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FREN
About
PictoExpress wasn't born in an office. It was born at our house, with a pair of scissors, a glue stick, and a boy who needs to see tomorrow before he can fall asleep. I'm the dad of Naïm, 11, autistic and ADHD. I built this tool to get his days ready. Then I understood that getting the days ready was only half the work. Today it's free, for every parent.
At our house, the storms always have a precise starting point. A substitute teacher. A closed pool. A route changed at the last minute. That morning, it was the bus that never came. For most kids, it's an annoyance. For Naïm, it's the ground giving way: nothing that was planned holds anymore.
I can still see myself kneeling on the sidewalk, at his height, searching for the right words. But that morning, words were useless. It was only later that I understood the essential thing: Naïm doesn't refuse situations. He needs to see them to understand them.
One evening, after a day like that one, I printed some pictures and sat down at the kitchen table with scissors and a glue stick. Naïm came and sat across from me, without a word. He watched each card take shape in my hands: waking up, breakfast, the different route, the new teacher. I glued them onto a sheet, in order. Then I stuck the sheet on the fridge.
The next morning, Naïm looked at it for a long time. He followed each picture with his finger. Then he nodded, put his backpack on, and went. No storm. Just a boy who knew where he was going. That day, I made myself a promise: never again ask him to walk into a situation without a map.
So I kept going. Every appointment, every change, every first time had its sheet. But every sheet cost me my evening: finding the right pictures, cropping them, writing sentences short enough, printing, cutting, gluing. And starting over the next day, because life doesn't send a warning.
I started dreaming of a very simple tool: I describe the situation in two sentences, and it hands me back the illustrated board, ready to show. I looked for it everywhere. It didn't exist. So I built it. First for Naïm. Then for every parent who prepares tomorrow the night before, while the house sleeps.
Naïm grew, and the file grew with him. Assessments to book, reports to chase, certificates with an expiry date, forms that ask for the same information in a different order, and a meeting every spring where professionals who had never met him decided what his year would look like.
The heaviest part wasn't the paperwork itself. It was the fear of missing a date nobody would remind me about, and the certainty that if I dropped one thread, no one else was holding it. That fear took up room I would rather have given to my son.
"I hope this tool makes your day-to-day a little lighter. I know how hard it can be, some days."
Our mission
The thread running through PictoExpress was never about making pictures. It has always been about making the unpredictable predictable. For a child, that's an illustrated sequence. For a parent, it's knowing what's coming, when, and with which document. It's the same need, at both ends of the same day.
So we're widening the tool. Keeping track of what's coming. Keeping documents where you can find them. Walking into meetings prepared instead of empty-handed. Writing your child's story once instead of ten times a year. And, always, the pictograms for the day itself.
How it's made
A developer discovered the project and the cause behind it. Moved by it, he chose to give his free time, of his own accord, to turn a parent's idea into a solid, simple tool accessible to every family.
That's what lets us keep PictoExpress entirely free, with no ads and no child data ever collected.
If you have a suggestion that could help you and other parents, don't hesitate to write to us. We'll do our best to be useful.
contact@pictoexpress.comYou can also create your first sequence right now.