Everyone feels angry sometimes, but learning how to manage that anger in healthy, constructive ways is an important step in building emotional maturity and self-regulation skills.
If you’re looking for strategies to help your child or students to learn these skills, social stories can be a powerful resource.
Written from a child’s perspective, social stories provide a narrative outline of common scenarios and provide appropriate responses to help children practice skills like calming down, walking away, or asking for help.
Want to get started? We’ve put together customizable social story templates on topics like “What Should I Do When I’m Really Upset?” and “Making Calming Choices,” and which address situations that may frustrate a child or student.
Bonus Tip: Use one of our customizable social story templates that includes a character from a book or a theme that is of particular interest to your child or student to help them engage with the social story.
By teaching emotional regulation skills and modeling appropriate behaviors, your child or student will learn how to respond to strong emotions like anger or frustration in a constructive way.
Create your own social story about anger or choose from one of our customizable social story templates!
These behavior stories may benefit your students. They can be downloaded, saved and edited to suit your needs. The * notation indicates the story is formatted in a Power Point presentation and the ** notation indicates a Power Point with sound narration. Each Power Point has animation included on each slide. Some occur automatically – some occur on a “click”. Feel free to send comments or questions to [email protected].
Beethoven Social Story (behaviors of concern: hitting, language, and pushing)
What Should I Do When I’m Really Upset**
Sometimes Bob the Builder Gets Angry
What Can I Do? (Preschool through 1st or 2nd grade)
What Should I Do When I’m Really Upset? (Preschool through 1st grade)
What Should I Do When I’m Really Upset (SIA DOG) – Preschool/Elementary; Special Interest Area (Dog); includes Power Card
Pictures to Request Help with the above resource “What Should I Do When I’m Really Upset?”
What Should I Do When I’m Really Upset – 5pt Scale
When I Feel Angry (Boardmaker Choices)
When I’m Upset I Can (Written Choices)
A Detective Story (Topic: Solving an issue when you’re upset)
Feelings and Anger (Topic: Coping skills to help when sad and to replace hitting, pushing. Template for personalized photos)
Feelings and Anger Clipart (Topic: Coping skills to help when sad and to replace hitting, pushing. Story completed with Clipart illustrations)
This resource was authored by Watson Institute Special Education Consultant, Phillip Mauskapf, MS, MT-BC
If you have questions or concerns about the Watson Institute’s use of this information, please contact us.