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Planning wheel
- Parents and Carers
- Professionals and Clinicians
A planning wheel is a tool to help children or young people to become more independent. It helps your and your child work on everyday tasks and activities they struggle with. It also encourages you and your child to think about coping strategies and reasonable ways to make the task or activities easier.
Introduction to planning wheels
Planning wheels can be helpful for children and young people with sensitivities or sensory differences. Some children can find certain tasks or activities like brushing their teeth overwhelming and stressful. This is because their senses are giving them a lot of information.
By using a tool like a planning wheel, you can break down the task or activity into different areas. You can change some of these areas to make the task easier and less stressful. Planning wheels can help your child or young person to be more independent in everyday tasks.
The animated video below shows an example of how planning wheels can be used.
Jake narrating:
Hello my name is Jake and this is Serena. We want to tell you a little bit about ourselves and our lives .
Serena narrating:
We are both in the same class at school but we have very different ways of sensing the world around us and can sometimes find it a bit tricky.
Narrator:
Please ensure that you have watched the online sensory talks prior to viewing this video so that you have a better understanding. Thank you.
Jake narrating:
But thankfully there are lots of things that can help us such as the Planning Wheel which We’ll talk to you more about later in this video.
However, sometimes the information can be too much for me.
I get lots if information from my environment – this means what’s going on around me.
From what I see…
What I hear…
What I smell and feel
And from what I eat. Delicious, yummy scrummy!
Seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and tasting are all called our senses. There are other senses too and all these senses help me make decisions about what I like, dislike, and how I respond.
That means that I can get easily upset and I find it difficult to manage my feelings. Sometimes I even get a bit cross if I can’t complete the task I am working on. This is known as having a low threshold to what’s going on around me.
The OT says I can find it tricky to process all the information that my brain is collecting from all around me.
But I know my senses can help me. Not liking the smell of mouldy vegetables is good because it tells me to not eat them. Yuck!
I just needs more sensory input from my environment; like a tap on the shoulder to get my attention.
The OT says I needs lots of input from my environment and I have high threshold to what’s going on around me.
Serena narrating:
But I’m very different to Jake, When Mr Brown, our teacher says my name, I sometimes does not ‘hear’ him talking to me even though I can actually hear perfectly well.
Jake narrating:
The trouble is when our senses react in either of these ways – high or low threshold – We can find it hard to carry out day to day tasks like getting ready in the morning, concentrating at school or even going to the supermarket when its busy.
This means that I often miss out on instructions and can get into trouble as I loses my concentration. It’s not that I am reluctant to stop what I’m doing, I genuinely do not register when someone is talking to me. Some children in the class think I’m a ‘Daydreamer’.
And these feelings of not being successful in everyday tasks can make us feel upset and overwhelmed.
That’s why I love the ‘Planning wheel’ - it really helps me when I am overwhelmed with too much information. Let me show you how it works’.
Step 1 - I pick the activity I want to get better at… like brushing my teeth!
Then, with an adult I think about how it would help me if I change the environment when I do the task. I can then add these changes on my Planning Wheel.
So, by brushing my teeth in the bedroom it’s much better because there’s not an echoing sound that hurts my ears and no bright lights in my eyes. Cleaning my teeth in the bathroom can weirdly also make my tummy feel sore.
Step 2 - I think about changing the task so I can make it easier and tolerate the activity more, such as using non flavour toothpaste. Normal toothpaste is too strong and makes my tongue feel like its burning!
So I put the change of task on my Planning Wheel. After I have completed my Planning Wheel, I have a go at the activity with the changes to the environment and task to see how I get on.
If one of my ideas in the big wheel isn’t working I take it off and change it, for example, I am now finding that an electric toothbrush with a soft head works well for me, and I am going to add that ‘I prefer to use an electric toothbrush’ into the Planning Wheel.
It’s amazing- I feel like I have say in what and how I want to do an activity. I have become so much more confident and happy, all thanks to the Planning Wheel.
So give it a go! – It takes a bit of practice but it’s really helped me, and I’m sure it will help you too!
Benefits of planning wheels
Planning wheels can be used by children, young people, families or professionals. They provide a framework to help change and adapt tasks or activities to meet the needs of the child or young person.
Planning wheels can help:
- You think about your child's challenges in detail
- Set a goal to work towards
- Your child to understand what is coming up next in the routine
- Think of ideas to help make these tasks easier to complete
Think about your child's sensitivities
When starting a planning wheel it's important to think about what your child finds difficult and why they find it difficult. This is going to change over time. Using a planning wheel can help you and your child to adapt the environment or task to their needs.
Thinking about your child's sensory likes and dislikes will help you set up a planning wheel for them. For example, if your child hates having their hair washed, brushed or cut, this can make getting ready for school in the morning difficult.
Each child is different and unique. If you're not sure about what your child likes or dislikes, talk to them about it.
Read more about helping your child with their sensitivities.
Starting a planning wheel
The purpose of a planning wheel is to help your child or young person cope with daily activities by making small changes to their routine or environment. Planning wheels can be particularly helpful when something changes in your child's life.
There are 6 areas you can think about when starting a planning wheel:
- Setting a goal
- Structuring and adjusting the difficulty for your child
- Environment
- Involving interest
- Exercise
Please note, do you not have fill out every single area. You also do not have to be spend a lot of time figuring out where to put the strategies on the wheel. The planning wheel is a tool to help you think about the areas that can be changed to help your child.
You can create your own planning wheel or use one of our templates.
Spotting the challenges and setting goals
Your child may have one particular difficulty or they may have lots. It can feel overwhelming if your child is struggling with a lot of sensory differences. You can start by:
- watching your child - you may be able to spot which activities or tasks your child is struggling with the most
- talking to your child - your child may already know what they are struggling with
- talking to someone else who knows your child well (like a teacher) - they may be able to spot which activities they struggle with the most
If you have more than one challenge, list them out. You can then choose one goal to start with. You can then move onto the others at a later time.
Structuring a task and adjusting the difficulty
When you structure a task or activity, you are breaking the it down into smaller steps. This will help you and your child think about the task or activity in more detail. By structuring the task, you and your child can think about the different ways to adapt or improve the steps. It can also help your child or young person remember the steps that they need to take with the task.
When structuring a task or activity with your child you should think about:
Motor skills: Can your child or young person physically complete the task?
Posture: Does your child or young person struggle with coordination? Do they need to sit down to do a task? Should they change the position they are in to complete the task?
Responses: Does your child respond to certain senses? Do they find light touch painful? Do they not like being touched by other people?
Current interests: Does your child like a certain character, celebrity, TV show or game? Will this influence the task or activity? Can you bring this interest into the task or activity?
Sensory strategies: Are there activities your child finds soothing that can be added into the task? Do they like deep pressure activities? Do they like calming activities like stretches?
Adaptations: Can you change something about the task? Could you use a different type of hair brush or a detangling spray to make it easier?
You can also adjust the difficulty of the task or activity for your child. This is called grading. You can adapt the task or activity to reduce the initial pressure on your child or young person.
Changing the environment
There are lots of different ways you could adapt your child or young person's environment to meet their needs. It will be to meet their sensory needs. These will be unique to your child.
Read more about helping your child with their sensitivities.
You may want to consider:
Is it too noisy? Try to find a quieter place for them to complete the task. Get some ear defenders, noise cancelling headphones or earbuds.
Are the lights too bright? If you are able to, try dimming the lights. You can encourage your child or young person to do the task in a different room with natural light from a window. If natural light is too bright for your child, encourage them to use sunglasses.
Are there strong smells? Try to minimise distracting smells. Avoid lighting scented candles or spraying fragrance.
Are there distractions in the room? Turn off TVs, radios and any other devices. Try to keep the room as tidy as possible.
Is it too hot or too cold? Is your child or young person adequately dressed for the temperature? Can you decrease or increase to make the temperature more comfortable.
Create a space for your child to do the task. You can create a quiet zone or den for your child. You could use a tent or use a with a tent.
Using things that interest your child
It's important for your child or young person to be engaged and involved with the task or activity. It helps makes the task more interesting and may even encourage your child or young person to do it without prompting.
There are lots of ways you can involve your child or young person's interests:
- Theme the task around a character, show, game or any other interest they have like making schedule that is minecraft or Bluey themed.
- Use objects and toys that they like in the activities such as making toy teeth dirty so they can clean them and see what it looks like.
- Rename something to match your child or young person's interest such as a social skills group being renamed 'Warhammer group' where they painted models whilst working on their social skills.
- Involve friends and family in tasks like trying new foods or activities in different environments and with different people.
- Use their favourite activities as a reward for reaching a goal such as completing a number of activities they are not as fun.
Using exercises
Incorporating exercises into tasks can be a great way to encourage your child to be more active.
Adding exercises into the planning wheel can be helpful for children and young people. It can encourage them to be more active. Exercises and stretches can help children and young people to:
- wake-up or be more alert
- organise their thoughts
- focus
- settle and calm down
- help them self-soothe and self-regulate
Depending on the type of task or activity, you can add movement breaks into the task. This can be a 5 minute break that has some form of exercise. Movement breaks can be can be every 15 to 30 minutes depending on what your child or young person needs.
Some exercises you can incorporate into your planning wheel include:
- chair push-ups
- wall press-ups
- plank
- bear walk
- blowing bubbles, whistles or blow toys
- star jumps
Planning wheel training video
Our occupational therapy team have created a presentation on how to use the planning wheel.
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