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

all. In fact, by relying on them too much you can end up saying the opposite of what you wanted to say. I swear conversation is such hard work! To make myself understood, it’s like I have to speak in an unknown foreign language, every minute of every day.

Q5 W HY DO YOU DO THINGS YOU SHOULDN’T EVEN WHEN YOU’VE BEEN TOLD A MILLION TIMES NOT TO?
    ‘How many
times
do I have to
tell
you?!’
    Us people with autism hear that all the time. Me, I’m always being told off for doing the same old things. It may look as if we’re being bad out of naughtiness, but honestly, we’re not. When we’re being told off, we feel terrible that yet again we’ve done what we’ve been told not to. But when the chance comes once more, we’ve pretty much forgotten about the last time and we just get carried away yet again. It’s as if something that isn’t us is urging us on.
    You must be thinking: ‘Is he
never
going to learn?’ We know we’re making you sad and upset, but it’s as if we don’t have any say in it, I’m afraid, and that’s the way it is. But please, whatever you do, don’t give up on us. We need your help.

Q6 D O YOU FIND CHILDISH LANGUAGE EASIER TO UNDERSTAND?
    Children with autism are also growing and developing every single day, yet we are forever being treated like babies. I guess this is because we seem to act younger than our true age, but whenever anyone treats me as if I’m still a toddler, it really hacks me off. I don’t know whether people think I’ll understand baby-language better, or whether they think I just prefer being spoken to in that way.
    I’m not asking you to deliberately use difficult language when you talk to people with autism – just that you treat us as we are, according to our age. Every single time I’m talked down to, I end up feeling utterly miserable – as if I’m being given a zero chance of a decent future.
    True compassion is about not bruising the other person’s self-respect. That’s what I think, anyway.



Q7 W HY DO YOU SPEAK IN THAT PECULIAR WAY?
    Sometimes, people with autism speak with a strange intonation, or use language in a different way. Non-autistic people can sort out what they want to say in real-time, while they’re having their conversation. But in our case, the words we want to say and the words we
can
say don’t always match that well. Which is why our speech can sound a bit odd, I guess. When there’s a gap between what I’m thinking and what I’m saying, it’s because the words coming out of my mouth are the only ones I can access at that time. These words are either available because I’m always using them or because they left a lasting impression on me at some point in the past.
    Some of you may think we read aloud with a strange intonation, too. This is because we can’t read the story and imagine the story at the same time. Just the act of reading costs us a lot of effort – sorting out the words and somehow voicing them is already a very tall order.
    More practice will help, however. Please never laugh at us, even when we’re doing a less than great job.

Q8 W HY DO YOU TAKE AGES TO ANSWER QUESTIONS?
    You normal people, you talk at an incredible speed. Between thinking something in your head and saying it takes you just a split second. To us, that’s like magic!
    So is there something wrong with the circuitry in our brains? Life’s been tough for people with autism, pretty much for ever, yet nobody’s really been able to identify the causes of autism. For sure, it takes us ages to respond to what the other person has just said. 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.
    I don’t know if this is making a whole lot of sense to you. Once our reply has disappeared, we can never get it back again.
What did he say again? How was I going to answer her question?
… Search me! And all the while, we’re being bombarded by yet more questions. I end up thinking,
this is just hopeless
. It’s as if I’m drowning in a flood of words.

Q9 S HOULD WE LISTEN TO EVERY SINGLE WORD YOU SAY?
    Making sounds with your mouth isn’t the same thing as communication, right? Lots of people can’t get their heads fully around this, I think. Isn’t there a belief out there that if a person is using verbal language, it follows that the person is saying what they want to say?