Sue Doku

Sue Doku artwork  

Warning: shameless self-promotion ahead.

I love sudoku: the strategy is simple, but game play can be challenging. During stressful times (we know about those, right?), the focus sudoku requires helps take my mind off things.

Most sudoku apps, however, are ugly, with distracting graphics. So my friend Jamie and I recently launched Sue Doku for iPhone and iPad.

Sue Doku features:

  • Simple, minimal design
  • Thousands of beautiful game layouts
  • Four challenging levels
  • Light and dark modes
  • Helpful hints
  • Note mode
  • Stat tracker
  • Optional floating keypad (iPad)

Best of all, it's just $0.99 on the App Store. If you don't know how to play sudoku, check out the rules on our site.

I hope you'll give Sue Doku a shot. If you like it, please rate it and write a short review; better yet, tell a friend!

Get Sue Doku on the iTunes store

Thanks for reading.

What I've been reading — April 2015

I'm very excited about this month's installment: there are some provocative opinions and insights, helpful resources, a technology story, some informative science updates, news, and a few articles about ADHD.  If you like this and find it helpful, please share with others. Thanks!

Opinions and insights

The Best Way I Can Describe What It's Like to Have Autism "There is no doubt that autism makes my life difficult, but it also makes my life beautiful. When everything is more intense, then the everyday, the mundane, the typical, the normal… those things become outstanding." Read more

Normalised, no thanks. "Recently I had the experience of being kicked out of a Facebook biomedical page...Because I spoke up when a mother of an autistic child said that people are talking about Autism like its a gift, it's the new thing, when children with autism actually need to be normalised." Read more

If you are only raising neuro-typical children, you might not know what I’m about to share. "If we consciously leave behind the grass is greener gazing, we are free to be just as we are. If we remember that there are many different ways to do family life, we can let go of our expectations to do it the same as others do. If we are present enough to feel the joy in simplicity - in baking biscuits together, building with Lego as a family, staring at caterpillars and sitting next to each other while we all play with iPads - then we can accept our life as it is." Read more (Google cache)

Helpful resources

Tips for the Future Care of Disabled Family Members - NYTimes.com Extremely important — and useful. Read more

How to Explain Autism to People Helpful tips for sometimes awkward conversations. Read more

"my child has autism" "oh..." What not to say. "I’m always happy to tell people more about my sons autism...I appreciate it when people ask questions! Ask me anything and I’ll do my best to answer or point you in the right direction." Read more

When Aspergers Syndrome goes undiagnosed. "The populations that are most often misdiagnosed or undiagnosed are academically gifted children. Those who are gifted can fly under the radar because they may easily learn appropriate behaviors that can mask symptoms of autism." Read more

Technology

Autism researchers eager to use Apple's ResearchKit "A new software-development tool from Apple released to developers on Tuesday offers a shortcut to these apps. Called ResearchKit, it helps researchers create apps by providing templates for components such as mobile surveys and behavioral tests that harness the phone’s sensors." Read more

Science

Genes dwarf environment in autism's origins, study says "The genetic makeup of an individual plays much a bigger role than environmental factors in whether he or she develops autism, according to one of the largest twin studies to date. The findings, published 4 March in JAMA Psychiatry, suggest that genes confer up to 95 percent of the risk for autism — nearly double that of previous estimates." Read more

Standard tests underestimate nonverbal children with autism "Nonverbal doesn’t mean incapable. A pilot study of children with autism who have low or no verbal skills suggests that the right intelligence tests can reveal their hidden potential...when the scientists used a picture-based test called the Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices, 65 percent of the children scored in the normal range. Ten percent ranked in the 90th percentile." Read more

Another large study shows no link between autism and the MMR vaccine. "...kids who got the MMR vaccine were not more likely to be autistic. It doesn’t matter if their older siblings were autistic or not. So, 'high risk' or not, the MMR vaccine doesn’t increase autism risk." Read more

News

(UN Secretary General) Ban launches ‘call to action’ inviting commitments from businesses to employ people with autism "At a special event at United Nations Headquarters to mark World Autism Awareness Day, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called today for greater access and work opportunities for persons with autism, saying that while much progress had been made, much more work was needed." Read more

A Swim Team for Teens With Autism Wonderful short documentary: "Team sports are a right of passage for many children, but kids with disabilities often can’t participate." Read more

ADHD

Love: The Most Powerful Medicine for ADHD "Now, let’s be clear. Treatment for ADHD matters a lot. Scientifically proven treatments can (and should) help your child. From behavior therapy to medication to counseling, there are many, many good options. But love is a key part of any treatment plan. Children who are loved, and who know they are loved, are getting the most powerful medicine for ADHD." Read more

ADHD Is Real Steven Novella takes on an op-ed piece in The Blaze that asserts ADHD is not real. "There is a clear consensus based upon robust scientific evidence accumulated over decades that ADHD is a real disorder. Denying the reality of ADHD, in my opinion, is just like any other science denial, and employs the same suite of methods and fallacies in order to do so." Read more

The opposite of high

The opposite of "high" is "low," correct? So when a parent says their child is "high-functioning," they're saying other children are "low-functioning." Even if they don't think that's what they're saying, that's precisely what they're saying.

But what even determines high-functioning vs. low? Having a savant-like skill? Verbal acuity? Passing as "normal"?

My sense is that it's that last one, that the term "high-functioning" is used by parents who feel their kids are close to "normal." Their kids can pass. Maybe it gives these parents some comfort to use that label. I guess so, since I see it used out of context all the time. For example, some parents sign their emails, "Parent to Billy, high-functioning autism." Ugh.

Like some others, I felt that the DSM-V's elimination of the sub-types Aspergers, PDD-NOS, ASD, etc. was, in some regards, problematic. In certain situations, these labels help add context; they are useful in understanding the strengths and challenges one might face.

The APA must have realized this problem, because the latest iteration includes levels of severity for ASD, from Level 1 to Level 3. These, however, are clinical distinctions, helpful in some situations but not in general conversation.

Which leads me to this: maybe all these labels are just problematic to begin with. Maybe the term "autistic" is sufficient. Or maybe even that's too much, I don't know.

So how about this? If you do feel the need to help someone understand what's going on, maybe just talk about the specific issues, and leave the labels at the door.

What I’ve been reading — March 2015

Here are some things I’ve read this past month that I found helpful, informative, or inspiring. If you like this and find it helpful, please share with others. Thanks!

Opinions and insights

Respectfully Connected: Don't Say Rainbows. Fantastic. "There are few misconceptions about autism acceptance and neurodiversity that consistently get repeated by parents of autistic children, to the point that people take them as fact. What follows are some myths I've been trying to deconstruct in the recent past..." Read more

My Speech at the Profectum Conference "The autism I have is not a language processing problem or a lack of understanding anything. I want this point crystal clear. My mind is fully, totally intact. In fact, my experience is that most nonverbal autistic people have intact minds too...Here is your challenge. Stop looking at our weird movements, blank faces, lack of speech, trouble handwriting, poor self control, and on and on, as proof of intellectual delay." Read more

Autism Discussion: building self-acceptance for spectrum teens "... I asked a few autistic adults what helped or would have helped them navigate those notoriously challenging teen years. I also requested input from parents who write frequently about radical self-acceptance for their spectrum children. Here are their responses." Read more

An insider’s view of ‘Special Interests’ "Through Special Interests, you might find a way in to your child’s internal world. A way to share their enthusiasm and a safe harbor to gently lead them to when the world gets too much." Read more

a friend illegible (stories from the autism spectrum) "Early in life, I noticed that playing alone seemed to meet all of my recreational needs. It was engaging, it made sense. I could invent characters to take the place of friends. And yet, at the same time, I felt an intense need to be with people." Read more

Was autism ever a first advocacy priority for those promoting the idea that vaccines cause autism? Basically, no. Read more

News

The Parents Who Give Their Children Bleach Enemas to 'Cure' Them of Autism "O'Leary (autism advocate) has no sympathy for anyone giving their children chlorine dioxide and painted a bleak portrait of life in an MMS household, one that sifting though the CDautism.org forums at length only reinforced: a life of tightly restricted diets, constant oral dosing with chlorine dioxide, and regular, invasive, chlorine dioxide enemas. A life of pain." Read more

Soldiers with autism give army rare view into intel, and disorder How the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) is integrating "...autistic teens and young adults into one of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate’s more crucial functions: aerial photography interpretation." Read more

Keeping autistic readers interested. “'Interest-based reading' — or providing autistic students with reading material based on their particular interests — allows children from fourth to eighth grades with ASD improve their reading comprehension.' Read more

Science

Sign language study solves autism's pronoun mystery. "Instead, the researchers say, the misuse or avoidance of personal pronouns stems from an inability to distinguish between oneself and others — a fundamental confusion in the children's sense of 'self.'" Read more

You and I — "A new fMRI study published in Brain in July reports that connectivity between two brain regions involved in self-awareness is greatly reduced in people with autism when they engage in deictic shifting." Read more

Flair for faces forecasts future autism severity A recent but small study suggests that "...problems with facial recognition in childhood predict autism severity. They also raise the intriguing possibility that impaired facial recognition contributes to the social deficits seen in autism. If this theory pans out, it may be possible to improve social skills in people with the disorder by giving them tools to better recognize faces." Read more

Symptoms in children with autism follow diverse paths "Within months of being diagnosed with autism, preschoolers with the disorder may already be on distinct trajectories, according to a study published 28 January in JAMA Psychiatry. The findings suggest that the severity of autism symptoms does not track with the ability to function in daily life...For example, a child whose social deficits worsen over time may at the same time show improvements in intelligence." Read more

Wearable sensors aim to capture autism in action As we see health trackers become more ubiquitous, it's fascinating to see how they're being used, adapted, or completely re-imagined to help people with autism. Read more

Questions for Deborah Fein: Defining 'optimal outcome.' "A substantial proportion of children with autism who later lost their diagnoses received a one-on-one intervention called Applied Behavior Analysis." Read more