Why I Jump Autobiography In the book Why I Jump, a boy named Naoki has autism. The book is about his life and him answering questions people have about autism. He answers the questions to the best of his ability on what it’s like for him in his life. It’s about how he feels on a daily basis and how he learned to cope with it, by communicating through the alphabet. He used that knowledge to write this book for people to understand autism in a better way. Naoki was young when he was diagnosed with autism. “Faintheartedness is doomed by the first niggling doubt that there’s Something Not Quite Right about your sixteen-month-old” (Higashida x). He didn’t know much at the time, so it was hard for him to understand what was going on. He had thought
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The questions would range from “Do you prefer to be on your own?”(Higashida 27). , all the way to “What are your thoughts on autism itself?”(Higashida 111). To every question Naoki had a good answer based on why he personally does all of these different things. To a person who doesn’t have autism it’s really hard to understand what’s going on in their minds. We don’t know they do the things they do or why they can’t do the things we do. It all just depends on the particular person and things can be different from person to person. Specifically to Naoki some of the most difficult things are answering questions. “The reason we need so much time isn’t necessarily because we haven’t understood, but because by the time it’s our turn to speak, the reply we wanted to make has often upped and vanished from our heads”(Higashida 18). It’s hard for him because for a kid with autism to answer a question it’s a process. They have to think about what they were just asked and relate it to a memory of a similar question to remember how they responded and then try and relay that back. This gets difficult for them because they have to remember the question, remember the memory, remember what they said, and then remember to answer back. So when they are being told to hurry up or to answer they get stressed out because they are trying hard to remember all of these things and it takes time. People need to learn to stay patient with them and to encourage them to keep trying. “When we sense you’ve given up on us, it makes us feel miserable. So please keep trying to help us, through to the end”(Higashida
The questions would range from “Do you prefer to be on your own?”(Higashida 27). , all the way to “What are your thoughts on autism itself?”(Higashida 111). To every question Naoki had a good answer based on why he personally does all of these different things. To a person who doesn’t have autism it’s really hard to understand what’s going on in their minds. We don’t know they do the things they do or why they can’t do the things we do. It all just depends on the particular person and things can be different from person to person. Specifically to Naoki some of the most difficult things are answering questions. “The reason we need so much time isn’t necessarily because we haven’t understood, but because by the time it’s our turn to speak, the reply we wanted to make has often upped and vanished from our heads”(Higashida 18). It’s hard for him because for a kid with autism to answer a question it’s a process. They have to think about what they were just asked and relate it to a memory of a similar question to remember how they responded and then try and relay that back. This gets difficult for them because they have to remember the question, remember the memory, remember what they said, and then remember to answer back. So when they are being told to hurry up or to answer they get stressed out because they are trying hard to remember all of these things and it takes time. People need to learn to stay patient with them and to encourage them to keep trying. “When we sense you’ve given up on us, it makes us feel miserable. So please keep trying to help us, through to the end”(Higashida