Social Stories

Has your child ever been fearful of a new situation or not known how to act in a new situation? (Did every parent just say ‘yes’?!) Then maybe he could use a Social Story.

Social Stories were originally created to help children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), but really they can help anyone with new or challenging situations. As adults, we often ask questions before going into a new situation about who will be there, what will occur, what our role will be, etc. However, children do not have the ability, yet, to prepare themselves for new situations in this manner so we need a way to help them do this.

A Social Story provides information about the events and social cues that will occur in the situation, how to respond to those cues and events, and reactions that the child might encounter or have expected of him. The goal is

Expanding Repetitive Line Books

We talked about basic repetitive line books last week, which are good for building language skills. A variation of this type of book is the expanding repetitive line book. These are books that start with one line and then this line is repeated on the next page and an additional line is added. Then these two lines are repeated on the next page with yet another additional line added. This continues throughout the book.

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything

Since it is almost Halloween, I will use “The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything” by Linda Williams as an example. The story starts with a little old lady who goes for a walk and encounters a pair of shoes that go “clomp, clomp”.

Repetitive Line Books

We have been talking about lots of beginning books that are good for learning some object names and descriptive words. If your child is starting to name objects and use some other single words, then it is time to for her to start to learn to put words together into short phrases.

Great Repetitive Line Book!

Repetitive line books are great for teaching children how to make short phrases because the same line is used throughout the book and often children quickly learn to fill in parts of the line themselves. A popular example is “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do you See?” By Eric Carle and Bill Martin Jr. The two repetitive lines are “what do you see?” and “I see a ________ looking at me”. The blank is a color + animal such as “yellow duck”, making it a great book to work on colors and animal names, as well.

After I read this book to a child a few times and they have become engaged in it, I will

Setting the Mood

So, we have talked about what types of books are good ones to start with little ones or with other children who have difficulty attending to books, but having the right materials is probably not enough. So let’s talk a little about ‘setting the mood’ so that your child can attend to the books you are presenting to him.

Reading in a Bean Bag Chair

Pick the right time of day. Try to figure out when your child is in a calm (or at least calmer than usual) state. It may be when she first wakes up in the morning or from a nap. Or it might be right before bed. Or maybe it is when her belly is full. This will be the best time to introduce books to your child. You can also have books available around the house and see if your child naturally starts to interact with them. “Interact” at this point may mean

Manipulative Books

These "tools" are books, too!

Now, I am not talking about books that manipulate you! ‘Manipulative books’ are how I decided to describe books that children can manipulate since I mentioned last week that young children like to ‘do’ things with their hands. This is the primary mode of learning the first 2-3 years of life. These might be ‘lift the flap books’, books that also look like objects such as a vehicle book with wheels or the tool belt above, books that have sliding parts, or books that have pieces.

Some of these books might have simple words making them perfect for younger children or

Touch and Feel

Touch and feel books, that is! These books are great for the 6-24 month old crowd because they give children something to ‘do’ while looking at books and ‘doing’ is what toddlers are all about! Besides helping young children engage with books, they are also great for children with sensory processing disorder. For the child with under-sensitive touch or with over-sensitive touch, feeling a variety of textures within the context of a story can be a great way to normalize touch. From a language standpoint, these books are great for teaching descriptive words, which makes them great for preschoolers, too.

Usborne touchy-feely books

My favorite series is Usborne’s touch-feely books. At our house, we have That’s Not My Tractor, That’s Not My Bunny, and That’s Not My Pirate. And they have many, many more in the series. I like these books because they have a variety of textures to feel. (Some other series seem to just have fur on every page.) The pictures are pretty simple and it has the added bonus of having the repetitive line “That’s not my….” on each page. I will blog at a later date about repetitive line books and how great they are for teaching language. Finally, they are full of great descriptive words:

Get Started Reading with Real Photos

Some of the best books to start looking at with young children (6-12 months) or older children that have not taken to books, yet, are those that have real photos. Real photos serve as a bridge between the concrete objects children have become familiar with in their every day environments and the later symbolic concepts of line drawings, letters, words, etc.

That said, the best first books are those that have real photos of every day objects. There should be just a few photos per page against a blank background to help children focus on each individual object pictured. Now, if you are industrious, you could make some of these books yourself. Take photos of objects around your house and community that your child is familiar with, get some cheap photo albums from the dollar store and slide them in! Or you could even get fancy and make an album on-line through shutterfly or some similar site, but you are going to spend much more than you would on some pre-made books from Target or Amazon.

Or if you are like me, you will have the fabulous idea of making your own book and will put it on your to-do list. Then some time will go by