For the last 30 years, my wife and I have been trying to parent a neurodivergent (autistic) son. In the early years, we got all the wrong advice. Doctors would tell us he will grow out of this, or it is just ADHD and here are some drugs. Or this is just developmental delays and things will work out. Things did not change and he did not just "grow out of it". In fact, as the adult expectations of life came along with school-driven structure falling away, things took a very difficult turn.
My son is intelligent, but with significant executive functioning delays. This makes his social interactions extremely anxiety-producing and his daily sequencing of life extraordinarily difficult. He knows what he is supposed to do, he thinks deeply, and is very emotionally sensitive. What is incredibly challenging is the executive processing needed to act on tasks, and complete the steps needed to get himself to a goal. No matter how hard he tries, he always needs assistance for sequencing executive functions and he always needs prompting to get to a decision.
The professionals all consider my son to be in the high functioning autism category on the spectrum. This higher level of functioning translates into people over estimating his abilities, and a greater degree of frustration with himself and by others. In other words, a wealth of knowledge is there in his brain, however some key bridges along the pathways to act on that knowledge just seem missing.
Over the last few months, my wife and I took the combined sum of our knowledge, experiences, years of struggles, battles with autism, neurodivergence, depression, anxiety, mood disorders, and so many other things that impact the neurodivergent — and authored what we hope is a helpful app called DailyCue. Planning and developing DailyCue has been an emotional journey. We have struggled so much and for so many years. The key question is/was always this ... What can we do to help him?
During the software development process, not only did we want to make this app helpful in sequencing decisions, and executive functions, we wanted to add a personal touch also. Since I am a musician, the personal touches are in the form of my own recorded notification sounds. The goal was to produce a gentle, less impactful experience overall. Both the notification sounds, and the theme colors are deliberately designed with kindness and care in mind for low impact. Furthermore, we strongly believe that distracting advertisements are just about the worst thing you can inflict on the neurodiverfent. Therefore, there is no advertising in this app!
DailyCue will not solve all the problems of someone who is neurodivergent. It is our solution for the problems we experienced — and we hope it is something others can benefit from. It is designed simply to be a helpful aid for people who struggle largely with task completion of daily routines.
If this becomes successful, we fully intend to donate a percentage of the proceeds to a suitable organization working to help neurodivergent people succeed in life. It is truly our hope that this story resonates with others, and that perhaps this work is helpful to others.
Sincerely,
Joff and Bonnie Thyer