Debby, shares how her teenage daughter has used her iPhone and iPad. One app she uses is called Pictello. You can use it to make a picture book. Then you add voice so it speaks out loud. She can share stories with her friends or they can read it themselves. Mom says it’s like a virtual social story.
Then. . .the family moved to a new home.
So, Mom created a social type story on the iPad with pictures that she took of all her daughter’s bunnies. She has all these bunnies that she sleeps with, and mom made a story with the pictures of her bunnies. She took pictures of the bunnies going into the moving box. Then she added pictures of the new house. They took her there so she could see where her new bed was going to be. She was looking at it a lot and she saw the boxes of bunnies coming into the house from the moving truck.
That Pictello story helped her handle the change to the new environment. But. . .Momdid not make a story about how the swimming pool was not built yet.
Mom looked outside to see her daughter “lying down on the front lawn crying with her arms out like Jesus” because she did not have a pool. All she saw was the big hole in the ground.
 | Mom realized, “I was so consumed with her bunnies and her bed that I didn't plan ahead for the swimming pool.” So, they started taking pictures with her daughter as they watched the pool being built. One of the most useful ways visual strategies can be helpful for our kids as by giving them information ahead of time to help them prepare for life. |