Our Autism Journey: How Autism Visuals Began

Say Less, Show More

Where Our Story Began

Our family was complete when Dylan arrived in 2011, joining his older sister Ruby.

For the first part of Dylan's life, we didn't realise anything was different. But as he got older, we started noticing things that concerned us.

Dylan wasn't talking or babbling. He didn't respond to his name, point to things or follow simple instructions. At toddler groups, he wasn't interested in joining in with the other children, and when we were out, he would often try to run off.

He could become very frustrated because he couldn't express himself.

We knew something was different, we just didn't know what.

Dylan's Autism Diagnosis

At around three and a half, Dylan was diagnosed as autistic.

Although by then we had expected the diagnosis, hearing it was still overwhelming. We knew very little about autism and suddenly found ourselves trying to understand what it meant for Dylan and for our family.

We attended a New Beginnings autism course and met other parents who were going through similar experiences. Slowly, we began to understand Dylan better.

But one of our biggest lessons was still to come.

The House Move That Changed Everything

When Dylan was young, we moved house.

We had taken him to see the new house and repeatedly explained that we were going to move there. We thought we had prepared him.

We hadn't.

Once we moved, Dylan became extremely anxious.

Looking back, we can see that although we'd told him what was going to happen, that didn't necessarily mean he understood it.

That experience led us to seek more specialist support, and we began working privately with a speech and language therapist who specialised in autism.

She introduced us to something incredibly simple: a visual schedule.

When We Discovered the Power of Visuals

For the first time, instead of constantly telling Dylan what was going to happen, we could show him visually.

His schedule showed him what he was doing that day and what was coming next.

When we went out, we also used a picture of our house so Dylan could see that after the activity, we were coming home.

That little picture gave him information that our words hadn't been able to give him clearly.

His anxiety started to reduce.

Things started to make more sense.

But There Was One Problem

Dylan wasn't particularly interested in looking at his schedule.

The schedule did its job, but it was plain and didn't mean very much to him.

At the time, Dylan absolutely loved The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

So we thought: why couldn't his visual schedule be based around something he actually loved?

We made him a colourful caterpillar-style schedule and suddenly his visual support became something much more engaging for him.

That idea stayed with us.

From Our Family to Autism Visuals

Years later, that experience became the starting point for Autism Visuals.

We wanted to create visual supports that do their job properly but are also fun, motivating and personal to the child using them.

Our schedules aren't here to make children fit neatly into somebody else's routine.

They're there to give children information in a way they may find easier to understand, helping them see what's happening, what's changing and what's coming next.

And because we've used visual supports ourselves as parents, we also understand something else: sometimes it's the parent who needs a little help knowing where to start.

That's why Autism Visuals isn't just about selling schedules and picture cards. We want to share what we've learnt along the way too.

Say Less, Show More

That simple idea has become a big part of what Autism Visuals stands for.

Children can be given lots of spoken information throughout their day.

Sometimes, rather than adding more words, showing them can make things clearer.

SAY LESS, SHOW MORE.

If our story sounds a little like yours, you'll find more of what we've learned across the rest of this blog, and the visual schedules, now and next boards and activity cards in our shop are the tools that started it all for our own family.

Say Less, Show More