✨Coming Soon✨ Hands-on packing plans for neurodivergent kids — because calm begins before you leave the house.
If you're the parent of a neurodivergent child, you know that family outings can feel daunting. Changes in routine cause not only excitement, but major anxiety, stress, and dysregulation for your kids. You want so badly to give them fun days full of special memories, but end up avoiding these trips because it feels impossible to make them happen in a way that works for the whole family.
These themed, printable sheets allow children with autism, ADHD, and other forms of neurodivergence to help their parents pack for day trips by using kid-friendly, illustrated packing plans they can check off, one item at a time. By giving kids a participatory role in packing, you can help reduce anxiety and manage anticipation, which ultimately allows you to pack quickly and efficiently, without having to hear "are we there yet" a hundred times before you've even left the house.
It's simple — print the checklist, put it on a clipboard, and give your child something to mark off each box. It can be a pencil, crayon, dot marker, or stickers — whatever they'll have the most fun with! You can even attach their favorite fidget keychain to the clipboard to accommodate for mini sensory breaks during packing! Each themed list comes with three pages — one that's pre-filled with written words for commonly used items, a copy of the same list that uses visual imagery instead of words to accommodate children who may struggle with reading, and an additional blank sheet that allows you to add any comfort or accessibility items that your child may need throughout the day.
I came up with the idea for The Joy Packs after a particularly stressful morning in my own home. We've all been there — we woke up and decided to have a spontaneous beach day. We hadn't packed or prepped anything the night before, so everything had to be done that morning, and of course it's impossible to pack lightly for a day at the beach with two little kids! As soon as our son with autism found out what the plan was for the day, he was an excited, anxious, impatient, and sensory-seeking ball of energy, which makes getting out of the house even harder. After an hour of questions and distractions, my husband looked at me and asked if we should even go. It had taken so long to get everything together amidst the chaos, that the morning was already halfway gone. We went anyway, and on the way there I had an idea...
What if next time we go to the beach, we give our son a fun checklist so he can participate in packing? I could design, print, and laminate packing plans for a variety of different outings, give them to him in a fun clipboard with colored dry erase markers, and he could use this fun new system to help us pack. This would give him something to do with his mental and physical energy and would likely allow us to pack more efficiently in the process. On our next beach day, I tested my theory and, no surprise, it helped. Was it a perfect solution? Of course not — those don't exist! But it provided him with a sense of calm amidst the anticipation and allowed us to get out of the house faster and with less frustration.
It's easy to lose yourself in parenthood, especially when parenting kids with special needs, but my hope is that The Joy Packs will inspire and allow you to add a little spontaneity back into your life, and I'm confident that these simple printables will make a big difference.
