Autism. Its a big word and its loaded with complexity.

I’m sure you know someone with autism, or someone who cares for a person with autism. But believe me you don’t “know” autism until you’re in it first-hand, and by the time you're truly in it, you're in a tornado of emotion, bureaucracy, exclusion and judgement with an imperative to learn and to learn fast. Where do you turn? How do you understand your child and the seemingly strange things they do? Where do you go for reliable information?

I’m the proud grandmother of a five-year-old child with autism. The sweetest child who loves Buzz Lightyear, Frozen, Peppa Pig and Mr Blippi. That same child sleeps at best four or five hours a night, regulates their emotions by hurting themselves,  banging their head, pulling out their eyelashes, gouging out their eyes and biting their own hands. They run away if you take them outside, have no awareness of danger, can be unexpectedly violent to others and despite having words they have very little communication, just a jumbled-up mass of random phrases most of it learnt from their favourite TV show, with little to no context or understanding.

Everything I learnt about parenting my three kids is next to useless in helping this beautiful, vulnerable and funny child. I’ve had to learn everything through trial and error which isn’t great for either of us.

Now don’t get me wrong there’s lots of literature out there but most of it is not what I need. I don’t need generic explanations of autism and autistic traits, I need to know about my grand-child, what it feels like to be them, how to communicate with them, I need to help them order their thoughts, to avoid them hurting themselves and others, to grow and develop as a person, all with the hope of creating a quality of life for them and maybe even the far off dream of independence. No two autistic people are the same, and so the over simplification of resources and the lack of investment in bespoke services is a gauntlet all autistic families must overcome.

The right level of information, support and help just hasn’t been available to us, and I’ve looked believe me. Many health professionals simply don’t understand or have the time or patience to individualise knowledge and coping strategies and so you are often left to sink or swim. Literature is lazy and appeals to the masses, often meeting only the most basic standard of information. But then along came a book written by Naoki Higashida “The Reason I Jump” which changed everything for me, and in turn will change everything for my grandchild.

It reminds us of something we should all remember, "in every autistic child however cut off and distant they may outwardly seem, there resides a warm, beating heart". 

It helps to answer the questions no other resource has answered for me so far - why does my grandchild do the things they do, repeating the same behaviour over and over again even though they've been told a million times not to do it? How does banging their head off the floor really, really hard help to regulate their sensory issues? Why do they insist on eating the same six foods to the exclusion of everything else? Why do they randomly begin to laugh at seemingly nothing at all and why can’t I have a proper conversation with my grandchild, comfort them, encourage them, calm them - something I yearn desperately to do.

I have so many questions, and this book brings it to life, allowing me to see it through their eyes, delivering compassion in spades. It doesn't solve these issues for us, but it gives us understanding so we can be better for them, bending to them rather than hoping they'll bend to us.

Quite simply this book is a revelation, dismantling every pre-conception we hold about autism, offering the reader access to a previously unknown world. I highly recommend it and believe everyone should read it and I hope for the sake of my grand-child and everyone just like them, that you’ll do just that – read it. The Reason I Jump will “stretch your vision of what it is to be human”, and in a world that is ever more complicated, often cold and intolerant of difference I’d urge you to buck the trend for my grand-child and everyone like them.