Put on the nightgown
The fabric comes down over the head, the sleeves twist, and for a couple of seconds your child cannot see anything at all. The visual support below breaks those seconds into steps you can predict, so the nightgown ends up right without the evening losing its calm.
♂Put on the nightgown
A child pulls a striped nightgown over the head.
About this visual support
What the skin feels matters more than we tend to think at bedtime. A seam that rubs the neck, a gown twisted around the waist or a sleeve stuck halfway can keep a child awake long after the light goes out. For children on the autism spectrum, details like these often decide whether the evening keeps moving or comes to a halt.
Visual support helps by making the order predictable before the fabric blocks the view. Your child can see what happens in the next second: gown over the head, arms through the sleeves, hem pulled down. Add a final frame where the hem gets smoothed out at the bottom, because that is usually the moment that settles whether the garment feels right. Turn the nightgown right side out and lay it on the bed before toothbrushing, so nobody has to untangle inside-out sleeves with tiredness already in the body.
In Routined you can build the whole evening with the nightgown in its place in the sequence. The pictures here are free to download, and the app can be tried for fourteen days at no cost.