Social stories for autistic children: what they are and how to write one

Our daughter’s social stories were songs

Music has to be playing in our home — that’s simply how our daughter lives. When she loves something in a video, she’ll rewatch it hundreds of times a day, learning the words, singing along. So much of what she’s learned has come through songs.

Somewhere along the way we realised we could teach through them. Family relationships came from Finger Family. Bus rides from Wheels on the Bus. Standing in line and walking in line — The Ants Go Marching. We weren’t following any method; we were just thinking from her point of view, because that’s what’s easiest for her to understand.

That, it turns out, is exactly what a social story is: meeting a confusing piece of the world inside a medium your child already loves and trusts. For many children that’s a little picture book. For ours, it was a song. The container matters less than the principle.

What a social story is — and isn’t

Social Stories were created in 1990 by Carol Gray, an American teacher of autistic children, and they follow a specific set of criteria she still maintains today. The overall goal, in the official wording, is “to provide socially meaningful information that is accurate and presented in a positive and reassuring manner”.

Most children absorb the unwritten social rules — what a queue is, why the hairdresser touches your head, what happens after the doctor calls your name — almost without noticing. Autistic children often don’t get that information for free, and a lot of distress that looks like “behaviour” is really a missing piece of information. A social story hands over the missing piece, calmly, in advance.

When one helps

The research guidance points at three situations, and every parent will recognise them:

• A first time is coming — the dentist, a haircut, a flight, the first day at a new school. The story lets your child meet the event safely before it’s real.
• A situation keeps going wrong and you suspect a misunderstanding underneath — fire drills, losing at games, sharing toys, the noise and crowd of festive visiting.
• A change is coming — a new teacher, a new home, a new helper, a different bus route.

Stories aren’t the only way to do this. Before our daughter’s first haircut, doctor visit and dentist visit, the two of us role-played the whole thing at home — one parent as the hairdresser, complete with the cape and the spray bottle. Same principle, no paper: let the child rehearse the situation while nothing is at stake.

How to write one

1. Stand in your child’s shoes first. Before writing a word, work out what the situation looks like from their side — watch, ask people who know them, ask them if you can. Often the real problem is smaller and stranger than it looks: not “lunchtime is hard” but “I never know where to sit”.
2. Give it three parts and a positive title. An introduction that names the topic, a body with the detail, an ending that lands somewhere reassuring. Title it by what your child can do — “Getting my hair cut”, not “Not screaming at the salon”.
3. Write as “I” or “she”, never “you”. “You” turns a story into a lecture. First person (“When the bell rings, I…”) or third person keeps it a story.
4. Keep it positive, patient and literally true. No “naughty”, no “should”. And because autistic children read literally, be literally accurate — if the dentist visit might include an X-ray, “sometimes the dentist takes a picture of my teeth” is honest; “the dentist just counts my teeth” is a trap.
5. Describe at least twice as much as you direct. This is Carol Gray’s actual arithmetic: for every sentence that coaches (“I can hold Mama’s hand”), write at least two that simply describe or reassure (“The clippers make a buzzing sound. Lots of children feel unsure the first time — that’s okay.”).
6. Format it for your child. Photos or drawings, big font, few words per page — or, if your child lives in music like ours does, a familiar tune with new words. The format rule is simply: their medium, their attention span.

Using it (the part that decides whether it works)

Read the story in calm moments, not mid-meltdown — it’s preparation, not a fire extinguisher. Re-read it in the days before the event, let your child hold it and return to it themselves, and keep the tone of reading it warm and unhurried.

And here’s the loveliest rule in the whole method: once the situation is mastered, the story’s job isn’t over — it becomes a praise story (“I learned to get my hair cut!”). Carol Gray’s guidance says at least half of all social stories should congratulate the child for what they’ve already achieved.

What the evidence says, honestly

Social narratives — the research category social stories belong to — are rated an evidence-based practice for ages 3–18 in the 2020 NCAEP review, across social, communication and behaviour outcomes. At the same time, reviewers note the evidence is mostly small, single-case studies: in one UK research team’s words, there is “a paucity of good quality, comparative evidence on Social Stories”.

Our plain-language translation: this is a low-cost, low-risk tool with a genuinely promising track record, not a guaranteed fix. It works best exactly as you’d expect — personalised to one child and one situation. If a story doesn’t land, nothing is lost; try a different medium, as we did with songs.