Teaching Turn-Taking and Sharing to Neurodivergent Children
8 min read
Social Situations
Sharing and Taking Turns when the wait is the hard part.
Sharing sounds like a value. To your child it means handing over something they were using with no idea whether it comes back.
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Why it helps
Why a visual schedule helps with sharing and taking turns
Turn taking is really a waiting skill, and waiting without a visible endpoint is one of the hardest demands for a neurodivergent child. Making the turn concrete, with a timer and a visible order, gives the wait an ending your child can see.
What usually goes wrong
- Giving up a preferred item feels permanent in the moment.
- The length of someone else's turn is unknown and unbounded.
- Whose turn it is next is invisible information.
A picture-first schedule answers the same three questions every time: what is happening now, what happens next, and when it ends. Children who can see those answers stop needing to ask, and the prompting that usually falls to you moves onto the schedule instead.
The routine
What the schedule can look like
A starting point for sharing and taking turns. Use it as written, or cut it down to the steps your child actually needs. Fewer steps that get finished beat a complete list that stalls.
- 1 Look at the turn taking card before playing
- 2 Decide who goes first
- 3 Set the timer for the turn
- 4 Take your turn
- 5 Hand the item over when the timer sounds
- 6 Wait and watch, or do the waiting activity
- 7 Take your next turn when it comes around
Tip: keep the same order every time. The order is what your child learns, more than the individual steps.
How VizyPlan helps
A schedule your child is actually in.
Clip art shows a child. VizyPlan generates images of your child, doing the step, in a routine you built in a few minutes.
01 · Personalized
Every step, with their own face in it.
Add one reference photo and VizyPlan generates an image of your child doing each step of sharing and taking turns. Children attend longer to images of themselves than to generic icons, which is the whole reason the personalization exists.
- Works for pre-readers, gestalt language processors, and AAC users
- Reference photos are never used to train public AI models
- Print any routine as picture cards for low-tech settings
02 · Prepared
A social story before the moment hits.
One tap turns sharing and taking turns into a picture-by-picture story your child reads at home, days before it happens. A child who has already seen it arrives prepared rather than surprised.
- Read it as many times as your child wants beforehand
- Share it with the other parent, a grandparent, or a provider
- Edit any page so the story matches your actual plan
03 · Regulated
Timers and calm tools one tap away.
Most of the hard moments in sharing and taking turns are timing problems. A visual timer that depletes on screen makes the ending visible, and breathing and grounding tools are available from any screen when the plan goes sideways anyway.
- Visual timers and countdowns for every step
- Breathing, color, and grounding tools built in
- Points and stickers for the steps your child finished
Make this schedule for your child.
Set up sharing and taking turns in about ten minutes, with images of your own child on every step.
$6.99/month after the free trial · Cancel anytime · Also at app.vizyplan.com
Common questions
About sharing and taking turns
How do I teach turn taking to an autistic child?
Make the turn measurable with a timer and the order visible with a chart, then practice with a low value item before a preferred one. Abstract fairness lessons rarely help; visible structure usually does.
Should my child have to share every toy?
No. Setting aside a few genuinely special items before a friend arrives is reasonable and reduces conflict for everything else.
What helps during the waiting part?
Give the wait its own activity, such as a fidget or a job, so waiting is something to do rather than something to endure. Empty waiting is where most turn taking breaks down.
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.
