The following is a simple story I wrote for a 6 year old girl who is having some processing-related challenges in school. This girl often will give a “deer in the headlights” look when asked to perform a simple request, such as “come over to the reading carpet for story time”. To help her understand this experience, and to help her teachers find language and interventions to address it, I created this social story. In the process of reading this to the girl, I had her draw Dee, Dee’s teacher, the reading carpet, the brain fairies, and the message being sent from the brain to the legs. We did this all on a blackboard, but it could have easily been done with a dry erase board or piece of paper.

Here it is:

There once was a girl named Dee. Dee was an older sister, a daughter, a grand daughter, a student, a playmate and a friend.
Sometimes Dee’s brain and body had a hard time talking to each other.
Sometimes in school when Dee’s teacher would call her over to the reading carpet, Dee would freeze – her body not moving at all. It was like her brain couldn’t send the message to tell her body to move. When this happened, the teacher would usually say again “Come on over to the reading carpet Dee”. Dee’s brain would then finally tell her body to start moving. Dee didnt know why this sometimes happened. I think it’s because sometimes Dee’s brain fairies are sleepy and it takes them awhile to wake up, get on their shoes, and go down to her legs to tell them to move. What do you think? (I always give the child a chance to add their thoughts).
What do you think we can do to help Dee’s brain fairies shake off their sleepy dust and run down to her legs quicker? Ooooh. I have an idea. How about Dee and the teacher make a picture card that the teacher can hold up or place on Dee’s work surface that shows a brain sending a message to the legs that says “start walking”?
Maybe the card would look something like this (please excuse the lame drawing:):