Hair Pulling Social Story by Teach Simple

About this resource

What's inside this resource

A first-person social story walks a child through the feelings that often trigger hair pulling — anger, frustration, and excitement — before explaining, across three parallel pages, why pulling hair is never an acceptable response: it hurts the other person, makes them sad, and can cost a friendship. The story validates each feeling by name ('It is OK to feel angry... frustrated... excited') before drawing a clear line between the feeling and the behavior ('But it is never OK to pull hair'). It closes with the child stating a personal commitment to remember not to pull anyone's hair. Each page pairs one short sentence with a full illustrated spread, matching the simple, repetitive structure typical of a social story for a young or developing reader.

Product description

From the author

Social stories use a patient and reassuring tone to teach children about social situations in a way that can be easily understood. Social stories are particularly useful for children on the autistic spectrum for whom social cues can be challenging and who often suffer anxiety if they do not know what to expect from a situation however social stories can also be useful for any child who is struggling to understand a situation or concept or needs help to understand a social skill or social cue, expectations, perspectives, common responses or is troubled about an upcoming event.

This social story is to support a child who has been pulling other people’s hair. It explains that this hurts others and is not acceptable.

These books should be used over and over to reinforce the point so I would suggest either putting the pages into a display book or laminating and binding them.

Clipart images courtesy of Kari Bolt.

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Learning objectives

Identify and name personal feelings (angry, frustrated, excited) that can trigger the target behavior.
Recognize that pulling another person's hair causes real harm, regardless of which feeling triggered it.
State a personal commitment to stop the target behavior, modeled on the story's own closing line.

Teaching tips

Read the story repeatedly with the child, since each page builds toward the same 'so I should never pull hair' conclusion through a different consequence (hurts others, makes them sad, loses a friend).
Validate the underlying feeling first, as the story itself does on page 6 ('It is OK to feel angry... frustrated... excited'), before addressing the behavior on the following page.
Pair the final page's personal commitment ('I will remember to not pull anyone's hair') with a follow-up check-in, since the story ends on a self-directed reminder rather than an external rule.

Skills covered

Emotional identification — the child names three specific triggering feelings (angry, frustrated, excited) before connecting them to the target behavior.
Cause-and-effect understanding of behavior — the child follows three separate consequences of hair pulling (physical hurt, sadness, loss of friendship) across three parallel pages.
Self-regulation commitment — the child ends the story with a first-person statement of intent to stop the behavior.

Good to know

Questions teachers ask about this resource

How does the story address the feelings that lead to the behavior?

It validates them directly — the story states 'It is OK to feel angry... frustrated... excited' before explaining that pulling hair is never an acceptable response to those feelings.

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Resource details

Concepts & topics

Core concepts

emotional regulation
social story
behavior support
cause and effect

Topics

social story behavior hurting others hair pulling

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