Roughhouse

About this visual support

Wild play meets a real need: wrestling, tumbling and pushing against someone gives the body pressure and speed that can be both fun and calming. At the same time the threshold sits close to where laughter turns to tears, and many children cannot feel for themselves when it is starting to become too much.

A visual support that shows how the play runs, how it begins, which rules apply and how it ends, gives your child something to lean on. For some children, for example children with ADHD, this kind of vigorous movement is a way to regulate the body, and a clear stop picture makes the wind-down less abrupt.

A hands-on trick: agree on a shared stop signal, like a flat hand or the word pause, and link it to the picture for the end, so everyone knows the rule before the play starts. With Routined you can add roughhousing as its own slot with a calm activity straight afterwards, so the shift from wild to still becomes gentler.