SUMMARY

A parent sits across from you and says, "I just want to be able to ask my child about his day and have him tell me about it." It is one of the most common requests we get, and it usually turns into a WH question goal that never quite goes anywhere. In this episode, Nicole shares the Personal Narrative Builder, the simple, flexible strategy she has used with nearly every student on her caseload to help kids relay real experiences to real people. She walks through where it came from, how it works step by step, and why it does a better job at the thing teams are actually asking for than drilling questions ever could.

KEY TOPICS + TIMESTAMPS

(00:30) The request almost every one of us has gotten: "I just want him to tell me about his day"

(04:49) Why this matters so much for families and for the child, including safety and connection

(05:30) The traditional move: writing a WH question goal, and why Nicole is not a fan

(06:57) The pilot question problem and what drilling WH questions actually teaches

(09:09) Everything that looks like progress is not progress

(11:21) Introducing the Personal Narrative Builder and what "personal narrative" really means here

(13:13) Not a formal story retell. The foundational skill of relaying an experience

(13:50) Why telling about your day is more complex than it sounds (recall, sequence, vocabulary, delivery)

(15:35) Why Nicole starts with what is happening right now, in the moment

(16:00) The student who started it all: a multimodal communicator who was not using verbs

(20:50) The idea from a colleague, Miss Alyssa, that changed everything: use the visual schedule

(23:00) Highlighting verbs on the schedule, then the word bank, then fading the support

(28:00) Writing a session recap together and why letting kids watch us write matters

(30:30) Handing the recap to the teacher: the moment it becomes real communication

(31:57) The sentence frames: Today I ___, I was with ___, we ___, it was ___

(34:22) Why Nicole expanded this to her whole caseload and how targets shift per child

(36:30) Communication for safety: kids being able to report if someone hurts them

(37:00) Step 1: pick your sentence frames about something happening right now

(38:12) Step 2: scaffold for the child (photos, icons, word banks, AAC modeling, past tense)

(41:13) Every version is valid, from pointing at one picture to writing full sentences

(42:30) Step 3: recap together at the end of the session (not a test, not a quiz)

(43:27) Why this makes a child-led session so easy: the agenda lives in the last five minutes

(45:51) Step 4: the child delivers the message to a real person and gets a real response

(48:00) Taking it home: typing the recap as an email to mom, dad, or a sibling

(48:57) Giving families a window and a better way in than "what did you do today?"

(50:13) Real emails from real kids and why grammatically imperfect is completely fine

(51:30) Communication going both ways: families sending photos and videos back

(53:30) A Collective member's win: the child who would not put the paper in his backpack

(57:06) Why this is a better path to the WH question skills teams ask for

(59:10) Wrap-up, the resource inside The Child-Led Collective, and an invitation

RESOURCES AND LINKS MENTIONED

- The Child-Led Collective membership: childled.org/collective

- The Personal Narrative Builder workbook and implementation video (inside The Collective)

- The Child-Led Autism Summit (coming this August)

ABOUT NICOLE

Nicole Casey, MS, CCC-SLP, is the founder of The Child-Led SLP and creator of The Child-Led Collective, a membership community for SLPs, OTs, and special educators who want to practice with confidence using a child-led, neuroaffirming approach. She has spent more than 12 years working exclusively with autistic children and hosts the Let Them Lead podcast. Learn more at childled.org.