Download the first in a series of FREE Festive Social Stories that will be available for parents of children with Special Needs in the run up to Christmas. My sons Conor and Jack both have Autism and Jack in particular struggles with Anxiety.
Most Christmas morning he opens his presents and then bursts into tears. He is so excited to see what Santa has brought but is so overwhelmed with the build up to Christmas and then the idea that Santa has arrived while he is asleep at night.
He will then go hide in his bedroom. I usually have to coax him out and put away some of his presents so he will calm down enough to be able to enjoy his gifts. It happens every year and last year was by and far the worst where he cried more or less for the whole day with anxiety.
Last year I decided I would have him prepared and ready well in advance of Christmas this year and that would mean creating Visuals, Social Stories and doing whatever it will take to help him (hopefully!) enjoy Christmas this year.
I plan to do a few things differently this year than what I have done previous so I can help Jack. I will write up a blog post in the next week or so about what we are doing and plan to do as Christmas approaches.
I will be creating a series of Social Stories for Jack which will be available for FREE here on the website for parents of children with Special Needs. I am working on them this week at night time once I have the children in bed, so as I finish them I will upload them to the website.
I owe a great deal of thanks to my fellow Special Needs Parents who I asked for suggestions recently and they took the time to give me some fantastic ideas. So a HUGE thank you to everyone who made suggestions. Today’s Free Social Story and the upcoming Social Stories will feature all the suggestions I received.
FREE Christmas Social Story Part 1
Today’s Social Story will focus on:
- Children being off school for Christmas
- Writing a letter to Santa
- Putting up the Tree and Decorations
- Opening/Not Opening Presents
- Give/Receive Gifts
- What to do when you don’t like your gift or already have the same gift
- Christmas Eve activity
- Staying in bed
- Opening Presents
WHAT YOU NEED:
- Printer
- Laminator & Pouches
- Scissors
- Stapler/Binder/Whole Punch/Fastners
WHAT YOU NEED TO DO:
- Print/laminate each A4 sheet of the social story
- Once laminated cut each A4 Sheet in two, using the central black line as a guide. You will note that each A4 sheet essentially houses two pages of your social story.
- When laminated and cut, you should have 10 half sheets
- Use your chosen way to bind the sheets together. I have given some examples of different tools you can choose to use.
- I have created the pages in such a way that you can omit or include pages as they apply to your child. Not every child will need to be reminded we don’t say to others who give gifts that we don’t like the presents etc so if it doesnt apply to your child you could omit that page.
With Jack, I will read through this Social Story every day from the 1st of December so by the time school finishes up he will hopefully have an excellent concrete understanding of what will happen over Christmas and when he will go back to school etc.
In the coming days I will be uploading additional Social Stories. Follow my FACEBOOK page to keep up todate with new posts on the website.
You can download yourChristmas Social Story 1here.
I really hope this Social Story is helpful for your child. Comment down below how you use Social Stories or if you have any advice you can give me about Jack! I always welcome another parent’s perspective.
As mentioned in this FREE Christmas Social Story, you can use a Countdown Calendar to help your child understand time-wise when Christmas falls and also when it is back to school time. You can find more information about that here.
If you liked this post you may also like to download a FREE Letter to Santa for your child. You can find that post here.
LIKE my Facebook page to find out when new FREE PRINTABLES go live on the Blog.
Thank you for reading.
3 Comments
Omg this is fantastic how do you find the time to do all this work well done you.
Thank you so much Kate. I am happy to help other parents like myself. Many years ago when Conor was small (he is 8 now), I would have done anything to find a website like Little Puddins, to give me an insight to a life like my own and provide helpful resources I could try with Conor. I mainly work on the blog posts late at night when the kids are either in bed or up again after waking. It is my hobby really and I am so glad it is helping other parents just like me. Thank you so much for the support. x
[…] stories can be so helpful for prepare your autistic child for the upcoming holidays. Try this free Christmas social story and this one about visiting relatives and getting dressed for […]