Easy Kid Timer is a great tool for a parent or teacher of any child learning patience and the concept of time. This is especially true of children with the autistic spectrum disorders, because they are visual learners. Having time they can “see” is crucial to their understanding of time and patience.
Easy Kid Timer will be useful at home and at school. It will help your child
transition from one activity to another, because she can see when it is
time to switch and prepare for it, even when it is not her favorite activity.
Easy Kid Timer will give her child a concrete visual cue: a picture that
precisely describes the upcoming activity. There is also text which can
be useful for kids who can read. For example, you can set the timer for
"Time to go to bed" with the picture of her bed, "Time to
leave the playground" with a picture of your car, and also the ever-useful
"Timeout is over!" with the picture of her own happy face.
Some kids respond better to concrete images, some to abstract. If your child prefers abstract pictures, just draw them on a piece of paper or whiteboard and use your phone's built-in camera to capture them.
There are some great resources on various transition strategies, including the use of a visual timer. Kara Hume's article Transition Time contains a lot of specific ideas for parents and teachers . Robert Needlman talks about the use of a visual timer in his article Principles of Timeout.
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