Hi, I'm Maysa.

Lion mAIn Stories started because my autistic son, Isaac, taught me how powerful personalised social stories could be. I'm not really a founder. I'm a working mum trying to make life a little easier for families like mine.

Like many autistic children, Isaac found new experiences overwhelming. Social stories helped him anticipate what was coming and reduced some of the anxiety around unfamiliar situations. The problem was that generic stories weren't enough. At the time, he wasn't reading independently and often wouldn't stay engaged with stories that didn't feel relevant to him.

What worked was seeing himself in the story.

I started creating personalised social stories using his own photos, pictures of places we would visit, and realistic images gathered from therapists, websites and anywhere else I could find them. When the story was about him, he paid attention. He wanted to read it again. He could picture what was coming next.

The challenge was that creating each story took hours.

One night, after spending yet another evening piecing together photos and text, I complained to my husband that new situations were coming faster than I could make the stories. There had to be a better way.

What began as an attempt to solve my own problem slowly became Lion mAIn Stories.

At first, it was just for our family. Then a close friend who also has an autistic child started using it. Seeing how much time it saved her made me realise other families might be facing the same challenge.

Because the reality is that parenting a neurodivergent child often comes with extra appointments, extra planning, extra paperwork, extra therapies and extra mental load. Most parents are already doing the very best they can with the time and energy they have.

If this tool can save a family a few hours, reduce a child's anxiety, or make a new experience feel a little less overwhelming, then it's doing exactly what I hoped it would do.

My goal has never been to replace the care, creativity and knowledge that parents bring to their children.

It's to help them get there faster.

Everything about Lion mAIn Stories is built around a simple idea that has guided me as a parent:

Meet children where they are, then gently guide them to where they need to be.