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

electrical buzz in my brain, which is very pleasant – no other sensation is quite the same. Perhaps the closest thing is watching your very favourite scene on a DVD, looping on auto-repeat, over and over.
    Still, we shouldn’t do what we shouldn’t do. How, as thinking beings, can we break out of this loop? This is a big project. I work hard to solve the problem, but this work costs so much energy. Maintaining this grip on myself is really, really, really tough. It’s at these times that we need your help with patience, guidance and love. Of course we want you to stop us doing what we’re not supposed to do, but we also want you to understand what we’re going through at these times.

Q53 W HY ARE YOU OBSESSIVE ABOUT CERTAIN THINGS?
    We don’t obsess over certain things because we like it, or because we want to. People with autism obsess over certain things because we’d go crazy if we didn’t. By performing whatever action it is, we feel a bit soothed and calmed down. But then whenever someone tells me off for doing the action, or even prevents me from repeating it, I feel utterly miserable. I never actually wanted to do it in the first place, and now I end up hating myself even more for not being able to control my own actions. Whenever our obsessive behaviour is bothering other people, please stop us straight away, whatever way you can. The person who’s suffering the most is the one who’s causing all the headaches for everyone else – that is, the one with the autism. Even though it looks as if we’re frolicking about and having the best time, inside we’re aching and hurting because we know we don’t even have control over what our own bodies are doing.
    All that said, when our obsessive behaviour isn’t actually bothering anyone, I’d ask you just to keep a quiet eye on us. It won’t last for ever. One fine day, however hard we have tried to will ourselves to stop before, the obsessive action suddenly stops itself, without warning – like, ‘How come?’ Somehow our brain flashes up a GAME OVER signal. The sign works like when you’ve just guzzled down an entire bag of sweets. The need to obsess about whatever it was is all used up. When that sign appears, I feel set free, like someone who can finally put aside all of last night’s dreams.
    The problem is, how to help people with autism stop their obsessive actions in cases when they
are
bothering others? To you who are helping us, I’d say this: please handle and approach our behavioural issues with a strong faith that they are definitely going to pass, at some point in the future. When we are stopped from doing what we want, we may well make a terrible song and dance about it, but in time we’ll get used to the idea. And until we reach that point, we’d like you to stick with it, and stick with us.

T HE BLACK CROW AND THE WHITE DOVE
    There was once a black crow who liked a certain song called
The Seven Little Crows
which began,
Crow, Crow, Crow, why do you crawk
? Normally in stories, crows are bullies and villains who everyone hates, but not in this song. This troubled the black crow, who would ask himself,
How come it’s always the crows who are the bad guys?
    One day, a white dove who had lost her way met the black crow. She asked, ‘Where does this path go?’ Then the white dove stared down at the ground, looking lonely.
    The black crow wondered what was wrong, and asked, ‘What’s the matter?’
    On the point of tears, the white dove said, ‘I’ve been searching for the path to happiness for a long, long time, but I still can’t find it anywhere. And I’m supposed to be the bird of peace, too …’
    The black crow was surprised to learn that even a bird as beautiful and as loved by everyone as the white dove nonetheless had deep problems to worry about. His answer was this: ‘But all paths are one connected path.’
    The white dove looked taken aback by this un-expected answer. But after a time, she smiled. ‘How about that? So the path I’ve been searching for all this time is the path I am already on.’ In excellent spirits, the white dove flew off, up into the blue sky. Then the black crow, too, turned his head skywards, then flapped his wings vigorously, and away he flew. And the black crow looked no less perfect against the deep blue than the white dove.

Q54 W HY DO YOU NEED CUES AND PROMPTS?
    People with autism are sometimes unable to move on to their next action without a verbal prompt. For example, even