Room time
Go and play in your room for a while sounds simple, but the instruction contains neither content nor an ending. The pictures below give alone time a few options to choose from and a visible limit, so the pause works for both of you.
♀Girl spending time in her room
A girl sits on her bedroom floor with an open book and building blocks around her.
About this visual support
So what am I supposed to do? The question usually arrives within a minute of the door closing. Alone time is free in a way that can feel uncomfortable: nobody has said what applies, how long it lasts, or what counts as done.
A handful of pictures makes that freedom manageable without taking it away. Show three or four options that genuinely exist in the room, such as building, drawing, listening to music or looking at a book, and add one image for the ending. The child still chooses, but no longer has to choose out of nothing, which is usually where the emptiness and the repeated questions come from.
A kitchen timer or an hourglass on the floor handles the rest. When time is visible, the child does not need to come out and check how much is left, and you get the break the moment was meant to be. Routined combines pictures and a timer in the same routine, and the app can be tried for 14 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.