Before the train
The train leaves at 07:42 whether you are on the platform or not, and that single minute colours everything before it. The visual support below turns the time until departure into something a child can see rather than something only you are anxious about.
♂Boy waiting for the train
A boy stands on the platform while a dashed arrow points toward a red train on the tracks.
About this visual support
A departure time is unyielding in a way that few other fixed points in family life are. Dinner can be pushed back ten minutes; a train cannot. Children feel that difference even when they cannot name it, and it usually gets worse because the adult keeps checking the clock and hurrying things along with their voice.
Visual support moves the time pressure out of your voice and into something you can both look at. Set the preparation out as a short row of pictures with the departure last, ideally a clock or a train image as the end point, so the destination stays in sight the whole way. A tip specific to trains: make the final step something pleasant that belongs to the journey, like choosing a seat or getting the snacks out, so the row ends in anticipation rather than in stress. Your child then has a reason to keep up the pace that has nothing to do with you getting irritated.
In Routined you can build the travel day as its own routine with times and pictures, and try the app 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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