Summer Break for Autistic Kids: How to Survive the Routine Cliff
4 min read
Map Your Day
Building Your First Day Map without planning the whole week.
You opened the app meaning to sort the mornings out and closed it twenty minutes later having built nothing, because mapping an entire day is a bigger project than a Tuesday evening allows.
Free 7-day trial · No email or credit card to start · Built by an autism dad and a licensed SLP
Why it works here
Why a day map helps with building your first day map
A day map works by being followed, not by being complete. Building one short segment your child actually runs teaches you how they respond to the format, which is information you cannot get from designing a perfect twelve-hour plan nobody uses.
You will recognize this if
- You have started building a routine more than once and never finished one.
- The plan in your head is far more detailed than anything that exists in the app.
- You are not sure which part of the day to fix first.
What the research saysVisual activity schedules qualify as an evidence-based practice for autistic individuals across a review of 31 studies, with the strongest results where the schedule was used consistently rather than comprehensively.
Knight, Sartini and Spriggs, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 2015
The setup
How to set it up for building your first day map
Takes about five minutes. Use it as written, or keep only the steps your family needs. A short setup that gets used beats a complete one that gets abandoned in week two.
- 1 Pick the single worst part of your day and map only that
- 2 Keep it to four or five activities, no more
- 3 Use photos of your own home and your own child rather than generic icons
- 4 Run it for a week without changing anything, just to see what happens
- 5 Add one activity at a time after that, never a whole segment
- 6 Leave the rest of the day unmapped until the first piece is holding
The mistake most families make
Mapping the whole day on the first evening is the most common reason a family abandons the app in week two. The plan gets built, nobody can sustain it, and the failure reads as the tool not working.
In the app
Built into the routine, not bolted onto it.
The Map Your Day lives inside the same routine your child already follows, so building your first day map is a step with a visible length rather than a separate tool somebody has to remember to open.
- Attach it to any step in any routine
- Works for pre-readers, gestalt language processors, and AAC users
- Same setup at home, at school, and in therapy
Set this up for your child.
Five minutes to build, and your child sees it every time building your first day map comes around.
$6.99/month after the free trial · Cancel anytime · Also at app.vizyplan.com
Common questions
About building your first day map
How many activities should a first day map have?
Four or five is plenty. A short map that gets completed every day builds the habit, and a long one that stalls halfway teaches your child that the map is optional.
Which part of the day should I map first?
The one that goes worst, because that is where a small improvement is most noticeable to everybody. Mornings and the hour after school are the two most common starting points.
Should my child help build it?
Wherever possible, yes. A child who chose the order and the photos has a stake in the map, and involvement at the build stage reduces resistance at the running stage considerably.
VizyPlan supports routines and communication at home and school. It is not a medical device and does not diagnose or treat any condition. Talk to your child's care team about clinical questions.
