Get dressed for sport

About this visual support

Count the parts of a sports change: base layer, shirt, shorts, socks, shin guards, laced shoes and sometimes a hair tie. That is more steps than an ordinary morning outfit, and most of them have a fixed place in the chain. If the guards go on before the socks are pulled up, the child has to start over, and a restart halfway through changing is exactly the kind of setback that makes a whole session feel impossible.

A visual schedule solves it by locking the order in place. The child sees that the sock comes before the guard and that the shoes are laced last, and does not have to hold the whole sequence in mind while the changing room echoes. A tip that saves time: stack the garments in the same order as the pictures the evening before, so the bag matches the card sequence when it counts. With several activities a week, each sport can have its own card series, since swimming and indoor hockey share neither the parts nor the order.

Routined lets you save the change as its own routine with pictures and timing, so the same order travels along to every practice.