The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism Paperback – Illustrated, March 22, 2016

I am a mother of 2 Autistic children. In this short read, I learned to better understand my children. The journey is not easy. We as parents, have to be patient, loving, caring & supportive. Regardless, of what and how we feel at the moment. Its about them, not you (just try not to lose yourself in the journey). Beautifully written ⭐️

When an autistic child screams at inconsequential things, or bangs her head against the floor, or rocks back and forth for hours, parents despair at understanding why. Why are you so upset? Why do you hurt yourself? Why can't you tell me what's wrong? They fight to break through, to somehow communicate with the mind they know is in there, but when the child is nonverbal all parents have to go on is largely guesswork and the occasional adult memoir from someone who has long since learned to deal with their difficulties.That is, until 13-year-old Naoki Higashida pointed at an alphabet board letter by letter and painstakingly wrote a book about himself.“The Reason I Jump” is an extremely moving and candid book, mostly composed of Q&As that most people would never be so rude to ask but are desperate to know. “Why do you flap your hands in front of your face?” “Why do you get lost so often?” “Why can you never stay still?” “Why do people with autism talk so loudly and weirdly?” “Why don't you make eye contact when you're talking?” And, of course, “What's the reason you jump?” 58 questions in all, every one answered with honesty, humor, and a plaintive plea for understanding. It's the breakthrough that every parent or caregiver of an autistic child longs for.Why does he repeat questions he already knows the answer to? Because his memory doesn't work as linearly as most people, Naoki says, and it helps him concentrate. But also because he's playing with words. “We aren't good at conversation, and however hard we try, we'll never speak as effortlessly as you do,” he said. “Repeating these is great fun. It's like a game of catch with a ball. Unlike the words we're ordered to say, repeating questions we already know the answers to can be a pleasure -- it's playing with sound and rhythm.”Naoki also includes a few prose pieces and a short story as he strives to explain what daily life is like for him.If there's a theme, it's that autism for Naoki means experiencing everything -- sights, sounds, scents, memories -- without filters and with little control or priority, and everything he does is an effort to focus, to dial the stimulus down to something manageable, to take away uncertainty. Wiggling his fingers in front of his face helps soften harsh lights. Commercials are wonderful because they're very short and he knows how they end. Spinning things is fascinating because while they spin, they move with perfect regularity. Disruptions to a routine are disastrous because then his future is impossible to predict. “Unchanging things are comforting,” he said, “and there's something beautiful about that.”“This Reason I Jump” has been very popular in Japan since Naoki wrote it in 2006. The new English translation is by author David Mitchell (“The Cloud Atlas”) and his wife KA Yoshida, who translated it for their own use after they found it helped them understand their autistic son, and it's easy to see why it has struck a chord with so many people. For caregivers of an autistic child it's an unexpected godsend, a translator for a land they can't visit. But even if none of your relatives are autistic, you will certainly encounter people with varying degrees of these traits throughout your life -- autism covers a wide spectrum of conditions -- and the insights Naoki provides are invaluable.That said, autistic people have their own reasons for the things they do, just as “normal” people do, and Naoki's answers ultimately explain only Naoki. But the hidden value of the book, as Mitchell says in his forward, is what it reveals about the mind of an autistic child. “It offers up proof that locked inside the helpless-seeming autistic body is a mind as curious, subtle sand complex as yours, as anyone's,” he said.So why does Naoki jump? Because it's fun. Because when he jumps he can really feel where his body parts are and what they're doing for once. And because it feels as if he's “shaking loose the ropes that are tying down my body.“When I jump, I feel lighter, and I think the reason my body is drawn skyward is that the motion makes me want to change into a bird and fly off to some faraway place.”

The Reason I Jump, written by Naoki Higashida and translated by David Mitchell absolutely grasped my mind and brought it right back into its seat the moment I opened the book. Although the book is short in length, Naoki makes sure that his words are worth while and purposeful, leaving myself and my peers around me better members of society in relationship to people who have autism. Higashida's writing is phenomenal-- especially given the fact that he struggles in writing sentences out himself and relies heavily on a laminated print out of a keyboard to develop the very sentences shown in the book. Despite the vast array of questions that the narrator uses to interview Naoki, his answers become hugely repetitive in their message-- which isn't so much a cry of boredom for the reader as it is a huge light up arrow directly pointing out the single simple message that he is trying to relay.The chapters within the book are lined with stories that indirectly relate to the text, but nevertheless draw connections to other messages that he is trying to send out to his audience. One such story is a story about himself while he's learning to wave goodbye to a friend. In summary, people kept telling him that he was doing it incorrectly, but he didn't understand why until someone had him look in a mirror. He finally realized that he was waving goodbye to himself with his palm facing toward his own face rather than his palm facing away and toward the other person. He was simply mimicking what he saw when someone waved goodbye to him which happened to be the other person's palm, but couldn't fully translate what he saw into the correct behavior. This story highlighted something for me that the rest of the book didn't. Through sharing his charming anecdote with the audience, he was giving way to the possibility that the misconceptions go both ways between people without autism and the people with it.The Reason I Jump highlighted something that had never even gone through my head as a possibility-- which is the message Naoki gave about how his differences are so black and white with my own that his entire life is a different language than mine with only time given a way to crack simple translations. The fact that he describes himself as a prisoner of his own body allowed me to visualize what it must be like for him to make the same body movement or vocal sound that he had wished upon in his very own head. His writing began to rely more heavily on the contrast between what was going on through his head and how his actions followed up. He blamed autism heavily on the gap in purposeful communication and then instead of saying that he might try better next time, he suggests that he's already "tried better next time" and he might be better off if the people around him were more understanding of his way of life. His perspective as a young teenager with autism gave not only myself but my peers a new hope for understanding. As the narrator described in the preface, Naoki Higashida was one of the youngest individuals to write a whole book out that effectively comprehended and answered questions. It was as if he himself had cracked the code for people without autism to be able to understand the language of the autistic people-- a topic that is heavily elaborated on within the book itself.I would highly suggest reading this book for anyone and anyone that is determined to be a better member of society. For myself, I gained a world of understanding within the minimal text that it took to translate necessary "teaching-moments" of the world of autism. I also gained a lifelong respect and love for individuals who have autism.. they really are incredibly smart!