Tool Tuesday: The Narrative/Social Self-Regulation Connection

As an SLP working in a social educator role, I am frequently asked to process events with my students that have occurred outside of our sessions. Story Grammar Marker^® can be a critical tool for helping students “get” the overall story of what happened in a particular situation and provide a structure to access their self-motivated problem-solving.

Maryellen previously demonstrated this connection between story and self-regulation in this video, but in this post, I will describe a recent example.

I find it particularly helpful to add visual support to these conversations with students, so my go-to is to use sketches of stick figures, movement, word and thought bubbles, along with other situational elements, ala Comic Strip Conversations, an approach originally described by Carol Gray. Teresa Ukrainetz has also been a champion of the value of sketching in strategies such as Stickwriting Stories and Sketch and Speak.

A recent situation in which I supported a young child was for “regulating his silly” at school. For this kindergartener, morning meetings could stretch his regulatory tolerance, and he would respond by attempting to connect with peers through silly actions. Additionally, the dynamic in the class developed with friendships with other kids who would “tempt” him to be silly at the wrong times. A Comic Strip Conversation helped open his thinking to other perspectives and the “WHY” of this situation, strategies he might use, and his understanding of consequences.

Describing the flow of the conversation with this youngster as we drew will help clarify this drawing:

1. We started by describing how morning meeting can feel a bit long and that as a result, sometimes we or classmates (characters) get a bit silly. The child wanted to attribute this behavior to a classmate and gave an example of yelling out “6-7” (you likely know the recent meme/”brainrot” language).
2. I gently detailed how I had heard of some silly behavior on the client’s part, which led to the involvement of other characters—his parents. The drawing on the top right was part of our exploration of how that behavior in class led to his parents receiving emails. We used sketched emojis to talk about how they might feel about an email describing disruptive behavior.
3. In the center of the image, we detailed actions/consequences that happen at home as a result of reports from school, e.g., restricted screen time.
4. Connected to this situation was the perspective of teachers and the client’s mom— and the client himself—that a classroom friend can sometimes pull him into being silly. We talked about the social concept of the Silly Tornado (Social Thinking^®) and what some actions/language scripts could be for telling a friend we don’t want to get “pulled in.”

This story took some review and discussion of “same but different” situations over the following weeks, but overall it was helpful, and provided a strategy so simple (story+sketch) the parent could replicate it at home! For more information on Comic Strip Conversations, read the book by Gray or check out the many tutorials available on YouTube.