expected, and not bad or scary. I wasn't really sure that could be successfully taught, but I presume, since it's wired into dozens of these Stories™, that it must be possible. Considering our general tendency to really really hate change, it's probably a good thing to have in there.
Social Stories™ are a method of teaching autistic people, especially children, what to expect from a situation and what their various options are. They are meant to teach skills and options while encouraging positivity and self-esteem. While I've never personally had Social Stories™ used to help me deal with situations, I can tell from reading this book and its massive examples section that they would have been really helpful, if presented in a way that didn't damage my pride.
The first section of this book, more the introduction than the first chapter, given the page numbers (ennumerated in Roman numerals, rather than normal numbers), is a 71 page guide with 10 catchy rules for writing your own Social Stories™. These are actually rather important, as they are far more ways to write a Story wrong than right. These rules cover tones, perspectives, topics and subjects, vocabulary choices, tenses, sentence types, and even the balance of the types of sentences.
The rest of the book is filled with samples of well written Social Stories™, covering things like fire drills, self-monitoring, birthday parties, and feelings. I could have, I suppose, skipped the remaining 200 some pages and still given a decent enough review of this book, but as there are a lot of ways to be condescending in a book like this, I did read through the entire thing. Thankfully I did not find any condescending things to be annoyed at. I did, however, find some of the example stories had useful concepts attached to them.
One of these is Fort Able. The set of stories this concept is attached to describe it as a safe, secure place in your brain that is comfortable and full of all the things you like and enjoy. Their description suggests that there are three steps to get into every Fort Able, and that it has different rooms for these positive, safe things. A room for photos of favorite people and fun times, a room for favorite songs, movies, video games, videos, a room for scrapbooking anything else positive and enjoyable, and and a mental gymnasium for healthy thoughts to exercise and remember. In addition, Fort Able is guarded by people who care about the person: so family, friends, etc. The guards aren't just there to keep the place safe, they're also there to cheer you on when you succeed, and comfort you when you don't.
Following the directions, I mentally built my own Fort Able, a large pod made of thick brushed steel, with a very comfortable chair in front of a computer with a trio of screens- one for each section they outline your Fort Able having, sans the scrapbooking thing. I'm not really a scrapbooking fan, and the other categories seemed to have things covered. I ended up envisioning one room, rather than several, because I find it annoying and difficult to envision walking between rooms, and remembering where each one is in relation to the other. Chris (my spouse) and my parents are the only regular guards I envisioned, but the examples suggest a lot of my other friends and family would also qualify. I like the idea of counting to three, envisioning your feet hitting each step one at a time, before entering Fort Able. I'm kind of bad at keeping pictures and concepts like this in my head, but maybe this one will stay.
Another useful concept the book had to offer was its understanding of mistakes. Autistic people are more prone to black and white thinking than most people, so mistakes can seem like shameful failure rather than the path to success. I have, at this point, lost count of how many Social Stories™ have specifically addressed making mistakes, but each of them has pointed out that mistakes happen, should be expected, and are good opportunities for learning. I didn't personally grow up with that mentality, and indeed, one of my close relatives displayed a lot of perfectionist characteristics, some of which rubbed off on me. However, I think at this point in my life, I don't consider mistakes miserable failure so much as inevitable annoyances. That's an improvement, but not nearly as good as not getting upset about mistakes at all.
The last major useful concept I noted was that the book introduced change as a thing that is normal, to be expected, and not bad or scary. I wasn't really sure that could be successfully taught, but I presume, since it's wired into dozens of these Stories™, that it must be possible. Considering our general tendency to really really hate change, it's probably a good thing to have in there.
In addition to all these, there were Social Stories™ about various safety situations, like wildfires, emergency drills, evacuations, etc. And of course lots of different Stories™ for a regular school day, doing your homework, going to parties, and home situations. I was amused to find the book even included a Social Story™ to explain the glossary section at the end.
Read This Book If
You want to explore using Social Stories™ as a tool for your child, student, patient/client, etc. This isn't really a book that can be mentally flipped for use by an autistic adult, it's specifically meant to guide someone teaching an autistic person in a practical, useful method of conveying information and skills to the autistic child. The concept of Social Stories™ can be scaled up all the way to situations in adulthood, but as a relatively functional adult, I didn't find the included example stories useful beyond examining their philosophy. I do think Social Stories™ would have been a great tool, if used well, for teaching me when I was a child, though.
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