Complaining Story

Anna Goes To New Places

Sometimes Anna goes to new places.

Anna does not like to go to new places.

Anna can say, “I don’t like this!”

Mommy will say, “I know it is hard to go new places.”

Mommy will listen when Anna tells Mommy it is hard.

Anna is a big girl.

She goes to new places but she does not like it.

The intent of this story, is for Anna to know that her Mommy understands how hard it is for her to go to new places and that it is fine to complain when things are hard. This story could be filled out with simple examples of new places that Anna did not like going to the first time but that she eventually enjoyed. Then the story would help Anna remember that sometimes she does come to like new places. The originator of writing stories to help children understand socially acceptable options for expressing emotions is a Speech Language Pathologist named Carol Gray and her story writing strategy is called Social Stories^TM.

Recently, one of my young friends got very upset that his TV program was not offered at the regular time. As he started to demonstrate how upset this made him by throwing his toys. His mother joined him in his outrage, at least in her facial expression and voice and told him that she would help him write a letter to the TV station. She effectively communicated that she understood his intent and was about to show him another way to manage his frustration. He stopped throwing things and they got on the computer to write a letter. He was familiar with writing about things that happened to him but had not written a letter before. He loved the mailbox, though, and quickly understood the concept of what they were going to do. They wrote out a letter on a where program called Writing with Symbols. This is a program which uses visual icons for almost every word and reads the words out loud as the word is typed). They wrote scathing complaint to the TV station and mailed it off that day. They brought me a copy of the letter and this little boy was still a little outraged but terribly proud of the letter he had written. What a wonderful example of teaching a child to complain!