4 Lessons from “The Reason I Jump” I learned as a Speech Therapist
Ming, a speech therapist, draws four lessons from Naoki Higashida's The Reason I Jump about autism. Autistic people understand more than they can express and hate being treated as burdens. Sensory overload is extreme and unpredictable. Motor control for speech is harder than it looks, and fear triggers are difficult to verbalize.
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Hey, guys, it's Ming here from agents of speech.com. today, I want to talk about four lessons I learned from this book, okay? And this book is the reason I jumped by Naoki Higashida. The first lesson is this, all right, that people with ASD do not want to be a burden. All right? And inside the book, I'm paraphrasing. I'm not really directly coding him. He says that sometimes he wishes that he wasn't born at all. And it rings true to, like, two of the students who have said the same to me. One of them said, ming, I really sometimes want to crawl back to my mother's womb. And the other one is like, I didn't ask to be born. Stuff is so hard in this world. And I really think that they, as in, I don't want to have a distinction between us and them, right? But when I say they, I mean, people with ASD are obviously different in terms of operating and thinking and all with us, right? So they don't want to be a burden to us as much as we don't want to. You know, we don't want to have that burden on us either, okay? It's also a very hard. It's also a huge burden, an emotional burden for them that their lives will affect ours and brings some sort of. Some sort of inconvenience to us, right? They're also human being in their hearts. They want to contribute. They want to be themselves. They want to be independent. They don't want people to be always around them and so on. They don't want the. The help that we're giving them sometimes, and we have to be mindful of that. We cannot just think in a way that, oh, they don't know anything. They. They won't understand. They won't think. And a certain way where, you know, we're helping too much or whatever, they will think that way as long as they're mature enough. And one of the students that, you know, I teach will say. She will say, people think that I don't understand, but actually I understand every word, okay? And when people say that in front of children with ASD or people with asd, it really hurts them because they feel like they are treated differently, obviously. Right? But if you talk behind the back as if they don't understand and, you know, pretend that they're a dummy, it actually makes them feel like a burden, okay, to society as a whole. All right? So that's my lesson number one, that they don't want to be any part of this, you know, our wants to treat them and like, give them therapy and everything is help, right? It's. It's great. But at the same time, they never asked for it. All right? So sometimes we act in a way that we know best and we, we go ahead and we tell them do this, do that, don't do that, and then they don't understand. They feel like were being inconvenient, like they, they are inconvenience to us, and it really hurts them emotionally. So we need to remember that. Okay, so lesson number two is that sensory overload is worse than we can ever imagine. All right? And I don't really think as far as the book also says, right, and it's a guess, right? We don't really know much about ASD at this moment in time. Maybe some people will argue, yeah, we know a lot. We. We don't know anything. But, you know, the more I learn about asd, the less I think I know. All right, so as far as we know, we think that the neural endings, the hardware inside the brain is basically around the same, but it's how it's wired. Right. That's why we call it neurotypical or neural diverse. Right. So the way that it's wired, the, the software is kind of different. The, the term sensory processing, I think it's quite important here. So the way that they process sensory is rather different than us. So they might feel something the same as us, but they don't know how to react, how to give an emotion, how to react. React to it, right. Sometimes it's no reaction. Sometimes the reaction is too much. So they cannot really have a, what we call normal, right. As an hour normal. Right. But when they process these sensory, they don't know how to give an appropriate reaction. All right? And sometimes these reactions trigger some sort of emotion, especially fear. So that's why, in my opinion, my opinion only that ASD children, you know, or people are fearful of unfamiliar sounds and unfamiliar like atmosphere or places, environment. But at the same time, the other can be true. They can be very mesmerized by like new visuals, especially certain patterns that have really, really nice details, right? So it goes both ways. Either they really scared of it or they really like it. Um, and, you know, only they can tell us what they're thinking or, or how they feel. And we can only guess, right? Okay, so lesson number three is that memory and fear triggers work differently from ours. Their memory, their triggers. Right. Their fear triggers are different from us. Okay? So memories always pop up into ASD people's mind. According to the book, that's what Naoki said. And some of my students, especially two of them, they always just suddenly start to laugh. And the, the reason I know is because I can ask them, what, what are you thinking about? And they can tell me, ah, thinking about something funny, right? Or something. Sometimes they just scream, ah, like, and I'm like, what? What's going on, man? And then they tell me, oh, I thought about something really bad, okay? So these memories pop up a lot. And as much as I would like to think that, you know, they have these kind of triggers more often than us, I really think that we have a much. We have something to, to use to cope with it, okay? We can go out to drinks with friends, we can talk to our friends, we can talk to our, in my case, my spouse, you know, my friends, my family and complain and talk it over, okay? But children or people on the spectrum, they don't really know how to do that. They don't know how to explain themselves, express themselves effectively and all just trapped inside and they don't know what to do about it, okay? So, you know, as, as we talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk and talk. That's why in psychology we call it talking therapy when we are treating some sort of, some, some sort of psychological disorder. Right? The problem is that ASC people don't have that opportunity. Many times these fears and memories, they come back and haunt people on the spectrum and it really isn't addressed properly. This becomes more mainstream. I believe psychotherapy for ASD people will become more, more popular as, as a, as a way of intervention, Right? I'm not talking about those who identify themselves as like adult autism or like diagnose themselves, right? I'm talking about people who didn't talk at like 5 and then didn't talk until like 10. And then, you know, during adolescence and adulthood, they need some sort of counseling. I'm not talking about those people who self diagnose, okay? And I'm not gonna, we're not going into that rabbit hole either, all right? I'm sure people in the comments like gonna try and talk about that, but let's not go there, okay? So the last lesson I've learned is something that I know, but I didn't know it was that bad. Okay? So number four is motoric tasks are harder than we would expect. So we take it for granted how easily we move our limbs, right? I'm like moving my hands as I talk to express myself, okay? ASD people, sometimes some of them like, not everyone. That's the beauty of asd, because of the spectrum. And everyone's kind of different. So some of them, they have a problem with, like, coordination, motor planning, and whatever that comes with it. Okay, Just think about how intricate talking is. When I talk, there are multiple, multiple, multiple small mouth muscles, or oral muscles, as we call it, that contribute towards saying a sound correctly. All these muscles are working in a very fine order. All right? So. So if the. The tongue goes up a little bit, goes down a little bit, the whole sound changes. So if you think about that, it wouldn't be hard to imagine why it's so difficult for children or people on the spectrum to say a sound correctly. Obviously, there's a lot more to talk about in this topic, in this book, and there are a lot more books I know out there that are great, but, you know, we can only read so many. That's why we have a Facebook group for parents like yourself. If you're watching it, you can. And it's basically a place where it's safe and free and okay to share about your experiences, ask questions, and also to get your answers right. Please go there and link in the description box below and I'll see you there. Goodbye.
