“The Reason I Jump” By Naoki Higashida
Donald Trump has been President for over two weeks now, and I am just going to make a super controversial statement and say…Saturday Night Live has never been better.
In all seriousness, since Trump started dominating headlines 19 months ago when he announced his candidacy by calling Mexicans rapists, I’ve never felt more urgency to make my voice heard, donating my money to organizations like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood and donating my time to organizations like Hour of Code and Big Brothers, Big Sisters.
Then, Trump mocked a reporter with a disability.
This is the man who, at the time, was asking the American people to give him the most powerful job in the world. And while the majority of Americans did not vote for him, Trump became the 45th US President, winning the electoral college. The man who publicly bullied a person with a disability is our President.
But, this is not a political piece.
I come from a family of educators who either work or have worked with children who have special needs including children on the autism spectrum. When I was a lifeguard and a swim instructor, I taught private swim lessons to a child with autism.
This child saw and interacted with the world through a filter different from my own. He LOVED the water and his excitement was palpable, infectious and beautiful. I learned immediately that I was not going to be able to teach this lesson employing my “normal” techniques. To connect effectively with this child meant communicating, for the most part, non-verbally and focusing, instead, on demonstrations: how to kick, blow bubbles and hold our breaths underwater.
After several lessons, we both learned a few things.
- My student learned how to float and became much more comfortable dunking his head underwater, which was a far cry from vomiting on his instructor after swallowing too much chlorine on day one.
- I learned that effective communication can and does exist so much outside of verbal communication. This seems obvious, and it’s something we do often without realizing. However, when verbal communication is not an option, the road to understanding becomes much more difficult.
Several years after this experience, someone recommended to me The Reason I Jump, a book written by a 13-year-old boy named Naoki Higashida.
Translated from his native Japanese, Higashida answers questions about autism that many people likely wonder but are afraid to ask such as “Would you like to be ‘normal?'” “What causes panic attacks and meltdowns?” and, of course, “What’s the reason you jump?.”
But when I’m jumping, it’s as if my feelings are going upward to the sky. Really, my urge to be swallowed up by the sky is enough to make my heart quiver. When I’m jumping, I can feel my body parts really well, too—my bounding legs and my clapping hands—and that makes me feel so, so good.”
Higashida answers each of the 58 questions posed in his book sometimes with great detail and always very thoughtfully, providing a window into his world.
So how do people with autism see the world, exactly? We, only we, can ever know the answer to that one! Sometimes I actually pity you for not being able to see the beauty of the world in the same way we do. Really, our vision of the world can be incredible, just incredible …
Autism has entered the national conversation within the last decade with the debunked claims that there are links between autism and vaccines. The CDC has funded 9 studies that all concluded that there are no links between himerosal-containing vaccines and Autism Spectrum Disorder.
While autism and its causes largely remains a mystery, this book helps to paint the picture of the world with autism, question by question, detail by detail — much in the way the world reveals itself to a person with autism.
When you see an object, it seems that you see it as an entire thing first, and only afterwards do its details follow on…. But for people with autism, the details jump straight out at us first of all, and then only gradually, detail by detail, does the whole image sort of float up into focus.
Recommended? Unequivocally
Buy it Here: http://amzn.to/2kGT7Gd
