I would say my sensory experience was mostly positive, with the exception of my extreme fear of dogs. Joss's parents describe his childhood sensory experiences as positive and that they were able to provide what he needed. If I have been overstimulated at work or I am coming back from time in the community, I will turn the lights out at home to block out additional sensory input. These are all things that I have a hard time handling. Tapping, a blow dryer, loud music, phones ringing, a dog repeatedly barking. Any noise that's loud or repetitive will drive me nuts. Music also calms when I play my specific playlists as well as riding in the car. He goes on to say, 'Everything has its own unique beauty when a color is vivid or eye catchy, my heart kind of skips a beat and I can't concentrate on anything else.' For me, I like looking at things lava lamps, rain falling, looking at pictures and small visual timers. This makes me be able to see things other people wouldn't recognize or if someone loses something I'm able to find it faster than others. It sometimes takes me a minute to figure out what I'm looking at. When you see an object, you see the entire thing, but for me the details appear first and then the entire thing' For me, I would say I notice the details first and then the whole object. Naoki describes his sensory experience as 'So how I see the world you may be looking at the exact same thing as me, but how I perceive it maybe different. If I have been overstimulated at work or I am coming back from time in the community, I will turn the lights out at home to block out additional sensory input. My long term memories feel like they just happened yesterday and it doesn't matter whether it's a good or bad memory. For example, if I'm doing a task I enjoy it's hard for me to stop doing it. Personally, I would say time can be confusing. My memory is more like a pool of dots – memories are all scattershot and never connected in the right order.” Naoki describes his memory with the phrase, “Time is a continuous thing with no clear boundaries, which is why it’s so confusing … I imagine other people’s memories are arranged continuously like a line. It follows the lives of Joss, Amrit, Ben, Emma and Jestina. Jerry Rothwell paints the unique sensory experience of those with autism through multiple filming techniques including close-ups and heightened sound. The documentary shows the challenges and victories of living with autism from people around the world. The Reason I Jump documentary follows the lives of five non-verbal or minimally verbal neurodivergent people.

He gives a very detailed account into his life. The book describes the thoughts and feelings of Naoki as he navigates the world being unable to speak. The Reason I Jump is a book written by a non-verbal, autistic 13 year old boy, Naoki, living in Japan.

I'm going to be giving spoilers into the documentary. Naoki Higashida shines a light on the autistic landscape from the inside.Ībridged and Produced by Allegra McIlroy.DISCLAIMER: I strongly encourage you to read The Reason I Jump or watch T he Reason I Jump documentary on Netflix before reading this blog post.

The Reason I Jump pushes beyond the notion of autism as a disability, and reveals it as simply a different way of being, and of seeing. His autism is so severe that he finds it difficult to hold a conversation, and he wrote the book using a Japanese Alphabet Grid - a low tech table of Japanese hiragana syllables, on which he spells out his words painstakingly, character by character.ĭavid and his Japanese wife originally began a translation for their personal use and that of their son's other carers and tutors, and eventually it grew into this book. Naoki Higashida was born in 1992 and wrote the book when he was still only thirteen years old.

When the award-winning author of Cloud Atlas David Mitchell, whose own son has autism, discovered this extraordinary book, he felt that for the first time his own son was talking to him about what was going on inside his head, through the words of the young author. Translated by David Mitchell and KA Yoshida, and introduced by David Mitchell

The reason i jump