Every child's behavior has a logic.
ChildLogic Format, or CLF, is an open, plain-text format for recording children's behavior in real-life family settings. It helps parents, educators, clinicians, and researchers describe behavior with enough structure to be useful, while staying simple enough to write in a few minutes.
CLF is not an app, platform, database, or diagnostic tool. It is a shared language for observation.
Parents often remember important behavior patterns, but the memories are difficult to communicate clearly:
- What happened right before the behavior?
- What did the child actually do or say?
- How did adults and the environment respond?
- What developmental or psychological logic might explain the pattern?
CLF turns these questions into a lightweight record format based on the ABC-L model:
[A] Antecedent: the context and trigger before the behavior[B] Behavior: observable actions and language[C] Consequence: observable responses by others and changes in the environment[L] Logic Tags: the selected observation hypotheses for the record
---
date: 2025-03-15
age: 4y2m
location: Grocery store checkout
observer: parent
language: en
---
[A] Around 3:30 PM, the child passed the toy aisle while the family was checking out.
The child had pointed to the same toy car during a previous visit.
[B] The child asked to buy the toy car. After the parent refused, the child cried,
lay on the floor, kicked both legs, and refused to stand for about 8 minutes.
Later, the child stopped crying and stood up.
[C] The parent tried verbal reassurance several times. After nearby shoppers began
watching, the parent bought the toy.
[L] #Logic/Equity
#EF/Inhibition
#Dynamic/Reinforcement
#Social/Audience- CLF-SPEC.md: the draft v0.1 format specification
- TAGS.md: the initial Logic Tags dictionary
- data/logic-tags.v0.1.json: machine-readable Logic Tags data for tools
- templates/clf-record.md: a blank CLF record template
- examples/: sample records in CLF
- CONTRIBUTING.md: contribution guidelines
- LICENSE: CC0 1.0 Universal public domain dedication
- Plain text first: CLF records should be readable in any text editor.
- Parent-friendly: a useful record should be possible in 3 to 5 minutes.
- Observation before interpretation:
[B]should describe what happened, not judge it. - Tags are hypotheses:
[L]tags record selected possible logic; they are not diagnoses. - Privacy by default: CLF can be stored locally and shared only by the family.
- Open by default: the format is released under CC0 to remove adoption barriers.
This repository contains the first public draft of CLF v0.1. It is intentionally small. The goal is to create a stable starting point for discussion, examples, research collaboration, and tool-building.
Maintained by localthinkai. For maintainer contact, email contact@childlogic.org.
ChildLogic Format is released under CC0 1.0 Universal. You may copy, modify, distribute, use, and commercialize it without asking permission.