Generalizing Social Thinking Concepts

If you are familiar with Michelle Garcia Winner's Social Thinking Concepts, then you know that it is important to generalize these concepts across all environments. One of our student's teams came up with the idea to have a social thinking notebook for him so that whenever situations occurred they could write about them in the notebook.

For example, there is a page that reads, "I am a superflex kid when I....." that they continually add to as situations come up (e.g., when I let my sister play with the toys I am playing with, when I let my friends pretend to be who they want to be). There is also a page that has examples of when he is not a superflex kid.

Another example is a 5-point emotional scale page that they continually add to.

One aspect that has worked well is that as situations are repeated or occur again, the tutors or parents can encourage him to reference his notebook (e.g., in regards to a behavior mapping question to how will your friend feel if you do that, he can look at the previous answer and it serves as a visual reminder).