Self Care

That depends on where your child gets stuck, and it is worth working that out before you buy anything. If the problem is the feel of things, start with what touches them. The brush, the shampoo, the toothbrush, the sunscreen. If the problem is remembering the order, start with a planner or the instruction cards. If you are not sure which it is, the Self-Care Skills Play Kit holds several options and video guidance for each task, so your child can try them and tell you which one works for them.

A different toothbrush or toothpaste is usually the first thing to try, and then a different time and place. Our Self-Care Skills Play Kit holds several toothbrushes for them to try, and our therapist videos and parent guide walk you, and them, through this process. If you want to start smaller, the self care instruction cards break brushing into steps with a picture for each one, so your child can see what is coming and gain some independence in their routine, instead of being told again and again.

Change one thing at a time rather than everything at once. Is it the water on their face, the temperature of the room, the feel of the towel afterwards, the smell of the products. Our shampoo and conditioner were developed for sensitive kids, and the detangling spray is for the brushing afterwards, which for a lot of families is the harder part of the hair routine. The sensory hair brush has soft bristles with massage beads through them and is made for knotted and matted hair.

We have a Sensory Friendly Sunscreen Kit. It comes with a clip-on bottle, a mess-free applicator so the cream does not have to go on by hand, and a storybook about sun safety. The applicator is usually the part that changes things, because it takes the rubbing and the hands out of it.

There is no single age that is right for every child. It helps more to break the task into steps and hand over one step at a time than to wait for a certain age to arrive. Our self-care instruction cards split each task into steps with picture based instructions for each one, and the magnetic planner lets your child build their own order for their self-care routine and tick it off themselves. Our Puberty Self-Care Masterclass covers the pre-teen and teen side of things.