How to hold the session

• Set the story up on your own first. It takes about two minutes and it is easier than doing it while a child watches.
• Read the theme you have picked. If it carries a warning, read the safety guidance before you start.
• Know your reporting pathway. Not because you expect a disclosure, but because deciding what to do in the moment is the worst time to decide it.
• Decide how long you have. Nine scenes runs about fifteen to twenty-five minutes at a child's pace, and it is fine to stop long before the end.

Hand over as much of the setup as you reasonably can. Choosing the world, the animal and the name is often the first decision a child has been offered all week, and it changes how the rest of the session goes.

Then point at the four buttons along the bottom of the screen and say, in your own words: you can stop this whenever you want, you can skip any question, you can change the story, and you can finish it early. Then mean it. The first time a child tests one of those and it works, the whole thing becomes safer.

Be honest about what it is. Something like: this is a made-up story about a fox, and you get to decide what the fox does. Do not tell the child the story is about them, because it is not, and the distance is the part that helps.

• Read it aloud if the child would like that. Let them read it if they would rather.
• Let the child choose without commentary. Do not steer them towards the brave option.
• Ask about the character, never about the child. Ask what the fox is feeling, not what you are feeling.
• Do not ask why. Children hear it as an accusation. Ask what, where, or what happened next.
• Leave a gap after a question and count to ten before you fill it. Most of the useful answers arrive in that gap.
• A shrug is an answer. Take it and move on.
• Do not praise a choice. Praise turns the story into a test with a right answer in it.
• If the child rewrites the story, follow them. The change they made is the information, not a derailment.

The panel underneath the story gives you three or four open questions after every choice. You are not meant to ask all of them. Pick one, or none.

It happens. A child moves from what the fox is carrying to what they are carrying, usually without announcing it. What you do in the next ten seconds matters more than anything else in the session.

• Stop the story. Do not carry on to the next scene.
• Do not ask a question. Not one. Not a gentle one. Questions at this point can contaminate an account and make it harder for a child to be helped later.
• Say something plain and non-committal: thank you for telling me, that was a hard thing to say, I am glad you did.
• Never promise to keep it secret. If you are asked, say you might need to tell someone whose job it is to help, and that you will tell them what is happening.
• Write down what was said in the child's exact words, as close to the moment as you can, with the date and time, and without adding your interpretation.
• Then follow your reporting obligations.

The safety guidance sets this out in full, including what to do if you are a parent rather than a practitioner.

Finish gently is not a failure button. It moves the story to a settling scene from wherever you are, so a session never ends in the middle of a feeling. Use it whenever the child has had enough, including at scene two.

Afterwards, do something ordinary. A drink, a walk, a game, anything that is not about the story. Do not debrief the child, do not explain what you think their choices meant, and do not ask them to reflect on it.

It cannot assess a child, and it does not produce a result. There is no scoring behind the choices and no profile being built. If you find yourself reading the pattern of choices as evidence about a child, stop, because that is the point at which a story tool turns into a bad assessment instrument.

It is also not an interview. Anything gathered through a story is not evidence and must never be treated as such. Where a forensic account is needed, that is a job for a trained interviewer, and using this first can make their job harder.

If a child needs therapy, this is not it. Used by a qualified counsellor it can be one activity inside a session. Used at home it is a way of sitting alongside a child who cannot talk about it directly, and nothing more than that.