Ten minutes where they lead

The sheet

For the parent: ten minutes most days when your child chooses the game and you follow. What to do, what to leave out, and what to do if it goes off course.

Pocket card · A4, four cards to cut, two sides · Two pages · PDF, 64 KB

How it helps

Ten minutes of play where your young child leads and you follow, with your full attention, tells them that they matter to you just as they are. Children who have this most days often need to fight less for attention at other times.

How to use it

1. Print on both sides, flipping on the long edge, and cut out the cards. Keep one where you’ll see it.
2. Most days, at a time you can keep, put your phone in another room and let your child choose the game. Join in the way they want.
3. Say out loud what they’re doing, and now and then tell them exactly what you liked. Leave out questions, instructions and teaching.
4. Warn them when there are five minutes left, stop on time, and tell them when the next ten minutes are. Your child doesn’t have to earn them, and they’re never taken away.
5. The back of each card says what to do if the play goes off course. If, in play or in words, your child tells you that someone is hurting them, that they are hurting themselves, or that they do not want to be alive, don’t question them or interpret it: the back says what to do that day.

How to get this sheet

This sheet comes with a subscription. It is also yours with its chapter, if that is the chapter you read free, or if a teacher or therapist sends it to you. School staff and therapists signed in to their shelf can print it too.

The first chapter you open here is free to read in full, with its sheets. This one goes with Big Feelings and Co-Regulation and Siblings and the Fights That Aren’t Fair.

Free to print

These are free to anyone, with nothing to sign up for.

• A plan for a bad dayTo fill in together · A4
• Before you ring the schoolFor a call or a meeting · A4
• What to say: school and friendsCards to cut out · A4, eight cards to cut
• Before the SENCo meetingFor a meeting · A4
• Three reports, side by sideFor a meeting · A4 landscape
• The return-to-school meetingFor a meeting · A4
• The move to secondary school, for a parents’ eveningFor a parents’ evening · A4, five pages
• The last half-hour before bedFor the fridge · A4
• The worry ladderTo fill in together · A4
• Before you see the GP about your childFor an appointment · A4, two sides
• A record of what happenedFor a call or a meeting · A4, two pages
• The people I can tellTo make together · A4, two pages

Every sheet, marked free or with a subscription, is at theparentbook.com/printables.