Journal pain
Pain is invisible, and translating it into a number or colour is its own job. Children usually need pictures to point at before words arrive. The visual support below offers the starting points.
♀Journal pain
A person journaling their pain in a notebook.
About this visual support
The inward nature of a pain journal is what makes it hard. Asking how much it hurts is not enough, because the child first has to notice the feeling, then compare it to something, then choose a label. Three steps that try to happen at once if the only prompt is an open question.
Visual support gives each sub-step its own window: a body map to point at, a colour or face scale to compare with, a time of day or an activity that happened before. The vague question turns into a series of concrete choices: where, how much, when. The child does not have to build the words from scratch.
A concrete tip: fill it in together at two fixed moments every day, not only when the pain spikes. A calm entry at breakfast and at supper gives baseline numbers that actually mean something. In the Routined app you can place the pain-journal routine as a card in the morning and evening flow, so it becomes part of the day rather than an extra task. Two-week free trial.