Put the dishes on the counter
Clearing the table is two things: remembering and carrying. The plate has to be lifted, held level and set down in the right place, and somewhere along that route many people lose the thread. The pictures below show the whole stretch.
♀Put the dishes on the counter
An adult places a stack of plates on the kitchen counter beside a bowl and a mug.
About this visual support
Clearing up looks like an action but is really a transport. What has to happen does not happen where the task starts but several metres away, and along the route the plate must stay level while the eyes need to look ahead. For younger children that is motorically demanding, and for anyone who loses the thread easily it is long enough for something else to turn up on the way.
Visual support shows the destination, not only the action. A picture of the table and one of the counter gives the task an ending you can see, which is the whole difference from an instruction that just says clear up.
A concrete tip is to let the child carry one thing at a time, cutlery in one hand and plate in the other. Two small trips get finished more often than one big one. In Routined the clearing can sit as a step directly after the meal, and the app can be tried for fourteen days at no cost.
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Take the visual supports with you
In Routined you build schedules from these pictures, add timers and voice instructions, and your child follows the day on their own.
* 14-day free trial included for new users.