Tell A Story With Tommy: Consequences app for iPhone and iPad

Tell A Story With Tommy: Consequences is an application that was developed to provide visual examples of the consequences of the choices children make. This application was designed particularly for children with a diagnosis of autism, although it will also be useful to teach cause and effect and consequences for all children.

Time is a concept that develops later in children. Concepts such as “wait”, “tomorrow”, and “later” are not easy for them to understand. Children with a language disorder will develop this concept later than their normally developing peers.

Another concept that involves time is being able to predict the future. As a result, a young child cannot understand that their behavior now will affect what happens later on. That requires the ability to understand the concept of time and also to be able to look at the event from another person’s point of view.

Tell A Story With Tommy: Consequences takes typical childhood events such as playing with a friend, and through the context of a story, gives your child the opportunity to make choices. The story continues based on the choices made and ends with the consequence of those choices. This application gives your child a visual story over time. The repeated, overlapping verbal and visual story will help your child visualize and understand the consequences of behavior choices.

Who will benefit from this app: Children with a diagnosis of autism, children with a diagnosis of receptive and/or expressive language disorder, young children who are just developing the concepts of cause and effect, and children who need to learn the consequences for their choices.

What can I expect from this app?
-The consequences are built into simple stories
-The child has the opportunity to make choices from the first page of the story
-The option of saying “I’m sorry” is built into the app.
-Good choices are paired with green smiley faces. Poor choices are paired with red sad
faces which gives another visual cue for making the right choice.
-The pages have hidden animations.
-The “Found It” page lists all of the hidden animations for added seek-and-find fun.
-We included a 14 item quiz which relates to the stories in the app. You can use the quiz
to measure improvement and to use as a point of discussion regarding making good
choices.

We hope this app leads to a conversation between adult and child regarding behavior and making good choices.

Happy Talking!