Holiday
On holiday almost nothing lines up with home. A different bed, meals at odd hours, days that never repeat. The visual support below gives the unfamiliar a shape your child can actually hold on to.
Beach items
Sunglasses, a sun hat, a beach ball, a palm tree and a starfish in front of a shining sun.
Packed suitcase
An open suitcase filled with sunglasses, a beach ball, a towel and a book under a sun.
About this visual support
Travelling pulls a child away from every fixed point an ordinary day rests on. The kitchen is not where it should be, breakfast arrives late, and the evening lands in the wrong order. What unsettles is rarely the holiday itself but the loss of outside structure: nothing tells the child what comes next anymore.
This is why a row of pictures that follows the journey rather than the home routine works so well. One card for packing, one for the car or train, one for where you will sleep, one for the first thing you will do on arrival. The child gets an order to lean on again, even when the surroundings are entirely new.
Lay the cards out the evening before a long travel day and walk through them together calmly, so tomorrow already feels familiar before anyone has got up. The visual support is free to download and print. If you would rather carry it in your pocket, try Routined free for fourteen days and build the whole holiday schedule in the app.