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

I originally bought this book as a gift for a dear friend who is an amazing mother navigating a long, challenging recovery journey with her child. Before gifting it, I read most of it myself, and it completely shifted my perspective on neurodivergent and special needs children. This book beautifully reveals that their world is simply different from ours, and we cannot force them to constantly adapt to fit into our expectations. While we might look from the outside and assume they are suffering or "unhealthy," the author shows that they can be incredibly happy and at peace in their own world—they don't view themselves the way society does. It is a deeply moving, comforting book that brings immense hope. It reminded me that miracles do happen. If you know a parent walking a similar path, or if you just want to understand these wonderful children better, I highly recommend this read.

I bought this book used in “like new” condition, but the experience ended up meaning so much more to me than simply receiving a book. Somehow, tucked between its pages were small traces of another life, from another time, reminders that stories don’t just belong to the people who write them, but also to the people who carry them through the years. What touched me most is that, in a strange way, this book arrived with things that genuinely felt useful to me in this moment of my life. It felt less like a random purchase and more like one of those beautiful reminders that life sometimes sends us exactly what we need through unexpected paths... And somehow, that made reading this already powerful book even more emotional. Thank you for giving stories a second life instead of letting them disappear. To the seller/ sender, Thank you!

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!

Easy to read and very insightful.

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 can help readers understand the way some autists feel and make you understand their actions more but it helps in way to address the problems at hand. Furthermore the question-answer style at first works but then begins to fail more and more. The few illustrations you receive in the book are few, far-between, and feel out of place without much context. The tone of the author also can come off as defensive rather than informational; what I mean by this is it feels like instead of teaching you he is defending the actions and telling you to be entirely fine and even encourage detrimental and dangerous actions. You can understand where he is coming from but you do have to read between some of the lines there. Still this book is informational and a good read for parents, and teachers but beside from that I do not see much value for the average person.

Fantastic book, so educational for parents and kids.

The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida is like a Rosetta Stone, a secret decoder ring for autism’s many mysteries. Author Naoki Higashida is a non-verbal boy with autism living in Japan. He’s able to write using a letter board, and this book of essays was published in 2006 when Higashida was 13 years old. While Higashida doesn’t represent everyone on the autistic spectrum, his book certainly helps explain many autistic behaviors from the inside out. Higashida answers questions on a variety of topics, like, “Why do you flap your hands?” and, “Why do you like to jump?” Higashida’s answers show amazing insight into the autistic mind, detailing a unique system for filing memories, as well as a perpetual struggle with sensory input, and the concept of linear time. The mental gymnastics needed to overcome autism’s obstacles are tremendous, and sometimes brilliant. But it’s exhausting being inside Higashida’s head — you can only imagine how he must feel. A quest for consistency — for something true and unchanging — is behind many autistic behaviors, as seen in Higashida’s response to the question, “Why do you like to spin things?” “Watching spinning things fills us with a sort of everlasting bliss — for the time we sit watching them, they rotate with perfect regularity. Whatever object we spin, this is always true. Unchanging things are comforting, and there’s something beautiful about that.” Many of Higashida’s introspective insights are universal, and written with a poet’s hand. “Invisible things like human relationships and ambiguous expressions … these are difficult for us people with autism to get our head around.” Invisible things are hard for all of us to grasp. Thoughts, emotions, memories, and faith; germs, virus, and disease. Our lives are ruled by Invisibles. They get us all in the end. Asked what causes his panic attacks and meltdowns, Higashida’s response is perceptive and poignant: “Stuck here inside these unresponsive bodies of ours, with feelings we can’t properly express, it’s always a struggle just to survive. And it’s this feeling of helplessness that sometimes drives us half crazy, and brings on a panic attack or a meltdown.” Higashida’s apologetic tone resonates throughout this collection. He longs to connect, but he knows his strange behavior makes others uncomfortable, and it breaks his heart. It will break yours, too. But The Reason I Jump offers a double-shot of hope to parents of children with autism, especially those of us raising non-verbal / limited-speech kids. This book is proof of what we’ve known all along — our kids are thinking / feeling / loving people trapped inside uncooperative bodies. They wear their skin like an ill-fitting suit, constantly tripping on the hems, and getting caught up in the sleeves whenever they reach for something. Sensory Integration Disorder and the strange wiring of the autistic brain make connecting with the outside world a challenge for our kids. Higashida says the autistic mind focuses on details (flashing lights, a ladder, hoses, a loud siren); while a typical mind immediately recognizes an object (a fire truck). Higashida sees a benefit in this reverse-engineered view of the world. “Every single thing has its own unique beauty. People with autism get to cherish this beauty, as if it’s a kind of blessing given to us.” Connect with a person with autism — see the world through their eyes — and you’ll be blessed, too.

This book was an eye opener to ways my child with autism may be thinking. It’s well written and a good read if you have a family member who is non verbal.

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.

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

very touching and having a child with autism myself this book has helped me to understand my son a little better.