The Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing, Genius, and Autism Paperback – March 25, 2014

The Spark is well worth reading. While you are following the story of how Kristine Barnett was able to connect with her son and release his gifts, you will be thinking of how you can strengthen the relationship with your own children, and how you can help them develop their own special talents. Too often in life we are told that we are not enough. That we have to fix our weaknesses and change who we are, in order to succeed. The Spark shows us a different way to raise our children and maybe even a different way of looking at ourselves. The author's advice can be summed up into the following:1) You are not alone. Build a community. Believe in your kids, and in each other's kids. Do it together. Don't wait for the system to come and save your kids. "Through resilience and hard work, we'd done it ourselves, and we'd done it together." (101)2) Focus on your child's gifts and do whatever you can to nurture his or her passion. "Any child will outperform your expectations if you can find a way to feed his or her passion." (73)3) Give your child a place to be himself or herself – an art studio, a cooking place, a construction area – but "give it freely and without any expectations." (70)4) Watch and really listen to your child. Then get out of their way. "Showing a child that you take his or her passion seriously and want to share in it is the most powerful catalyst in the world." (76)5) Gifted children are afforded much more time in their day to focus on the things they care about. Give your child that time. (95)6) Get into your child's world, instead of expecting him to come out to you.7) Follow your intuition and trust yourself. "Every parent has to be a fighter on behalf of his or her kid, not only the parents of kids with autism or developmental disorders." (102)8) In all things, there has to be a balance. Don't forget the importance of childhood and of simply having fun. "I believe it's a parents job to close up the chess board and send the kid outside to play. The child needs to have friends his own age; he can't discover who he is in a vacuum. (134)9) Whenever you feel depleted, connect with your senses. Make your house smell like a home. Make yourself physically warm and comfortable. Nourish yourself and your family with a home-cooked meal. "Indulging the senses isn't a luxury, but a necessity." (160)10) It's hard to trust your child to find his or her own path, especially when we are told every day that children must fit into rigid boxes. But take the leap. Celebrate your child's passions. "If you fuel a child's innate spark, it will always point the way to far greater heights then you could ever have imagined." (250)In the author's words: "Don't ever be afraid to be who you are. Find out what you love to do and do it." (x)

To read The Spark is to ask the question. Kristine Barnett talks about her son, who turns out to be a genius in astronomy and mathematics, perhaps even more of a genius than Einstein. Jacob is diagnosed with autism because of his lack of response to the world. Perhaps he was generating equations in his head and was too busy to respond. You have to wonder about this. How does a human being communicate with an ant, so that the ant recognizes what you are trying to communicate? Most people would give up trying. We don't know that Jacob reacted this way. What we DO know is that he had a mother who is like a mother tiger, defending her son against all the people who would gladly consign her son to the ash heap. She didn't even have a hint of his brilliance at first. She simply fought for him. Would that all mothers would take this attitude, and have the insight to figure out HOW to reach the nub of the problem. The writer establishes what a difficult time she had finding people who understood the problem well enough to help. Most people throw up their hands and send such a mother and son packing.I found the book very uplifting because of Jacob's personal triumph. My husband found it depressing, just thinking of all the people who have been wasted because no one fought for them, no one recognized their potential, and no one was willing to undertake the task of figuring out how to unlock these children. It reminds me of a person with Down Syndrome I know well, whose language development was in the neighborhood equivalent to an IQ of 150, and who lost his advantage because everyone he worked with had NO understanding of how to help him learn. As a result, his talents have never been developed, and as a young adult, he is unlikely to find anyone who will help him develop them. As with a child with Down Syndrome, the child with autism will have a unique learning style, one that requires a setting different from what we have designed (or not) for most children. The system we have works poorly for nearly all children, but especially for people with unusual learning styles. Instead of judging and condemning children, we need to figure out what we did wrong, and meet their needs. In my opinion, this book helps provide the impetus.I would have to disagree with Barnett about one thing. We don't NEED to give these children a "normal childhood". We need to ASK them if this is what they need and want. We put far too much emphasis on sports. For many people, it is a religion. I was never interested in sports. I wasn't interested for their own sake, and the attitudes of other children to those who had no gift in this area, but have gifts elsewhere, just cemented my feelings. Jacob didn't need to spend time doing things that were irrelevant to his purpose in life. Fortunately, he wasn't overwhelmed with such irrelevant demands. But I question whether or not we even know what a "normal childhood" should be, and whether we should try to help the unique children among us to be involved in such a waste of time. I think Maria Montessori had a much better idea of what a "normal childhood" should be, but few people heed what she taught us. Another thing that isn't clear to me is whether or not a person with the genius of a Jacob can have "real friendships". How can you have a friendship in depth with someone who hasn't a CLUE what you are talking about when you are talking about your consuming passion? Certainly having friends is quite desirable. I value my friends. Everyone will value those who nurture them in some way. But that is not to say that we are obliged to "fix" lack of friendships for children with genius, inasmuch as we have no idea what friendship means to them anyway. Sooner or later, they will find such people who can be true friends, and they might not even find them in Mensa, which seems to be a place primarily for boasting about your IQ anyway. People with real genius and drive don't have time for games like that.So let's forget the games. If you are inspired by genius, read this book. Just understand that even mothers with a real instinct for nurturing genius don't always fully understand or get it right, either. But our primary task is to convince the world that people of genius deserve their place in the world, and that who belongs in that class isn't at all obvious to most of us. Let us find ways to nurture everyone, regardless of how much we dislike their deviance from our pet ideas of sociability. Reading books like this is a very good start toward this essential understanding. What can we learn from a book like this? I hope that in general we will learn plenty, but it has to start with books like this.

Page after page, I was overcome with emotionas I read about the burning desire of this mother to help not only her child, but every child whose parents reached out to her.The author writes in a way that makes this story a real page turner. I stayed awake all hours of the night to read the story of this amazing family.I highly recommend this book to every parent and teacher everywhere!