The water is going out of the bath and the question arrives before the towel does. What are we doing after this.
You answer. Two minutes later, while you are still hunting for the other pyjama leg, it comes again, in the same words.
There is a small thing worth trying here, and it is smaller than a plan. Say the next step, and the one straight after it, and then stop.
The joins in a day
The asking clusters around the joins. Getting out of the bath, shoes, coming to the table, the bit where you have said it is time to go and nobody has moved.
Sometimes there is no question at all. The child carries on with what they are doing, or turns to something else at the moment you needed to leave.
Either way it lands in the same place in the evening. The gap between one thing and the next is where it shows up, more than in either of the things themselves.
What those moments have in common is the gap itself. Shoes are followed by the shop, and the shop is followed by coming home again, and none of that gets said out loud at the point the shoes come out. The bath ends with the water going away, and what comes after it has not been mentioned yet.
Saying two things
Now we are getting dressed. Then we are going downstairs.
There is not much more to it than that. Two concrete things, in the order they are going to happen, and then the first of them starts.
Two rather than four, because four is four things to hold on to, and more that may have changed by the time you reach them. The same wording fits the other joins in the day. Shoes on, then we are walking to the shop. Cars in the box, then dinner.
Where the current thing ends
The part that gets left out is the end of what is happening now. It is easy to name the next thing and say nothing at all about when this one finishes.
We get out when your hair is washed. When this song finishes, we are going to the table.
A marker you can point at, rather than a length of time. The plug coming out. The end of a song. The last bit of a sandwich. It gives you a sentence you can say again in the same words if you need to, and it promises nothing about how the getting out will go.
If the difficult part is stopping something that is still going well, what happens to the unfinished thing is a separate question.
What is already in the room
You do not need to set anything up. The towel over the radiator is the cue. The bowl is already on the table, and the bag is the one you are carrying out with you.
Picking the thing up while you say the sentence gives you something to hand over at the same time. If the next thing is in another room, the doorway does the same job.
Then only the parts you can actually do. If you say downstairs and then a story, there has to be a story, and if a phone call might land in the middle of it, that bit is one to leave out. Naming fewer steps leaves fewer promises to change later.
When it takes longer
Some of this will be quick and some of it will not, and the sentence you said beforehand does not decide which.
When it is taking longer there is no need to add more detail. You can say the same two things again in the same words, which adds no new instruction to the one already given. Or you can say nothing else at all.
I like this one mainly because it costs so little. There is nothing to set up, and nothing that has to carry on tomorrow.
With an older child
Ask instead of announcing. What are we doing after this.
Let them tell you. If the order comes out wrong, you can put it right in a sentence and carry on, without it becoming a conversation about the order. If they name something that is not happening, say what is, and leave it there.
There is not a great deal of difference between the two versions. Somebody says it either way, and it is shorter when they do.
It is one sentence, worked out on the landing before you go in.