About social stories

You can use social stories to teach autistic children and teenagers about appropriate social behaviour in specific settings, like the supermarket, the doctor’s surgery, the playground and so on. You can create a social story for almost any social situation, skill or concept.

Social story: pretend examples in schoolwork

Here’s a social story on pretend examples, like ‘I have four apples. If I eat two, how many are left?’

Autistic children can find pretending particularly difficult. Some autistic children take pretend examples literally. A child who interprets things literally might think, ‘But I didn’t have four apples, and I wouldn’t have eaten them because I don’t like apples’. So taking things literally can make schoolwork difficult.

The social story below could help in this situation. This social story has been developed and written by a trained Social Story™ therapist.

Sometimes, I might have a maths story problem. To do a story problem, I have to pretend. Pretend means it might not be true for what I usually say or do. Pretending means using my brain to imagine what I would do to solve the problem.

This might mean I pretend to like foods that I don’t like in real life. Or I pretend to like things or activities that I don’t like. The good news about pretending is that I don’t have to really like to eat those foods, or really like those things or activities. I will try to pretend enough so that I can complete my schoolwork.

I will try to tell myself that to complete my schoolwork, I only have to pretend for a short amount of time.