Free Printables for Parents to Use at Home

How do I pick the right printable for the problem we are having?

Work backwards from the moment that goes wrong, not from the label. Parents often ask us for “something for autism” or “something for ADHD”, but a chart cannot answer a diagnosis — it can only answer a moment. Name the moment first: the shoes at the door, the shouting at bath time, the homework that never starts.

If you are not sure which difficulty you are actually looking at, the situations other parents describe are worth a read first — most families recognise their own week in one of them.

How do I use a reward chart so it actually works?

Reward the effort within seconds, not at bedtime. Keep to three goals your child can already manage on a good day, so the first star arrives on day one. Never take back a star that has been earned. When the habit sticks, let the chart quietly fade out.

Those four rules cover most of what goes wrong. In practice, the charts that fail in the first fortnight nearly always fail for one of these reasons:

• The goal was too big. “Behaves well at school” cannot be rewarded. “Puts shoes on when I ask, first time” can.
• The reward was too far away. A young child cannot hold on to Friday. Start with something that arrives today, then stretch it.
• The chart became a punishment. The moment stars start being removed, children stop trusting the chart and stop trying.
• Everyone rewarded something different. Agree the three goals with whoever else is at home — a grandparent quietly overruling the chart will end it.
• It never ended. A chart is scaffolding. Once your child is doing it without looking at the wall, take it down and celebrate that.

What can I do tomorrow morning?

Pick one moment of the day — usually the worst one — and change only that. Print the sheet tonight. In the morning, show it to your child before the difficult moment rather than during it, keep your instruction to a few words, and then wait longer than feels comfortable.

A first day that works usually looks like this: you point at the picture, you say the two or three words that go with it, your child does about half of what you hoped, and you make a genuine fuss of that half. That is a success, and it is how the second day gets easier.

How do I print these if I do not have a printer at home?

Most parents we work with do not own a printer, and it changes nothing. Download the PDF to your phone, then take it to any photocopy or stationery shop and ask for an A4 print. Black and white is fine — none of these sheets depend on colour.

• Slip the sheet into a clear plastic folder and write on it with a marker. It wipes clean, so one print lasts weeks.
• Stick it at your child’s eye level, not yours — on the fridge, the bedroom door, or beside the table where homework happens.
• Cut the cards out once, properly. Card-backed pictures survive small hands far longer than loose paper.
• Keep a photo of the filled-in sheet on your phone each week. It becomes a record you can show a therapist or a teacher later.
• Brothers and sisters will want one too — and that is usually worth saying yes to. There is more on that in our note about supporting siblings.

Can printables replace speech therapy or an assessment?

No. Printables are everyday parenting tools, not an assessment and not therapy. They can make a morning calmer and a habit easier to build. They cannot tell you why your child is not talking, and they are not a substitute for seeing a qualified professional if something is worrying you.

Please speak to a professional — your doctor, a therapist, or us — rather than reaching for another chart, if any of the following is true:

• Your child has lost a skill they clearly had before — words, gestures, eye contact or toileting.
• Your child does not turn to their name, or does not seem to hear you consistently.
• The same worry has been sitting with you for months and has not shifted.
• Behaviour at home has reached the point where you feel you cannot cope.

If you would like a sense of where your child is before you decide anything, the free developmental checklist takes a few minutes and gives you something concrete to bring to a conversation. If a diagnosis has just landed and you are not sure what comes next, start with just diagnosed — what now, and keep the little reminders for the hard days somewhere you will find them again. When you want to talk it through with a person, get in touch with us — in English or Urdu, with no pressure to book anything.

اردو میں · A note for Urdu-speaking parents

The sheets are printed in English, but they are not really an English exercise — most of the boxes are yours to fill in. Write the words in whichever language you speak at home. The picture carries the meaning, and the word your child hears every day is the word worth writing beside it.

• گھر میں جو زبان بولی جاتی ہے، الفاظ اسی زبان میں لکھیں — اردو، سرائیکی یا پنجابی۔
• تصویر والا شیڈول بچے کو بتاتا ہے کہ آگے کیا ہونے والا ہے، اور دن پرسکون گزرتا ہے۔
• ستارہ فوراً دیں، رات کو نہیں۔ چھوٹا انعام جو ابھی ملے، بڑے وعدے سے بہتر ہے۔
• ایک بار دیا ہوا ستارہ واپس نہ لیں — ورنہ بچے کا چارٹ پر اعتماد ختم ہو جاتا ہے۔

If the sentence in your head is bacha kehna nahi manta, start with the first–then board. If it is bacha aik jagah nahi baithta, start with the token board. And if it is mera bacha bolta nahi, the first-words cards are the place to begin — then read our FAQ for parents, which covers assessments, sessions and what actually happens first.