After preschool
At the gate you often meet a child who has spent every ounce of attention holding it together in a group for eight hours. The pictures below take over what would otherwise have to be said out loud about the coat, the backpack and the way home.
♂Boy outside preschool
A boy with a backpack waves outside the preschool building, where a clock sits above the roof.
♂Boy heading home from preschool
Carrying his backpack, a boy waves in front of the preschool while an orange arrow points away from the building.
About this visual support
Pickup looks calm from the outside. Your child has played, eaten and got through the day, and now you just need coats on and out the door. Yet this is often exactly where everything collapses. Holding it together in a group costs energy, and by the time the door opens the account is empty. Words that normally work at home become one more thing to process.
Visual support helps because it switches channel. Instead of more instructions your child gets a picture to look at, and you can stay quiet while the picture does the work. Four images usually cover the journey home: shoes, coat, bag, door. Keep the order identical every day, including the days you are late. A concrete trick is to hang the strip at your child's eye level by the shelf rather than on a noticeboard made for adults. For children with ADHD this overloaded end-of-day moment is often the hardest one, and a picture asks less of them than a question does.
In Routined you can set the walk home up as a fixed routine on your phone and try it for fourteen days at no cost.
Use this image in a schedule
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