Wait for the bill

About this visual support

The end of a restaurant meal is not decided by your family. The food is gone, the ice cream is finished and the child is mentally done, but the bill comes when the staff reach your table. From where the child sits, nothing at all appears to be happening. Waiting of that kind, with no visible end and nothing to do, is harder to carry than a long wait whose length is known.

A visual schedule breaks that last quarter of an hour into things that can be seen happening: catch the waiter's eye, ask for the bill, wait at the table, pay, put your coat on, walk out. The waiting becomes one step among others instead of an empty gap after the meal. A simple trick is to ask for the bill when you order dessert, which shrinks the hardest stretch at the end into something the child can sit through.

In Routined you can keep the restaurant trip as a routine where the waiting step carries a timer, so the child watches the time move rather than asking about it.