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Calm and Repair Plan

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The short version to write on paper: The plan does not depend on this page. On paper, write your protective action first, a support your child already accepts, your limit phrase, a person who could take over and how to reach them (if there is one), and the sign that means professional or urgent help. For immediate danger, contact the emergency services in the place where the person at risk is, now, or the safeguarding service there if that person is a child; for a medical emergency, call the emergency services where the person who needs help is. Do not delay that call to finish a card.

Before anything else: what is happening right now?

Answer for this moment, not for the general pattern.

Nothing else on this page opens until you have.

Nothing saved yet

If a hard moment is happening right now

A hard moment is not the time to fill anything in, so this part asks you nothing. Move whatever could hurt someone, or move your child away from it, before you try to talk. If a card already exists, on paper or on this device, read that one: it carries your own lines instead of general ones. The questions on this page are a calm-hour job, and this is not a calm hour.

Your protective action

It comes before any words: make the space safe first, then lower noise and demands.

What you do first: move whatever could hurt someone, or move your child away from it, then change the room. For instance: the other children go to another room, the television goes off, you both move to the hall.

What usually helps?

Only what has actually worked for your child, not what is supposed to work. Pick up to four. What settles one child winds another one up, so if the thing that helps is sensory, write it in your own words rather than hunting for it in the list.

What has genuinely helped before

Your limit phrase

One short sentence, or a sign or a picture if that is what reaches your child best, used the same way every time. It is for your child, and it is also for you: a limit you have already chosen is one you can still give when you have nothing left.

Short, calm, and not a question, in fewer than ten words. It holds the limit without giving its reasons again, and it asks nothing of your child in the moment. If a sign, a gesture or a picture reaches your child better than speech, write down that one.

Optional. Writing it down is often what stops it coming out.

Who can take over, and when to get more help

Optional, and only if it is true. A name here that has not been agreed is worse than a blank line.

A name with no way of reaching it is not a relay at three in the morning, so put both on one line. If there is nobody, leave it blank and write what you do instead in the line below.

For instance: sit in the doorway, say the same sentence again, wait. Deciding it now is the point, and this line goes on the card whether or not there is a name above it.

Write a sign agreed with a qualified local service, or an immediate danger that requires local emergency help.

The repair: when

The repair belongs to a different moment from the one that has just happened. It tends to go better once you can both talk again rather than straight afterwards, and last thing at night is a hard slot for a serious conversation. You know your own evenings better than a form does.

Say it the way you would out loud: "after tea, on the sofa" is more use than a time.

The repair: your part

This half is the adult's. It is the part that is skipped most often and the part that does the most work.

Your voice, your timing, what you said. Naming one thing you would do differently is enough. You are writing it for yourself, not making a confession to anybody.

What you ask of your child (Optional)

An apology extracted under pressure teaches that saying the word ends the discomfort. None of these options require one.

The repair: what you both try next time

One. A list of five is a list nobody remembers at the moment it would matter.

Optional. If your child can name what it feels like just before, that is worth writing in their words rather than yours. This is an early sign to notice together, not the sign that means professional or urgent help.

Where this sheet stops

For immediate danger, contact the emergency services in the place where the person at risk is, now, or the safeguarding service there if that person is a child. For a medical emergency, call the emergency services where the person who needs help is. Do not delay that call to finish, save or print a plan. This card is a memory aid for an ordinary hard moment.

What this will not do
  • This is not a diagnosis and not a therapy program. It does not identify a condition, it does not treat one, and it is not evidence of anything.
  • It cannot tell an ordinary hard moment apart from a dangerous one. You do that, and the first question on this page is where.
  • It will not tell you what your child needs. You know things about your child that no form does, which is why almost every line here is blank for you to fill.
  • It does not replace the people who help you: a clinician, a school, a support service. If episodes are severe, new, getting worse, or come with possible pain, a loss of skills or a change in communication, that is a conversation with a professional.
  • It cannot look after a copy once one exists. A printout, a screenshot or a line pasted into a message is out of the browser's hands and into yours, and it has your child's hardest moments on it.
Privacy and sources

Everything you type is worked out on this device. None of it is sent anywhere, and saving is a button you press on purpose.

Sources of this tool

Written for any country: nothing on it is specific to where you live yet.

The book's references for chapter 14

For immediate danger, contact the emergency services in the place where the person at risk is, now, or the safeguarding service there if that person is a child. For a medical emergency, call the emergency services where the person who needs help is. Do not delay that call to finish, save or print a plan. This card is a memory aid for an ordinary hard moment.