Before
One small thing goes wrong… and it feels like the whole day was terrible.
1A good day, one thing after another
Favourite pancakes. The playground. Favourite lunch. Screen time. A favourite book. Every one of them a good bit.
2Then one little thing goes wrong…
“This is so unfair.”
3“Today was the WORST day ever!”
“I never got to do anything fun!” Our brains sometimes remember the hardest part and forget all the good parts.
After
You still just see check marks during the day. The faces are there when you need them.
1During the day
He ticks things off like always. The board shows plain check marks — done, done, done.
2Choose how it went
After a tick, a small window asks Done! How was it? — Good, Okay or Not great. He can skip it; the task counts as done either way. Ticked by mistake? One tap takes it back.
3Keep going
Back to the list: check marks, not faces. Clean, simple, and nothing to look at mid-day.
4When you want to see more
Tap the smiley beside his name, then Show faces. Each finished task shows how it went for 30 seconds, then goes back to check marks by itself.
5A kinder perspective
“Look at all the good things you did today. One part was hard — and look how much else there was.” “Yeah… my day was actually good.”
Keep it simple in the moment. Look back when it helps.
A face takes one tap, right when the task is done — before the day has a chance to be rewritten. On Here When You Are nobody reviews them routinely and nothing adds them up; they wait until “today was terrible” comes up, and then the day can speak for itself. Each person can have the question on or off, and an older child with their own code can keep Show behind it.
More understanding.