Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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218 of 220 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Best for young or low/mid functioning students, July 30, 1999
By A Customer
I hoped this book would help me help my teenage high functioning autistic son navigate the social jungles of middle and high school. The introductory material and the tutorial on writing social stories were valuable. The stories were not, though they would have been helpful when my son was in day care and early elementary grades. Printed in large (18 point) type and triple/quadruple spaced, the stories focus on situations that the higher functioning autistic has already mastered: standing in line, eating with utensils, dressing, grooming, raising one's hand to speak. These are situations in which the correct (socially acceptable) rote action, once learned and applied, makes life easier for everyone. Social stories seem less well suited to helping autistic students navigate situations where rote actions or responses are inadequate. Examples include situations of sensory overload or sensory hypersensitivity, where the autistic person's socially incorrect behavior is not entirely under his or her control, recognizing teasing and threats, or understanding ambiguous social signals.
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110 of 111 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
New Social Stories don't live up to the Original, August 13, 2001
I'm a speech language pathologist working with children with autism spectrum disorders. Access to good materials for social skills/pragmatics can be difficult to obtain, but Gray's Original Social Stories book was excellent! I work with children from kindergarten to middle school and this book meet many of my needs. This new edition, however, was more than disappointing. The stories weren't written well, the illustrations had little or no connection to the stories, and the stories were not relevant to the needs of children with disabilities. I returned the book and discovered that Ms. Gray had discontinued publication of the original book to promote this new edition. Ms. Gray, please re-release the original!!! I recommended it to many collegues and it's no longer available.
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78 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Please stop simplifying autism, May 1, 2003
As either "this technique works, so it will work for everyone", or "it didn't work for those with whom I volunteered, so it must not work with anyone with autism". To say so is a MAJOR disservice to those for whom these techniques were designed to help, and creating some imaginary 'competition' between techniques negates the purpose of instituting multiple methodologies for the treatment and support of people with autism.I think Baron-Cohen/Hill/Golan/Wheelwright's Mind Reading program looks like an exciting new technique to assist people with autism in understanding emotion, especially those who are either high-functioning or Aspie. But as someone who has spent the last several years working in the field of PDDs and Autistic Spectrum Disorders, I can tell you sincerely that Carol Gray's social stories are as necessary to our line of work as a calculator is to an accountant. I can also tell you that there is no ONE technique that is the end-all-be-all of autism support and treatment-- there are no hard and fast rules here as all people with autism are as different from each other as anyone else, and will all respond differently to various methodologies. Professionals, parents and caregivers know that to help a person with autism succeed, they must furnish them with many tools-- social stories being only one of these. But anyone who thinks that social stories are redundant or are too "touchy-feely" for any practical use has obviously not spent any quality time teaching people with autism to perform all of the day-to-day activities that you and I take for granted. Simply put: social stories couldn't be more practical. Two of the defining characteristics of autism are difficulty perceiving social cues/functioning in social settings and a prevalence toward visual learning. Pairing a very visual setting (i.e. pictures of the social situation) with a breakdown of the social exchanges may help a person with autism see the target behavior more clearly than just "telling" him or her how to behave, or simply expecting them to know how to perform in social situations. Adding upon social stories with other techniques such as role-play, what-if scenarios, contingencies and options mapping can give very positive results. And one of the most rewarding results is the increased level of self confidence that emerges from knowing what to expect in social situations. Predictability in autism is everything, after all. There is a great deal of information and "serious research" on the use of social stories available to anyone who is willing to look it up. Carol Gray's method has been with us for a long time, and for good reason-- it works.
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