How I feel
Pausing to describe how you feel takes both words and a safe moment to do it in. Pictures give a child something to start from instead of an empty question. See how the support works below.
♂How I feel
A child with a thought bubble showing happy, neutral and sad faces.
About this visual support
The question how are you is easy to ask but hard to answer. It requires the child to pause, turn their gaze inward, find the right words and dare to share them, all at once. For many children that is too many steps at the same time, and the answer becomes a shrug or a fine that is not true.
Visual support breaks it down into something graspable. When the child can point at a picture that fits instead of forming a sentence, the threshold gets much lower. The picture gives a starting word to build on, and the conversation can grow from there at the child's own pace, without the pressure to produce a finished answer right away.
A tip: make the check-in a calm moment without demands, for example at bedtime, so it becomes a habit rather than an interrogation. The regularity makes it easier to open up. In the Routined app you can add a recurring question about how the day feels, with pictures to point at, so the child gets used to putting words to their inner world.
Use this image in a schedule
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