One common struggle for a lot of my Behavior Buzz clients is knowing how to appropriately use social skills in their daily life. They especially struggle with how to talk with their peers and handle common social problems. This post focuses on a fun and creative approach for improving social skills in children. Elsewhere in my blog you’ll find information on games and activities to improve social skills, like using facial expression pieces to teach emotions, or using Legos or pegs to teach play skills. Although many children enjoy those activities, some children really like being creative and making something of their own rather than following along with something an adult has designed for them. For these creative kids, I love working with them to build Friendship Stories.

This post focues on how to make and use Friendship Stories. Be sure to read all the way through to the end for some important tips about Friendship Stories as well as ideas on ways to use this strategy to help your students improve social skills in the classroom!

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At the end of this post, you’ll see a sample story I’ve made for one of my clients. Feel free to print it and use it with the children you know, or simply use it as a starting place for developing your own ideas.

What are Friendship Stories?

Friendship Stories are an approach I’ve used for improving social skills in my clients for years. The basic premise is that each Friendship Story focuses on a character who goes through various common social situations and must face social challenges. Each time the character faces a social problem, the child can make suggestions on how to solve the social problem. Whether their suggestion is appropriate or not, the adult can then have a conversation with the child about how that choice would turn out and whether it would fix the social problem or make it worse.

What makes a Friendship Story more exciting than a regular book is that the child helps create the story, which builds interest and motivation in the task.

How do I Make a Friendship Story?

Depending on the age and developmental level of my clients, I make Friendship Stories in one of a few ways.

For my youngest clients, I usually have a pre-written story that the child simply helps color in. The social problems in the story cover the specific areas of concern the family has about the child. If the child is struggling with greetings or conversations, I’ll build in scenes where we can work on improving social skills by having the main character greet people or have a conversation with another child. I also try using the child’s name for the main character – that often makes it exciting, especially for younger kids! If I know the names of their siblings or friends, I can personalize it even more by including them in the story. Before we read the story, I let the child decorate the entire thing. Then, once the entire story is colored in and decorated, we read it together, stopping at the social problems and talking through options.

For my highest functioning clients, I let them help design the entire story. They identify the characters, they identify the locations, they identify social problems, and then either they write it with my help, or I do the actual writing while they talk with me about it. I never let clients go off on their own to create a Friendship Story because I want to ensure their story meets all the goals of our work together. Older children sometimes love drawing the illustrations, but sometimes they are more self-conscious of their artwork. I let them decide whether to make the story illustrated or not. The goal is really to work on improving social skills through the social problems in the text, so there’s no reason to lose a child’s buy-in to the activity by forcing them to create artwork!

For those clients in between those two extremes, we work very collaboratively. I’ll have an idea of the story in my mind, but ask them to think of character names and locations. For example, I may know I want the story to cover what to do if children don’t share or call you mean names (because those are the social problems this client struggles to handle appropriately). I might, therefore, ask the child to think of 4 names for our characters and a place where kids have to share. He might choose the park, at camp, at school, or even in the neighborhood. Then, using the names he’s suggested I would write out the story. I keep asking for information as we go (think MadLibs style writing) to keep my client invested. In the sample I pasted below, anything bolded would be a child suggestion. I also often let them illustrate the story (rather than just coloring in), because the artwork can be the most fun part for many of my clients!

Tanner is a 3^rd grader at Smith Elementary. One day when Tanner is at school, he sees his best friend, Jayden. Jayden brought a new toy to school for inside recess today and it is really cool. He brought a Nintendo Switch. Tanner has wanted to try out a Nintendo Switch for a long time. What should he do?

Things to Keep in Mind

Regardless of the level of the child and the type of story you’ve created, always be sure to read the story together so you can stop at each social problem and help the child think of appropriate answers. Without this key step, the child won’t be improving social skills, they’ll just be doing an art project!

Also, I find that sometimes these stories become prompts for children to ask questions or talk about similar social problems they’ve faced. If this happens, use the teachable moment in front of you. Work through the social problems the child is telling you about, even if that means you run out of time and have to finish the book next time. The social problems and stories children mention are usually really important to them, and discussing those, instead of focusing on the artificial story, can often help the child understand the lesson better than the task could have!

Be sure to let the child keep the Friendship Story, once it’s completed. Children often learn best by practicing skills multiple times. By taking the story home and reading it with their parents, they can continue working on improving social skills for weeks or months.

If you want to use this strategy with a classroom of children, consider breaking the kids into small groups and having each group create a Friendship Story and then share them with the class once they’re done. You can also make a group Friendship Story by working as a whole class on a giant flip board and having kids raise their hands to make suggestions about character names, settings, social problems, and solutions. A group story can then be saved and reviewed by students during free time so the whole class can practice improving social skills in a fun and engaging way!

The Story Included Below

The story that is available for you to download below is a great sample to get you started. Remember, although you can certainly use this sample to start conversations and review common social problems with the children you know, it may be best to use this as a sample to simply help you understand what a finished story might looks like and how to structure the activity. The Friendship Story included here just has clipart illustrations, but if I were using this with a child I might have them draw in the pictures if they were motivated to do so!

However you choose to make a Friendship Story, I hope you find this strategy as engaging as effective as I’ve found it with my own clients when we’re working on improving social skills during our sessions!