The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism

There are so many books out there on autism but very few that actually give you answers. Many books give medical information or statistics that don't help when all you want to know is what an autistic child is thinking. The Reason I Jump is the best and most helpful book I have ever read. Throughout the book there are many personal answers that pertain to the life of Naoki Higashida but they may also pertain to someone else going through life with autism. This book was so great because even through Naiko gave us answers that were very clear to all question he also gave us ways to understand better. The many short stories throughout the book gave us the ability to understand exactly what he was talking about. When educating yourself on any subject it is important to walk a mile in someone else's shoes to get a firm understanding and that's what this did. When in a family with an autistic child things can get so frustrating. It is not only hard when you don't understand what our child wants but it's hard to know that they need something and you are unable to know what that something is. Naoki makes it easier for anyone to understand an autistic child. He gives you all the answers to everything you have been wondering. Even though not everyone who is autistic is the same this books gives you the ability to at least having a starting point which is important. I loved reading this book and saw it as very helpful. Although I don't have a child that is autistic or spend every day living with someone who is, I do a ton of work with an autistic child and I found this amazing. Everything I read in this book I was able to relate to that child and now I am able to handle him better when needed. This book should be red by everyone because there are things that we all wonder that this book answers. Autism is something that is to talked about enough because people don't have enough knowledge but reading this book can be a first step into understanding which is very important.

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.”

This is a good book. It reads like a newspaper or magazine article and is clearly another inner voice. I have read Ms. Grandin as well as many others for my own personal reasons. I am positive that anyone who has the honor and privilege of knowing or caring for an autistic child already knows that this young man speaks for himself, and not all autistics. We loved ones want to know that the spark in the eye, or the joy of some small communication, is a sign that something is coming through. When a parent or caretaker receives the evaluation results, it is overwhelming. As recent as nine years ago, Autism was an extremely controversial subject, with very little support, help, or recognition as "...a real affliction...", which the general public are only now starting to understand and accept. Even personally, and in public, I was advised to "keep your child quiet or keep him at home..." when my child had a public meltdown because a woman started a loud hand dryer in the restroom after I asked her if she wouldn't mind waiting to dry her hands for only a moment. Public meltdowns and opinions never bothered me after that... While it is true that we reach for answers and hope, sometimes blindly, it does not make us stupid. Caretakers are intuitive, patient, loving people who only want their child to fit in as best as they can, without others taking advantage or harming them as adults. I recommend it, but only as ANOTHER VIEWPOINT, not as a reference manual.

What makes this book really so special and unique is that it is written by a person with autism. Not by an expert or a doctor. This book tells you why people with autism do certain things at certain times or in certain situations, how they see the world, and how they are actually not so different from the rest of us as to how they feel about things in general etc... This is a real eye opener. To be honest I wasn't so interested in this book at first but after reading some reviews of the book, I thought I had to read it. And the next thing I knew I had a copy in my hand. At first I couldn't even believe that it was written by a person with autism but after a while on You Tube I watched some documentary programs about Higashida Naoki, the author of the book, which convinced me that it really was written by him and that he really was a person with autism. The book has been so popular around the world now because it's such a special book written by a person with autism. You can study autism, you can read books on autism and you can deal with people with autism but you can never know what it's really like unless you are one with autism. It's a bit like "Autobiography of yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda, a book about a saint written by a real saint himself. Which makes the book so special. Anyway this book written by Higashida totally changed my idea of autism and people with autism. Autism may seem difficult to figure out but if you read this book, you'll know they are actually in a way not so different from the rest of us. They do look different but they are not different inside. Think about it, what if your legs and arms move against your will sometimes all of a sudden and you can't really control that? What if you yell and scream all of a sudden when you don't want to and you can't stop it from happening even if you want to? What if your body is beyond your control? And people around you think you are "different" just because of all those things? You just have no control over your body and what you do sometimes. You can read books and understand but you can't talk. You can talk inside you but are not able to communicate with others with words. As soon as you try to say something or anything aloud or put your words out of your mouth, your words just vanish. And people around you believe that you don't feel or think the same way they do but of course you do. This is a wonderful book, indeed. Only, it is to be regretted that the English version is not as wonderful as the original Higashida Naoki wrote in Japanese. I recommend the original Japanese version.

Que livro esclarecedor! Incrível ter a oportunidade de conhecer um pouco sobre um mundo a parte do que vivo no dia a dia. É uma benção poder que quer brar paradigmas.

A jump into an autistic mind, clear and easy to understand. Very useful for both neurotypical and autistic people; teens and adults.

Brilliant. I'd recommend for anyone who has autistic people in their lives.

I wanted to learn more about Autism from a nonverbal Autistic person’s viewpoint. Very informative book! I totally recommend it to parents or caregivers of Autistic individuals.