Social Stories are visual teaching tools used to help develop Social skills in children with autism.

Autism Social Stories provide the child with autism spectrum disorder an explanation and visual framework of the skill or situation that they may find difficult or confusing.

Research shows that Autism Social Stories are an excellent visual teaching tools which can be used to help reduce stress and inappropriate behaviours in some children with an ASD. The social story also increases social understanding and has been reported as a good approach for helping children with an ASD to reach their full potential.

The goal of a Social Skills story is to increase the child’s understanding of skills and social situations they are struggling to master and understand. By making the child with an ASD more comfortable with and in the situation, and suggest possible responses they may receive from others.

Social skills stories follow specific sentence types: descriptive, perspective, directive and control. Introduced around twenty years ago as a means of communication, Autism Social Stories have grown into a very popular visual strategy that can be used regardless of age and ability.

Generally social skills stories are written by experts, teachers and parents to help teach social and communication skills. Autism Social Stories can be edited to suit all needs, personalized, printed and are portable making them convenient and easy to use.

A social skills story can be introduced to help deal with any situation or skill that the child needs help with. No formal training is needed to use social skills stories, site which offer support and expertly written Autism Social Stories can be found using search engines such as Google.

Sites that offer Social Stories designed to help children with autism like http://www.autismsocialstories.com offer support, and downloads of printable social skills stories for various situations and skills.

A social skills story should be visual and use first person text, like a role model the social skills story will help with transitions, and changes to routines as well as teach and support social skills and communication difficulties.

For more information on this visual strategy visit any of the following sites and find Social Stories designed to help children with autism

http://www.autismsocialstories.com