Get clothes ready
Getting clothes ready means thinking about a morning that has not happened yet, with weather you cannot see. That is tricky when evening drowsiness is already in. The visual support below makes the planning concrete.
♂Folding clothes
A person folds a blue t-shirt and places it on a stack of folded shirts. Next to it are a stack of yellow folded shirts and a pair of green pants on a hanger.
About this visual support
It takes a small time-trip to handle this. You have to picture tomorrow, try to remember what kind of day it is, guess whether it will be cold or wet, and do all that while the evening light is already slowing the house down. For many children it is the time perspective that trips them up, not the clothes themselves.
With visual support, you do not have to hold everything in mind at once. A calendar, a weather picture, clothing categories and a place where the outfit gets laid out in order – the steps turn into a checklist that gives the future-thinking something to lean on. It also becomes easier for an adult to back the child up without taking the whole task over, because it is visible where the child is getting stuck.
A concrete tip: start from tomorrow, not from the pile of clothes. Say first what kind of day it is and what is happening, then let the child choose accordingly. In the Routined app you can tie the laying-out to the same evening routine as toothbrushing and a book, so it is not forgotten once tiredness arrives.