Transitions can be hard, especially for neurodiverse kiddos. We had a lot of trouble transitioning William from fun activities to not so fun activities, which makes sense. Why would he want to stop doing something that he is currently enjoying!
When was time time leave the park/zoo/beach he would act as if I was kidnapping him. The crying, screaming, eloping, and down right resisting always left me in a cold sweat. The concerned looks from strangers was always an added treat. At home, we had the same issues transitioning him off of screen time. So much so that we took screen time away completely.
Once COVID-19 came around we needed to figure out how to make screen time work. Our county had the worst COVID-19 numbers in all of California. We were in the purple threat level for some time. It’s safe to assume that we spent a lot of time at home.
Like most of you know, being stuck inside with high energy child is exhausting. I needed a break. So we had to figure out how to make screen time work without creating daily tantrums.
Visual Timer
The first thing that worked for us was using a visual timer. This was perfect for William becuase it wasn’t visually busy, like a lot of the other visual timers, and it was easy for him to “read”. The green light turns on once the timer starts and when there’s 25% of the time left the yellow light turns on with a single beep. Once the time was up the red light flashes and the timer starts to beep. You can adjust the volume and you can even turn the sound completely off. The ability to turn off the sound was a necessity since my husband is sensitive to sound.
This is how we use it for William:
- Sometimes we give him a set time right out of the gate (“Você pode assistir TV por 15 minutos.” / “You can watch TV for 15 minutes”. ).
- We set the timer and when the green light turns on we say “Green/Verde!” and he says “green/verde” back to us so we know that he knows the timer has started.
- When the yellow flashes, indicating that he has 25% of his time left, we will say “yellow/amarelo” and he says it back to us. Again, this way we know that he knows time is almost up. Sometimes he does this unprompted.
- When the timer goes off I walk over to the timer turn it off and we transition to the next activity.
- 90% of the time he transitions without incident. If there is an issue then that’s an indicator that he’s either tired or hungry.
Sometimes I need him distracted a little while so I can get some work done or make calls. During these times I don’t set the timer until my work is done.
We even bring the timer along to his speech therapy appointments to help him transition from his play breaks to table work. It works so well that his therapist is getting one for her office!
Transition to something fun!
The next thing that we realized was that we were transitioning all wrong. We were going from activities that my son liked to activities that he didn’t like.
We should have been transitioning from a fun activity to an another fun activity. We started using popsicles/picolés as the alternative activity. Popsicles were perfect because they have a finite amount of time built into them so there’s no need to transition off of them.
Other good activities could be car rides, bike rides, board games, anything that your child enjoys that has a natural beginning and end.
Once William got used to the routine then we were slowly able to wean him off the popsicles. He still gets popsicles, just not during transitions.
Make it a positive experience!
Lastly, I make sure the whole experience is a positive one! Focus on the positive and less on the negative. When the timer goes off, instead of saying “Ok, TV time is over.” we say “It’s popsicle time!”. We make a big deal about it. Even though he doesn’t get popsicles anymore (during transitions) he still gets so excited when his timer beeps red.
I hope this post gave you some ideas of how to help your child with transitions!