Shire: Headache Diary app icon

Shire: Headache Diary

The headache diary your child keeps by telling a horse about it.

Download on the App Store

Feedback & discussion

  • Shire looking out of his stall in the lantern-lit night stable, asking how the day went
  • Shire asking when the headache started, with everyday time choices like after lunch and I don't remember
  • The Wong-Baker faces drawn as quiet line drawings, asking which face the hurt is like
  • Choosing where the head hurts by tapping a place
  • Shire asking what else feels wrong, with symptom choices in a child's words
  • The calendar of the month, marking headache days and days checked in
  • The night stable filling the iPad screen, Shire in his stall beside the conversation
  • Shire asking when the headache started on iPad, with everyday time choices
  • The Wong-Baker faces on iPad, drawn as quiet line drawings
  • Choosing where the head hurts on iPad
  • Shire asking what else feels wrong on iPad, with symptom choices in a child's words
  • The calendar of the month on iPad, marking headache days and days checked in
  • The generated PDF report for the neurologist, showing headache frequency, intensity and duration

Shire is a horse who lives in a lantern-lit stable. When your child’s head hurts, they go and tell him about it — and that conversation is the whole diary.

A diary a child can keep alone. No forms, nothing to type. Shire asks one gentle question at a time and your child answers by tapping: when it started, which Wong-Baker face matches the hurt, where it hurts, what else feels wrong, what might have set it off. A new headache can be recorded in as few as two taps, and it’s written down exactly as it was said — “a bit worse” stays “a bit worse” instead of being forced onto a 0–10 scale.

“I don’t remember” is always an answer. Every question about times and feelings offers it, so nothing is ever guessed at. Times can be given with everyday anchors — after lunch, before bed — and you teach the app what those mean in your house.

He never nags. Shire doesn’t scold, guilt-trip, or hand out medical advice. If a headache is still going he asks after it kindly for a few days and then lets it rest; a headache is never closed automatically. Tapping an answer changes it mid-conversation, and “let’s fix something” corrects an answer after it’s saved — without erasing what was there before.

A report your doctor will love. From the Grown-Ups area, one tap builds a PDF for the neurology appointment: headache days per month, intensity and duration, time-of-day patterns, where the pain sits, symptoms in clinical language (photophobia, phonophobia, visual aura), reported triggers, missed school, and a complete episode log. It reads the whole diary — including records kept in earlier versions of the app.

Rewards for showing up, never for hurting. Stars, streaks and rosettes hang in the barn, earned for telling the story rather than for having headaches.

Made for iPad, at home on iPhone. The stable is a full-bleed scene on iPad and a comfortable single column on iPhone, with big tap targets throughout.

Private by design. Every entry is a plain file in your own iCloud Drive and syncs only between your devices. No accounts, no ads, no tracking, no analytics. Your family’s health data stays yours.