Life, as we all know
it, is a huge roller coaster ride where situations are always unpredictable and
unsustainable. There are days when all of us live in our routines but then
there are days where there is a chaos in our lives. It could be due to a
marriage, festival, earthquake, floods, fire, some urgent business trip, and
any type of UNAVOIDABLE EMERGENCY.
A lot of us can easily
accept the challenge, manage things and keep ourselves calm. But, for children
with special needs, accepting, managing and keeping themselves calm at such
times is a huge break point.
Thus, for such times we
require Social Stories. And this time, Potential Therapy Centre talks about Physical Emergencies and how to prepare a child using
Social Stories.
What
are Social Stories?
Social Stories are visual aids that provide a sequence of
instructions for the child where he is the main hero of the story and the
entire storyline plot revolves around him so he understands what his own
actions should be.
Social stories are situational based where the target is to
cater to the difficulties of a child in various dimensions of the spectrum of
life.
It helps the child in thinking skills and decisions making
skills. It is a tool for anticipation and prediction of major events.
Why
do we use Social Stories?
1.
Prediction/ Anticipation: What the situation might be, who all
are going to be there, how might the place/ people look like, what they might
be feeling about me/ thinking of me, what they may be expected of me.
2.
Skill building: what may be the way for me to
respond, how can I talk, how I may really ask for help.
3.
Feel good factor: if I am able to do all of this I
might just be able to be calm around these people and they may even comfort me
back.
Recap
of the Rules for writing the Social Story
1.
A story of your child: using words like I, Me, My, Mine, We and Name of your child. Don’t use name of
another child, thinking your child will be able to relate himself/herself to
the situation.
2.
Content: Narration (Refer to the post below
for understanding the concept of narrations) involve what “you” are telling
your child, when we are saying that social stories include the main character
being your child then how may our sentences be framed?
E.g., the sentences could be framed
as “When there is fire, Raghav shouts Mamma.”
3.
Language: the language that your child can
use, is understood by him and repeats/ emphasizes on the key words e.g., fire, shouts, Raghav, Mamma.
Exemplary Sentence: “When there is fire, Mamma shouts Raghav”.
4. Targeting behavior/ situation:
·
Targeting
the behavior of utmost concern. E.g.,
we know that when Raghav is highly anxious, he jumps and flaps his hand so we
can write “When Raghav sees fire he can shout for Mamma. Raghav can stand still
or Raghav can walk to Mamma.”
Preparing
Social Story:
A social story includes the following parts:
1.
Descriptive: This part includes the answers of
all “wh” questions for your child for what he is likely to see, whom is he
likely to meet, where is he going, what activities will he be doing and if
others are performing, what is he expected to do.
Note: It is important to keep in mind
sensory concerns for your child, narrations can be given like “there may be a
lot of noise – some people may be screaming, shouting, this will be difficult
for us but we can still control ourselves.”
2.
Perspective: describing what may be the feelings
or thoughts of others in the given story. ‘others’ are the people who are
defining the situation or the people who might be getting effected by any
action of your child.
Here comes the important part of preparing the child about
the EMERGENCY SITUATIONS. Potentials Therapy Centre intends to include Fire
alerts, Water Flooding and Earthquake social stories. Emergencies can happen anytime
and last minute experience of a situation can not only panic a child but can
also leave impressions of trauma on a child’s psyche. Thus, it is important for
parents to introduce such social stories anticipating the emergency and revise
it in the middle of the week during free times so that god forbid, but if it
happens, the child is mentally prepared about the situation.
While preparing the social story, it is important for the
parent to point out the following things at the time of Emergencies:
1.
Event
2.
What
is the situation like? E.g., Fire Alert
3.
How
will the environment look like? E.g., fire at some place or there will be fire
all around.
4.
How
will the child feel? E.g., Panic, Anxiety, Fear, Afraid
5.
What will other people be doing? E.g.,
screaming, running, shouting
6.
How
are other people feeling?
7.
Whom
can the child approach for help?
8.
What
should child do at this particular moment?
EXAMPLE SOCIAL STORY:
1.
When Raghav gets anxious he jumps
& flaps hands.
2.
If there is emergency like fire
Raghav Jumps & Flaps hands.
3.
When Raghav Jumps & Flaps hands
he is more anxious.
4.
When there is emergency/Fire, Raghav
can shout for mamma.
5.
When there is emergency/ Fire, Mamma
also shouts for Raghav.
6.
When Raghav shouts for Mamma, Raghav
can hold Mamma’s hand.
7.
Then Raghav is safe with Mamma.
This is just one of the exemplary emergency preparations to
children with special needs but there are many more existing situations for which
we have to prepare our kids to face them so that they do not get hampered with fears.
