Stories to Help Autistic Kids Express Emotions Appropriately

Autistic kids are often blindsided by emotions. Unable to identify emotions in others, and hard-put to deal with their own feelings, they struggle to make sense of both. They'll often resort to tantrums when overwhelmed by negative emotions. Stories -- both generic and custom-created social yarns -- can help your autistic young one to express emotions appropriately. Practice strategies will help your child to build cognitive bridges pinpointing and addressing emotions.

  1. Setting the Stage: Emotion Image Flashcards and Short Stories

    • Identifying emotions is a developmental skill that autistic kids do not come by automatically. The first step in helping your child to express emotions is to help her to identify them. Begin by creating flashcards with simply drawn facial expressions, like angry, sad, happy and surprised. Make up a simple story as you show your child a card. For instance, hold up the angry card and say, "Sam is angry. His brother broke his favorite toy. Sam feels angry." Then make an angry face and have your child imitate your facial expression. Ask her to repeat the name of this emotion. When she can routinely identify basic emotions, you're ready to share generic stories with her.

    Generic Stories Addressing Emotions

    • Check out age-level stories each week from the library on emotions. Read the story to your child daily for an entire week. As the week goes on, whenever the story narrative addresses the emotion, allow your youngster the opportunity to orally identify the emotion. Read the story with an over-the-top expression to help grab your child's attention and create neural pathways between the story and emotion identification.

    Custom-Created Social Stories

    • Social stories are a special means of addressing specific social shortcomings in an autistic kid. A few steps can create an effective social story. Check on the Internet by typing in "social stories" into a search engine. Choose a site that makes sense to you, and create a narrative that speaks to any particular emotional concern your child has. When compellingly written, social stories are brief, to-the-point and effective with autistic youngsters.

    Working with Non-verbal Kids

    • Non-verbal autistic youngsters can benefit from flashcard stories, generic and social stories as much as verbal kids. Encourage them to mimic the face you make expressing an emotion. Always pair the face with the auditory name of the emotion. On some occasions, non-verbal autistic children can build a bridge between the visual emotion and the spoken word.

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