Wash under arms
The armpit is ticklish on the outside and private on the inside. When the hand comes in from an unfamiliar angle, the reaction is often to flinch or clamp the arm down. The visual support below shows the grip and the motion in advance, so the body gets a heads-up.
♀Wash under arms
A woman washing her underarm with soap and water.
About this visual support
The armpit is one of those body parts with two problems at once. The outside reacts with the laughing spasm that tickling triggers, and the inside feels private, a place where a hand, even the child's own, should arrive with warning. When someone else is washing, both problems fire together and the arm comes down like a lid.
Visual support makes both of those warnings visible. The child sees a card of the arm lifted with support against the head, then a card of the washcloth coming in from the side, then a card of the actual wash stroke, top to bottom, not back and forth, which triggers tickling most. Knowing the order means it is no longer a surprise.
A tip specific to this step: ask the child to count out loud to three while keeping the arm up. It pulls focus from skin to numbers and dulls the tickle reflex. To connect the armpits with the rest of the shower routine, you can build the order in Routined and let the cards appear one at a time.