Waiting Is Hard: A Social Narrative

Waiting respected as real work: why it feels enormous, jobs for hands and brain, and the arithmetic that helps most, a perfect lifetime record of surviving waits. Includes a note for grown-ups.

Short first-person stories you read with your child before something happens, so they know what to expect, what they can do, and that they'll be okay.

Made for PreK to Grade 2. This library is written and drawn for young children.

When and how to read

Read it before, together, in a calm moment. Start in the days before the moment it prepares a child for, and read it again right before that moment. Come back to it after, and notice together what went well. This is preparation, not a bedtime story, and it is never read during a meltdown or used as a punishment.