When something goes wrong
A spill, a broken piece, a knocked-over tower. Your child works out which next moves sort it out and which keep it going.
Something went wrong
It has already happened. Decide what each next move does to the problem.
For grown-ups
What this pack teaches
That the moment after something goes over has its own moves, and some of them shrink the problem while others keep it running.
The thirty seconds after a spill decide most of what follows, and a child who has no move for those seconds invents one — hiding it, or arguing about whose fault it was, both of which make the hour longer. Having two moves ready, say it and fix it, is what turns a broken thing into an ordinary afternoon. None of that asks the child to be less upset.
- Say what happened, then fix the mess.
- Telling somebody early makes it smaller.
- Hiding it leaves the problem there.
- Blaming does not clean anything up.
- One thing to fix it is enough.
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
- Say your own out loud when you break something — “I've knocked the glass over, I'm getting the towel.” Hearing an adult do it is the model.
- Keep the cloth somewhere your child can reach. A fix that needs an adult to start it is a fix that will not happen.
- When they tell you about something broken, answer the telling first. “Thanks for telling me” before anything about the thing itself.
Things you can say in the moment
- Tell me what happened first, then we'll work out the cloth.
- You could say “the milk went over and I'm cleaning it up.”
- It doesn't matter yet whose it was. What does the floor need?
- Say “that was me”, and then say what you're going to do about it.
What not to push
- Being upset about a spill is not the problem. The feeling is allowed to be enormous; this pack is only about what the hands do next.
- Sorry is not the skill here. A child who cleans it up without a word has sorted it out, and one who says sorry and walks off has not.
- Needing to leave the room first is fine. Fixing it in five minutes counts exactly the same as fixing it straight away.
If this pack is hard today
Try it on something that has already been sorted out — last week's spill, the cup that got glued. A problem with no heat left in it is far easier to think about than one on the floor right now.
Nothing is counted
No marks, no tally, no percentage, nothing saved. A child who taps the other mat gets exactly the same screen as a child who did not, because the explanation is the point and the tap is only how they get to it.
Social situations depend on the people in them. Everything here is one common way things tend to go, not a rule — and a child who reads a situation differently from us may well be reading their own life correctly.
Social situations depend on the people in them. Everything here is one common way things tend to go, not a rule. This is an educational resource, not therapy or medical advice.