Community Spirit eZine - September 2019

Soon, Jacob was "mainstreamed" in school, and
with each year, his teachers and parents discovered
more of his abilities. Like Dustin Hoffman's
character in the movie, Rain Man, he was adept at
calendar calculation – telling you which day of the
week someone was born, based on the year of
birth. He had stunning visual memory. He could
remember how many windows there were in a
skyscraper he had only seen once. By the age of 8,
he was taking classes in astronomy at Indiana
University. At 10, he entered university. Last year,
his story was on 60 Minutes. His YouTube video on
calculus, in which he writes reams of calculations on
the window panes in his house, went viral. Kristine
Barnett has now written a book: The Spark: A
Mother's Story of Nurturing Genius. Warner has
bought the movie rights.In person, mother and child
are a study of an extraordinary bond, of a biological,
emotional, spiritual, and intellectual connection, that
both affirms the helicoptering, hyper-parenting ethos
of modern culture and rejects it.
"It is an adventure every day," says Kristine Barnett
with a laugh when asked about their family life.
Brought up in an Amish family, she left her
traditional community to marry her husband,
Michael, whom she had met in college. But there
are qualities about her – steadfast, pragmatic,
down-to-earth and stubborn – that could be seen as
part of her upbringing. She is not fazed by any
question or, it seems, by any event. While in turmoil
about what to do with Jacob before his
breakthrough, her second child, Wesley, was born
with disease called reflex sympathetic dystrophy, a
neurological disorder that can affect every system in
the body. When she was 30, she suffered a stroke,
from which she is now, at 39, fully recovered. In its
aftermath, she was diagnosed with lupus.
While she talks, Jacob, now 15, sits at a table in the
boardroom of her publishers. Diagnosed with highfunctioning
autism, he is polite in the way every
parent schools her teenager – shaking hands firmly,
looking his interlocutor in the eye, adept at
pleasantries about the weather and his recent
travels. He listens to the conversation, but often
when addressed, looks to his mother to help him
interpret the question.
Asked how he feels about his mother's ability to
identify his genius – his IQ is higher than Einstein's
– he wrinkles his brow and says, "What are you
asking me? Hmmm," he says, thinking to himself.
And then comes his enthusiastic reply: "I'm very
appreciative."Does he hang out with other
teenagers? "I do hang out with average people who
are my age as well." Any girlfriends? "I was dating
some for a while, but then I realized I didn't have
very much time for a girlfriend." Does he feel
different from other teenagers? "No, not really," he
says. "I think they have just as much potential to do
what I do. It just takes doing it."But not all autistic
children have Jacob's capabilities. Do either of them
worry about giving parents false hope? "Everyone
has capabilities," Jacob replies. "It's who recognizes
it," his mother adds. "It's the human spirit to
overcome, and we all have it," she asserts. In 2000,
she started a not-for-profit learning centre for
autistic and special-needs children, called Jacob's
Place, where she will often bring in animals, to
engage the children.
"The animals change," Jacob explains. "One time it
was a llama. One time it was a sheep.""There was a
rabbit farm one year," adds his mother."And
currently, we are in cats," he deadpans.She
believes in a learning technique she calls
"muchness ... It is finding that thing that children are
truly passionate about within themselves. It can't be
something that you're telling them to do. And then it
has to be total immersion, very rich experiences
built around those interests.""Muchness" sounds like
an endorsement of hyper-parenting Tiger-momish
culture, I point out. But she shakes her head. "All
I've done is follow him with wonder into the stuff that
he loves … But it's very hard for many people to
take a leap of faith and put everything you have into
[some interest] that doesn't look like it will turn into a
job on Wall Street. As a parent, you have to let go of
your dreams for them, because they are yours.""I
like having autism. It's part of my character," Jacob
explains. Currently, he is working on three projects:
chaotic laser physics, classic PT symmetry, and one
that "has to do with string theory." He is looking into
graduate programs in math and physics.
He has ideas all the time, he tells me, often in the
middle of the night.