Drive to work
The clock decides, even when your child would rather stay home. Traffic queues, red lights and a meeting start time all set the door-closing moment. The steps below show why the trip starts now and where it ends.
♂Driving to work
A smiling man driving a blue car along a road that leads to a building marked with a briefcase.
About this visual support
Driving to work is not a routine the child has any say in — it is shaped by traffic lights, queues and a boss waiting at the other end. For a small child watching the parent leave, that logic is invisible: it makes no sense that mum or dad has to go now, when home is the cosiest place around.
Visual schedules make the timetable visible. The child sees the car, the road, the daycare and an arrow pointing back to home later in the day. Moving from the hallway sofa to the car seat gets easier when there is a picture of where the trip ends, not just one of it starting. That softens the familiar feeling of being left without an explanation.
A concrete tip: include a picture of the reunion — who picks the child up in the afternoon and what you usually do together afterwards. It shifts the focus from absence to the return. To tie the whole morning together from wake-up to goodbye hug, you can build a sequence in Routined where the car is one labelled step in the order.