Train Trip Social Story
As the ADHD mom of an autistic child, I have made it my mission to make social stories that are neuro-affirming and focused on the viewpoint of the child that needs them, rather than how the child is impacting people around them. Currently, I'm working on transportation social stories. So far I've got airplane and ferry boat and now train! I'm gonna walk you through how I put this together, what it looks like on the inside, and how we use it.
To be honest, I haven't been on a train trip with my autistic daughter yet. I have, however, been on Amtrak trains in the U.S. long distance trains through Europe so I have some experience with the concept and knew I wanted to cover it for a download. There are multiple points in the train experience download (like security, bag checking, etc.) that can be taken out depending on your specific situation. I've been in Argentina for a lot of my recent social stories and have done them in book form. This social story, however, I'm going to do a little bit differently.
Like all of my other social stories, this is from the perspective of the child who is going to be experiencing the event and how they can use their accommodations and ask for help instead of how their behavior impacts other people. That's a problem that I see in many other social stories that I come across and as a parent telling my child they need to change for society is the last thing that I want. Another thing that I try to do in all of my social stories is make it as inclusive as possible because not every family looks the same. I also try to use the term "grown ups" instead of "parent" so that it reflects any living situation that a child may be in.
I'm trying to use up the supplies I already have before we leave Argentina. I have leftover plastic sheets from a different digital download that I did, so I'm going to use them. I'm making sure that the pages are back to back so that we can see them on each side. There are 18 pages in the social story, so I'm using nine plastic sheets total. If you have bought any of my other digital downloads, you may recognize some of the art in here. I have tried to change it up so it's not exactly the same so some of the images are very similar, but they are not identical.
Once I was done getting all of the pages into the plastic sheets, I made sure they all lined up and used a metal ring to keep them all together. Again, this is just a different way to show you how you can put these books together, but you're welcome to laminate, staple or print however you want. Like all of my social stories it is something I'm very proud of. I think there are now more than 25 social stories in the shop. If you would like to see any other kinds of social stories that I don't already have, please let me know! I love getting feedback from the community.
