Halloween
Halloween is built on blurring the line between fun and frightening. Faces are disguised, it is dark outside and you ring the bell at houses you do not know. The pictures below make the evening known in advance, so the thrill can be fun rather than overwhelming.
Halloween
A carved pumpkin, a ghost, a witch hat and a bat in front of a full moon.
About this visual support
What makes Halloween appealing is also what makes the evening hard. Masks hide faces, which removes the signals you normally read in other people. Darkness changes how familiar streets look, and ringing the bell at strangers' houses breaks every other rule you have been taught. For a child who needs predictability that is a lot of exceptions at once.
Visual support turns the evening into a plan rather than a surprise. A picture for the costume, one for where you are going, one for how many doors and one for when you head home makes the course of events known. What is known can be thrilling without becoming threatening, and that difference often decides whether the evening works.
A concrete tip is to agree on the number of doors in advance, five for instance. A clear ending means nobody has to negotiate when tiredness arrives. In Routined the evening can sit as a short routine with pictures and an end time, and the app can be tried 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.
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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.