Waiting

What this pack teaches

Waiting is a thing a child does, not a thing that is done to them. This pack practises what to do with the time so the wait has something in it.

An empty wait is far harder than a full one, and a wait with no known length is hardest of all. Most of what looks like impatience is a child with nothing to do and no idea when it ends. Knowing the length, and having something for the meantime, changes the whole ten minutes — and both are things a child can ask for.

• Ask how long the wait is.
• Find something to do while you wait.
• Move about if your body needs to.
• Say when the queue is too loud.
• Check the queue instead of asking again.

How to use this

• ·Sit next to your child rather than opposite them. This works best as a thing you do together, not a thing you set them.
• ·Read the speech bubbles aloud if that helps. Nothing here needs to be read independently.
• ·Talk about the picture before the buttons. “What's happening here?” is often more useful than the sorting itself.
• ·Five situations is a session. Stopping after two is a fine session too.

Practising away from the screen

• ·Give the wait a size your child can check: two songs, three cars, the end of this aisle. “A minute” is not a size a seven-year-old can see.
• ·Keep a waiting kit in the bag — a fidget, a small book, headphones — and hand it over before the queue, not after it has gone wrong.
• ·Practise short waits on easy days: thirty seconds for the toast, one ad break. A wait that has been survived is a wait your child has evidence about.

Things you can say in the moment

• “About four more minutes. I will tell you when there are two left.”
• “Two people in front of us, then it is our turn.”
• “It is loud in here. Do you want to wait by the door with me?”
• “You can walk up and down this bit while we wait.”

What not to push

• ·Fidgeting, humming, pacing the same three steps and jiggling are all ways of getting through a wait. Sitting still is not the skill here and never has been.
• ·Leaving a queue that is too loud or too bright is a fine answer, not a failure. Waiting outside, or in the car, is still waiting.
• ·Nobody has to wait quietly. A child humming through a ten-minute queue has found a way through it, and the way through is the whole point.

If this pack is hard today

If waiting is the hard thing today, do this pack while you are not waiting for anything. It works far better on the lounge floor on a Sunday than in a queue at the chemist.