So I've been bored the past couple days, but nothing a trip to good old Wal-Mart can't fix. Just thought I'd share my latest project in case it can help anyone else. I know I should be keeping a mood chart, journal, etc. but I haven't exactly gotten around to it yet. I was also thinking about the fact that sometimes I have problems knowing exactly what kind of mood I'm in. Then I thought who can tell better and be more brutally honest than a child. My daughter is almost six, so I decided to let her lend a hand in my treatment.

Today I went to Wal-Mart, spent 8 bucks and got a decent sized white board. I sectioned it out for me, my girlfriend, and our daughter to each have three lines corresponding with morning, afternoon, and night. Then I added columns so that it can be used for fifteen days in a row and a few columns to tally the totals at the end of the fifteen days. Since she isn't old enough to really tell the finer details of moods, I assigned just three, happy, sad, and mad, and then gave them each a color. Happy is green, sad is blue, and mad is red.

I did the grid work with a permanent marker so I don't have to redo it every time the board gets wiped. Otherwise, everyone fills in the box that lines up with the date and time of day with the color they think is right. So, for example, if my daughter thinks that I'm mad in the morning, she colors in that box red. Then, every fifteen days, I can total up three moods, find out which happens most often, least often, and if there is a trend for a certain mood at a certain time of day. Plus it gets my daughter involved in starting to understand my illness so hopefully it helps her understand why I act the way I do sometimes. And I added a few lines at the bottom in case anything of note happens that I want to mark down.

I just thought maybe it could be an idea for anyone else with young kids, or even older kids, to get an extra perspective and involve them in your treatment in a fun way.