The Importance of Social Narratives that Praise Accomplishments

Carol Gray, the creator of Social Stories™, recommends that at least half of the social narratives that we write for any student should have the sole purpose of recognizing skills that the student already does well or positive personality or character traits.

Positively Autism believes that this is important for a variety of reasons. First, it helps make reading a social narrative a positive experience for the student. When social narratives are written to praise or recognize a child, they may be more likely to enjoy reading all social narratives. Social narratives should always be a positive, or at least neutral, experience. They should never be used as a punishment (as in, "Your behavior is unacceptable! Go read your social story.").

Additionally, when we recognize the positive traits or skills that a student has, we may encourage the student to continue positive behavior in the future. And, of course, we want to focus on students’ strengths as much as we can, since there may often be a focus on their weaknesses.

Here is an example of a social narrative praising accomplishments that I wrote. Pictures of the child have been removed for confidentiality purposes. http://www.positivelyautism.com/downloads/SocialStory_Praise01.pdf .

Carol Gray also has examples of social narratives that praise accomplishments near the middle of this page: http://www.thegraycenter.org/social-stories/what-are-social-stories