A Thanksgiving social story is a short story about your family's actual Thanksgiving, read with your child in the days before it. Who's coming. Where you're going. What happens, roughly in order. Where the quiet room is.

It won't make the day go perfectly, and it doesn't have to. What it can do is take some of the surprises out of a day that's built almost entirely from surprises.

If you've never written one, our guide to visual stories at home covers the basics. This post is about the holiday itself. It covers what to put in and gives a sample script you can change. The last part is about using the story in the week before.

Why Can Thanksgiving Be a Hard Day?

Look at the day from your child's side for a minute.

The routine's gone. There's no school, the meal is at three instead of six, and bedtime might be wherever it lands. You might be at someone else's house, with different rooms and different rules. Relatives your child sees once a year want hugs. The kitchen's loud. The table is full of food that smells new.

None of those things is a big deal on its own. Thanksgiving tends to stack them up in one afternoon.

A visual social narrative gives your child the information ahead of time, in a form they can go back to as often as they like. Research on this approach has found mixed results, and how much a story helps varies a lot from child to child. Our research guide links the studies and what they did and didn't find. So treat the story as one thing you try, and watch what your own child does with it.

What Goes in a Thanksgiving Social Story?

The more specific it is, the more useful it is. "We go to a family dinner" tells your child very little. "We drive to Grandma Jo's yellow house and eat in the dining room with the big table" tells them a lot.

Here's what to put in, one page each where you can.

Who's coming. A real photo of each person, with the name your child actually uses. "Uncle Ray," not "your mother's brother." If you don't have a recent photo, ask the relative to text one this week. Most are happy to.

Where it is, and how you get there. A photo of the outside of the house, and one of the room where everyone eats. If it's a long drive, say so, and say what your child can do in the car.

What happens, in order. Arrive, say hello, play or wait while the grown-ups cook, eat, dessert, go home. Keep it loose. If your family's dinner time always slips, write "around three o'clock" and leave it at that.

One food your child knows. Thanksgiving tables are full of things most kids don't eat any other day. Find one food you know will be there and that your child likes, and give it its own page with a photo. It's a small detail. It gives your child something familiar to look for.

The quiet room. Ask the host ahead of time which room your child can use for a break. Take a photo of it if you can. Then put it in the story.

How to ask for a break. Use whatever your child already uses: a word, a sign, a card, a button on their communication board. The story should show the exact one.

When you go home. Knowing when the day ends can make the middle easier to picture. "After pie, we drive home" is enough.

Every family's Thanksgiving looks different. Yours might be at home with four people, at a restaurant, split across two houses, or not a Thanksgiving at all. Write the day you're actually going to have.

For more on sentence types and how many coaching sentences to use, see how to write a social story.

A Sample Thanksgiving Social Story to Adapt

This is a starting point. Change every word in brackets to match your child's real day, cut what doesn't fit, and add a photo to each page. Most of it describes what happens. Only one sentence tells your child what they can do, and it's about asking for a break.

Page 1. [On Thursday], my family has Thanksgiving at [Grandma Jo's house].

Page 2. We drive there in the car. The drive takes about [30 minutes].

Page 3. [Grandma Jo], [Uncle Ray] and [my cousins Mia and Leo] plan to be there.

Page 4. Lots of people talk at the same time on Thanksgiving. The house may be louder than usual.

Page 5. The grown-ups cook a big dinner. Dinner is usually ready around [three o'clock].

Page 6. There will be [rolls] on the table. I like [rolls].

Page 7. [The back bedroom] is a quiet room. [Grandma Jo] says I can use it when I need a break.

Page 8. If I need a break, I can [show Mom my break card] and go to [the back bedroom].

Page 9. [Grandma Jo] is happy when our family comes to visit.

Page 10. After [pie], we drive home. I sleep in my own bed.

A few notes on it. It never promises the day will be fun, or that your child will eat dinner or hug anyone. It says what's true and leaves room for how your child feels about it. If your child doesn't use a break card, change page 8 to whatever they do use. And if the day isn't at someone's house, or you're staying the night, rewrite pages 1, 2, 7 and 10 for the day you'll actually have.

For more ready-made starting points, see our social story examples.

How Do You Use the Story in the Week Before?

Start a week or so ahead, not the night before. Read it together once a day, in a calm moment, the same way you'd read any book. Bedtime works for a lot of families. Let your child look through it on their own too, if they want to.

Read it once more on the day, before you leave. If you're driving a long way, it's a good thing to read in the car.

If you're traveling. A story on your phone is only useful if it opens where you are, and Grandma's house might not have WiFi you know the password to. In StoryRetriever, once the story is in your account, you can download it to read offline. A download is saved on that one device, in that one app or browser. So do it on the phone or tablet your child will actually use, in the app or browser they'll open it in, while you're still at home on WiFi. A downloaded copy opened offline shows the version you downloaded, so if you change the story on another device, download it again.

Afterward. Ask yourself what surprised your child that wasn't in the story, and add a page for it. Then keep the story. Next November you'll only need to swap a few photos.

Making it on your phone. You don't need a printer. StoryRetriever runs in a web browser on phones, tablets, Chromebooks and computers, and there's an app for iPhone, iPad and Android. You add your own photos and type the text. Then you read it with your child on whatever device you have. The free plan includes one story you create and one child profile, which is enough for a Thanksgiving story.

Make your family's Thanksgiving story on the free plan. No credit card needed.