We wrote 142 pages. On page 78, our three faces are there in line drawing — Nóra's, Márti's, and mine. And next to us, a frame.

It says, literally: "the following are our assumptions, and it is possible that not all of them will hold up."

We wrote and deleted that sentence — and the three related ones — over three weeks. The three of us: my wife and our daughter, Nóra. At first we phrased it more cautiously. Then more boldly. Then more restrained. In the end we wrote down what we actually thought: we don't know whether everything we built up as the theoretical framework around Pam Pam Pam will work everywhere and with everyone the way we'd like.

Pedagogical books rarely speak this way. If you pick up a methodology textbook at the library, you'll read that something is "proven effective," that "the research supports it," that "it has proven successful." Those sentences are rarely self-reflective. Because what adult publishes their own book and says inside it: "I might not be right"?

We do.

Not because we want to look modest. Because after twenty years of developmental work, we know precisely that a 6-7-year-old autistic kid is not a data point in a table. One week something works; the next week it doesn't. One pupil is helped by the mirrored number; the next fiddles with it for half an hour and ends up frustrated. Józsika doesn't open the door for five minutes — and then opens it in the sixth. We have no publication about this. Nor do we need one.

What specifically don't we know?

We don't know whether, if Bence learns to wait inside the game, that waiting will show up next week during the reading lesson too. Cognitive psychology calls this "transfer," and it's one of the most contested questions in the developmental literature. We hope it does. We see many signs that it does. But we don't know for sure.

We don't know whether, if we've observed in ten of our autistic padawans that they break a card down into colour, shape and value faster than their neurotypical peers of the same age, this holds true for every autistic kid. In the handbook, the parenthetical next to it reads: "anecdotal observation, without systematic measurement." That much, and no more.

We don't know whether the tally marks, the Roman numerals, the binary code, the Braille numerals, the animals' legs, the chemical elements' proton counts — all of which are on our cards — are each necessary, or whether some are already a luxury. We can attach theory to every one of them. Which cognitive system it trains. But whether a particular kid sitting in front of you actually needs which one — that's something the specialist sees during their own session, not us from the handbook.

Then why did we write it anyway?

Because there's another sentence we wrote earlier than the frame on page 78. Already in 2018 it appeared on the blog: "We cannot make autism disappear." But the continuation was there too: reducing symptoms, improving quality of life — yes, through development.

If we now waited years to back up every detail with laboratory measurements, in the meantime entire cohorts of autistic children would grow up without a handbook that ten years of blogging and twenty years of developmental work have polished together. And we know precisely the price of those years. We walked it through on the blog: Kati's shoelace took two years, and it was worth it. The flight preparation took months, and it was worth it. But passivity — that never pays off.

So we wrote it. With two decades of practical experience, with referenced literature, and with three guiding framed sentences scattered through the book: it's possible that not every detail will hold up.

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Take it, use it, try it. The handbook is a first edition. What's in it is 142 pages — what was left out may be precisely your experience.

The Pam Pam Pam Handbook - pampampam.hu — Colour, shape, value. 142 pages, three authors, and one frame on page 78 that says: we might be wrong. We're always here.