David Mitchell
‘I worry about my autistic son’s future every day’
‘When I see a stranger showing a little act of kindness toward my son, it makes me tearful,” says David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas. “A woman on a Thames boat trip let him play with her hair; I immediately went into anxious dadsplaining mode and started to apologise, but she chatted quite happily to him.
“As a child, the world instinctively makes allowances, but I worry about what will happen when he is a young man and that tolerance evaporates.”
Mitchell’s son, whom he never names, is 11 years old and has autism. If he were sitting quietly playing the video game Temple Run you might not guess at his condition. But if you distracted him, he might climb on the table to run his fingertips over a painting, or pull very hard on your earrings until you yelped because he wanted to see how much force it would take to hurt you.
Largely non-verbal, his boundless curiosity is exhilarating, exhausting and exasperating. But people understand. Scroll forward five years and strangers will react in a very different way. “Do I worry about my son’s future? Only every day,” says Mitchell. “A cute boy is an easy sell; a 19-year-old with little concept of personal boundaries, less so.”
Autism in young adults has been in the news of late. In the Vale of Glamorgan, a mother who took to Facebook pleading for a job for her 27-year-old son was inundated with replies. Meanwhile in London, the outspoken comic novelist Kathy Lette admitted she once considered taking her son, Julius, to a brothel so that he could experience sex. She got as far as kerbcrawling in a red light district but then, wisely, thought better of it. The 26-year-old actor, a semi-regular on Holby City, did find a girlfriend with whom he had a physical relationship.
“I understand entirely why any parent would feel like that and I have sympathy for Kathy Lette because sexuality and autism is a challenge,” says Mitchell. “We are a long way from that at the moment, but to cope with a child who has autism you need to be a creative improviser, reacting to situations as they change. My wife and I have friends who have reluctantly had to place their son in residential care because the wave of testosterone and frustration spilled over into violence.”
Mitchell, 48, who lives in rural Ireland with his Japanese wife Keiko Yoshida, their son and his 15-year-old sister, has written seven critically acclaimed novels; Cloud Atlas was made into a film starring Tom Hanks.
But today Mitchell wants to talk about Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8, an extraordinary book written by a young Japanese man, Naoki Higashida, who has autism and dictates by pointing to symbols and letters on a grid.
It was on Radio 4’s Book of the Week and makes for compelling reading as Higashida explains how he struggles to master both his mind and his body.
“When I fight the demands of my fixations, and when my urge to do what my fixation dictates and my determination to ignore it smash into each other, I can erupt into anger,” he writes. “When I erupt into anger, I start hitting my head. I want to take control of the situation but my brain won’t let me.”
Mitchell and his wife translated both this and Higashidi’s first volume, The Reason I Jump. It went on to become an international bestseller and according to Mitchell, its success “matters a whole lot more to the big scheme of things than my own fiction”.
This second book is based on a blog, written by Higashida between the ages of 18 and 22, and is a more mature, philosophical work. Mitchell has written a lengthy introduction in which he highlights the diversity and complexity within autism and makes a plea for greater awareness.
“People with autism want to live meaningful lives; they don’t just want to be care recipients. Why shouldn’t they have purpose and a means to earn respect and some degree of independence?” he says.
“When that mother from Wales sent out her appeal to find work for her
‘Do we want to live in a society where life for those with autism is, at best, only tolerable?’
son, the response filled me with gratitude and hope that my utopia of an autism-friendly world may be a little bit closer than I had feared.”
Born in Southport and educated at the University of Kent, Mitchell radiates a quiet yet powerful charisma. Having a son with autism has, he wryly concedes, made him a better person: more empathetic, patient, selfless. But his son has paid the terrible price for his epiphany.
“Would we be better off in Britain?” he wonders. “Maybe – there are more resources, although they are spread thinly across more than 65 million people. But there are big questions that need to be asked. Do we want to live in a society where life for those with dementia or autism or other conditions is, at best, only tolerable? Is a well-functioning, compassionate health system too much to aspire to when the alternative is the terrible failings of Mid Staffordshire?”
Mitchell, whose daughter was four when his son was born, could tell from the outset his boy was different; wordless, he refused to make eye contact and banged his head in a bid to banish the sensory overload.
In the past he has likened giving birth to a child with autism to planning a dream holiday in Italy, boarding a plane, then arriving at Schipol airport in Holland. After the inevitable anger, frustration and dismay, parents gradually come to terms with the change of plan and begin to discover and enjoy all that the new country has to offer.
“Someone has amended that to ‘landing in Beirut’,” he chuckles. “That’s probably more accurate. But at least we’re not interminably stranded in Mosul; our son is making progress all the time and you can see the huge effort he makes to fight his impulses. We haven’t had a major meltdown for a few years.”
He and his wife are at pains to ensure their son doesn’t take up all the emotional oxygen and make sure their daughter gets attention where possible, but life must still be managed. They have had to track down an autistic-friendly GP, who understands his young patient needs to investigate every piece of kit in the room before he will consent to be examined, and an autistic-friendly dentist who will look at his teeth standing up because Mitchell’s son doesn’t want to lie down.
An estimated 700,000 people in Britain have autism, which means 2.8 million people have a relative on the spectrum. According to the National Autistic Society, among autistic adults only 16 per cent are in full-time work and 70 per cent report not receiving help they need from social services. It is up to family to provide the safety net.
“My wife and I will look after our son for as long as we can. That used to be a very difficult thing to say but not any more. Whatever we go through, we have to remember it’s not easy being him and it never will be, and it would make all the difference if the rest of the world recognised that, too.”