Bedtime routine
Six things have to happen in the right order, with a child whose battery is almost out. The bedtime routine is executive function on very low energy, which is one of the hardest combinations in a child's day. The visual support below lifts some of the thinking off their shoulders.
♂Bedtime Routine
An illustration of a person's bedtime routine. First, the person is brushing their teeth. Next, the person is reading a book. Finally, the person is sleeping peacefully in bed.
♀Bedtime routine
A girl in bed is brushing her teeth and reading a book. A moon and stars are visible in the background.
About this visual support
The lovely thing about a bedtime routine is that it is predictable. The hard thing is that it has to happen exactly when planning skills are at their most scattered. Toothbrush, pyjamas, toilet, water, story, lights off — the list is short but asks the child to keep track of what comes next while the body is already drifting toward sleep. For many children the routine falls apart not from refusal but from losing the thread.
Visual support takes over the job of being that thread. When each step sits as a card in a visible row, the child does not have to hold the sequence in their head — it lives on the counter or on the door. The remaining energy goes into actually doing the steps instead of being swallowed by the effort of remembering what follows brushing teeth. That is the difference between navigating and just walking.
A specific tip: make the bedtime row shorter than you think you need. Four to five cards is often enough, and a short row feels possible to finish on tired legs. The sequence can be built in Routined so the same cards appear every night without an adult having to set them up again.