School Refusal in Week Three: What the Research Shows
6 min read
Vizy Timer
Car Journeys where are we nearly there has an answer.
Are we nearly there. Asked for the ninth time in twelve minutes, from a child who is not being annoying but genuinely cannot tell whether the journey has lasted five minutes or fifty.
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 visual timer helps with car journeys
A car journey is duration with no landmarks, which is the exact condition under which time perception breaks down. A visible countdown answers the question before it gets asked, which lowers anxiety for your child and noise for you.
You will recognize this if
- The same question arrives every couple of minutes regardless of your answer.
- Long journeys produce genuine distress rather than boredom.
- Your child copes better when they know the route than when they do not.
What the research saysAcross 27 studies, children and adolescents with ADHD sensed time passing more slowly than peers, which is part of why a twenty-minute drive can genuinely feel endless.
Zheng, Wang, Chiu and Shum, Journal of Attention Disorders, 2022
The setup
How to set it up for car journeys
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 Set the timer for the realistic journey length, including traffic
- 2 Mount it where your child can see it from their seat
- 3 Break long trips into visible legs with a stop between
- 4 Name one landmark per leg so progress has markers as well as minutes
- 5 Reset openly if traffic changes the estimate, and say why
- 6 Say what happens on arrival before you set off
The mistake most families make
Underestimating the journey to sound reassuring backfires the moment the estimate is wrong, and it makes the next journey harder rather than easier.
In the app
Built into the routine, not bolted onto it.
The Vizy Timer lives inside the same routine your child already follows, so car journeys 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 car journeys comes around.
$6.99/month after the free trial · Cancel anytime · Also at app.vizyplan.com
Common questions
About car journeys
How do I explain traffic to a literal thinker?
Name the cause and update the number rather than being vague. There are more cars than usual so it is ten minutes longer works, where soon does not.
Does a screen in the car solve this?
It solves the boredom but not the uncertainty, and it usually moves the difficulty to the moment the journey ends and the device goes away.
What about journeys of unknown length?
Time a leg rather than the trip. Thirty minutes until we stop is honest and useful, where an unknown total is neither.
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.
