The Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing, Genius, and Autism by Kristine Barnett

Author:Kristine Barnett
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Science & Technology, Medical, Memoirs
ISBN: 9780812993370
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-04-08T12:00:00+00:00

Who Am I?

“I hope next year I’ll be able to learn.”

That was Jake’s response to his second-grade teacher when she asked him what he was most looking forward to in third grade. Jake was starving for knowledge, craving it, longing for it, in a way that was a little frightening at times.

Michael and I were no longer surprised by the depth and breadth of his interests, by his endless memory, or by his ability to see patterns and connect them. But we were finding it hard to keep up. We supported his voracious appetite as best as we could with our trips to Barnes & Noble and lots of time on the Internet, but it was never quite enough.

Mike said it best: Jake was like Pac-Man. If there was something in front of him he could learn, he’d gobble it up and be energized by it. When he hit a wall, he’d just reverse course and find something else to learn. Heather, who helped me with the daycare, was in her sophomore year of college when Jake was in third grade. It was Heather who rediscovered Jake’s facility for languages, hints of which Michael and I had seen when he’d taught himself Japanese from DVDs as a baby. She had to take a Spanish class to satisfy her language requirements. One night she forgot her Spanish-to-English dictionary at our house, and the next day she discovered that Jake had taught himself a bunch of Spanish words.

Soon after, she brought in a beginner’s textbook for him, because she was curious to see what he’d do. Two weeks later, he could conjugate verbs, and he did the same thing with Chinese when she brought him a starter book she’d found in a secondhand shop down by the college. I have to confess, I didn’t encourage Jake to actively pursue other languages. I was more interested in helping him to become conversational in English. When he was chattering away in Spanish, I couldn’t understand a word he said. English was quite enough for me.

Heather worked for me on and off for a long time, so she knew Jake well. She told him once, “Someday you’re going to win a big award, and your mom is going to make so much noise celebrating that she’s going to get you all kicked out of the restaurant.” Jake found the idea of me whooping it up in a fancy restaurant incredibly funny, so it became a running joke between them. When Heather arrived for work, she’d always ask, “Hey, Jake, has your mom gotten you kicked out of that restaurant yet?”

In some ways, Heather was more his peer than the kids in his third-grade class. When she was studying for her exams, Jake would curl up with her and study, too. When I asked if he was a distraction, she’d say, “No, he’s helping!”

Watching them together, I could see that he was. “Don’t forget this,” he’d remind her, his little finger pointing to a fact on a chart.

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