Social Stories

Social Stories on Nookly are designed to support emotional growth, foster independence, and reduce anxiety—especially during moments of transition, uncertainty, or new experiences. These stories are particularly helpful for children who benefit from structured, visual guidance and clear, supportive language.

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Whether you're a therapist preparing a child for their first haircut or an educator helping students navigate classroom routines, Social Stories give you a flexible, easy-to-edit tool to create personalized narratives that resonate deeply with each child you support.

Here's how to create one from scratch.👇

Every great Social Story starts with a specific goal. Think about the skill, situation, or routine you'd like to support your learner with—whether it's preparing for a new school, visiting the doctor, saying goodbye in the morning, or learning to ask for help.

🪄 Need ideas or looking for inspiration? Check out the Community Library to explore fun, creative templates created by our team and that others have used!

Once you’ve selected your topic, it’s time to shape the story to match your learner’s world.

If you already have a child profile saved, you can simply select it from your list of kiddos. If not, creating a new child profile is easy and can be done manually by filling in your child’s details, or you can upload a photo to automatically generate an avatar that reflects their look!

Personalizing the profile helps ensure that the story reflects the learner’s developmental stage, cultural background, and individual needs—making it feel familiar and relevant from the very first page.

👉 Need help creating a child profile? Check out this guide for a step-by-step walkthrough.

Now it’s time to shape the story’s language to meet your learner’s needs. Each story is generated with clear, concrete language that aligns with best practices for learning, but every caption is fully editable, allowing you to tweak the wording, tone, or phrasing to match your learner’s comprehension level or communication style.✨

💡 If you'd prefer to start over, you can always click “Regenerate” to produce a completely new version of the story while keeping your child’s personalization intact.

📖 Need help with editing? Here's a step-by-step guide.

Once your captions are in place, you’ll move into Edit Mode, which opens up more control over your story's visual and text presentation. This is where you can fine-tune everything from the layout and formatting to the image expressions, background, and character actions.

👉 With Edit Mode, you'll be able to:

You have up to 20 image regenerations per story, giving you the freedom to experiment until everything looks just right. ✨

🎨 Want to learn how to edit images? Here's a more detailed guide.

Voila! Your story is ready, and you can flip through your story to enjoy the magic you’ve created!

🎧 If you've enabled the read-aloud option, the story will also play with narration, which can be especially helpful for learners with reading difficulties or short attention spans.

👉 You can always find your story again later by clicking “Leave Child View” and heading to your Reading Nook, where all your saved and edited stories live. From there, you can revisit your story anytime, make changes, and print it! 📚

If you’ve created a Social Story that really works for your learner, it’s often helpful to have it available across multiple settings—whether at home, at school, or in therapy sessions.

With just a few clicks, you can:

📬 Created a story you’re especially proud of? We’d love to hear about it!

Send us your story, and it might be featured in our weekly professional spotlight or resource library.