Apply cream

#cream#skin care#moisturize#tube#skin

Cream is cold when it meets skin, and it keeps feeling sticky long after the tube is closed. The visual support below shows exactly which body part is next, so that the touch never arrives without warning.

A man squeezes a dab of cream from a tube onto his forearm.

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Man squeezing out cream

A man squeezes a dab of cream from a tube onto his forearm.

Holding a tube in one hand, a man rubs cream into his forearm with the other.

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Man rubbing cream into his arm

Holding a tube in one hand, a man rubs cream into his forearm with the other.

Two hands hold a tube and squeeze cream into an open palm.

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Cream in the palm

Two hands hold a tube and squeeze cream into an open palm.

A man spreads a blob of cream across his shoulder with his hand.

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Man applying cream to his shoulder

A man spreads a blob of cream across his shoulder with his hand.

About this visual support

What makes creaming difficult is rarely the cream itself. It is that the skin has no idea where the next touch will land. A hand sweeping across the shoulder, then the stomach, then behind the knees delivers a stream of sensation with no order to it. For a child who is sensitive to touch that becomes too much very quickly, and the resistance starts the moment the tube comes out of the cabinet.

Visual support flips the direction of the situation. Instead of being creamed, your child becomes the one keeping the order: arms first, then legs, then back. Body parts on cards act as a map, and the map makes the touch predictable even when it still feels unpleasant. A tip that tends to slow the pace down is to always begin at the hands, where skin tolerates most, and save the face for last. Many children on the autism spectrum manage the whole routine if they know exactly how many spots remain.

In Routined you can save this as its own sequence with the body parts you actually use, and test it for fourteen days at no cost.