Be kind to your brother

#siblings#kind#brother#kindness#caring

Kind is a word adults repeat often and children can rarely convert into action. The pictures below swap the abstract instruction for small things that can actually be done to a sibling, right here and now.

One boy rests a hand on his brother's shoulder and both smile beneath a red heart.

Boy being kind to his brother

One boy rests a hand on his brother's shoulder and both smile beneath a red heart.

About this visual support

Kind describes a feeling, not a move. When a child hears the instruction in the middle of a fight over a toy, there is no obvious next action: hand something over, say sorry, walk away, wait? Without an answer the instruction is just one more telling-off, and a child who is already angry gets angrier from not knowing what is expected.

Visual support works here because it turns the word into scenes. One picture of a child handing over a car, one of two children sitting side by side, one of somebody asking before taking. Your child can choose among them, and choosing makes the behaviour something they do rather than something they get told off for. A tip: bring the pictures out while things are calm, not mid-argument, and go through them as a rehearsal for the next time the siblings have to share. Practising social interaction outside the live moment is the part that most often gets skipped.

Routined lets you gather these pictures into a sibling routine of your own and try the setup for fourteen days at no cost.

Use this image in a schedule

Build your own visual schedule with this image and download it as a print-ready PDF. Completely free.