My heart clenched when the kindergarten teacher asked, “Will you write a social narrative for my student about death? His mother just died unexpectedly.”
My mind instantly started whirring with questions. How do you explain to a kindergarten student with special needs that his mother has died?
There were a few things I knew this social narrative about death needed to accomplish:
- It needed to use simple language to explain difficult concepts.
- It needed to be custom-created to fit the after-life beliefs of this child and his family.
- I needed this precious boy to hear that his mother had not abandoned him and that she still loved him.
How we used this social narrative:
- I created the story and sent it to dad for approval. This was their story and I wanted him to have a say in the creation process.
- Next, I had dad send me pictures of the little boy and his mom. We put them in the story to make it special for him.
- I made two copies of the story. One I sent home for his family to read, and the other we kept at school and read together. The little boy was encouraged to go look at it whenever he felt sad or missed his mom.
After writing this story I knew I had to share it with as many young kiddos as possible. It is one of the first resources I put in my TpT store. It is free and will always be free.
This resource is also 100% customizable. The text is there for you to use as a guide, but it can easily be changed to fit your specific situation. There are no pictures. I encourage you to obtain pictures of the child and his/her loved one to insert in the document.
I hope and pray that you never have to use this social story. But if you do, I want you to know where to find it. You can grab it in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
