Child prodigies have long been a fascination that interests the crowds, but Professor Joanne Ruthsatz attributes child prodigies to being autistic. Dr. Ruthsatz has studied child prodigies for over 15 years and focused at one point on Jacob Barnett.
At age 15, Jacob Barnett was already in college acing his honors courses. If he had continued his rapid scholastic development, he would have been able to graduate college in his teens. He became the youngest person to ever be published in the physics journal, Physical Review A.
While all of this is truly remarkable, it is made even more astounding when reading his mother’s memoir The Spark: A Mother’s Story of Nurturing Genius. Kristine Barnett explains how she was told that Jacob would probably never read or tie his shoes when he started regressing at the age of two.
It was at this time that his parents provided him with all of the typical autistic therapies (OT, PT, Speech Therapy, etc.). However, by third grade, they realized that their son needed more than the average special education program provided by the public school system.
So, he started attending college classes with his mother. At the end of the semester, when he was eight years old, he aced the astronomy final.
“By fifth grade, he dropped out of public school. Just to demonstrate that he was ready for college, he taught himself all of the high school math in just two weeks,” ABC News reported. He was just 10 years old when Indiana University accepted him as a student.
He had an IQ score of 170 in math, which is the highest possible score. Professionals believed that he was on his way to winning a Nobel Prize in his studies of astrophysics if he continued to prove his theories of relativity.
As if attending college and being the youngest paid researcher hadn’t kept Jacob busy enough, Jacob and his mother started Jacob’s Place in 2000. It was a non-profit program for children with autism that served approximately 200 children.
Kristine Barnett and her husband Michael, ran the charitable community center for special needs children and their families in Indiana. One hundred percent of the donations were used to bring joy to children with autism and other special needs.
There were no administrative costs at all, so all the money went to providing programs for the kids.
Kristine Barnett said that it was their “plan to spread a hopeful message and maybe define what autism means to people” in a positive light.
Kristine admitted that parents tend to fix what is wrong, and immediately after an autism diagnosis, it was hard not to focus on all the negativity. She said, “It tends to be human nature to fix what is wrong, but it doesn’t need to define them.”
She continued, “Children with autism have (really, every child has) a special gift inside of them – we need to spend an equal time building them up as we do ‘fixing’ them. It’s time to shift the idea of Autism.”
“The way that people with autism think is beautiful, and we need to stop stripping them of that and to try to stop making them the same. As Temple Grandin says, they are ‘Different, Not Less.’” Kristine continued. One must admit that people with autism may think “differently,” but they sure are anything but “less.”
While not every autistic person will have a higher IQ score than Einstein, (like Jacob did), they each bring a beautifully unique view to the square world we tend to live in.
To see more of Jacob, check out his TED Talk:
Jacob can be seen giving a TED Talk about “Forget What You Know” at the following link: http://tedxteen.com/talks/tedxteen-2012/111-jacob-barnett-forget-what-you-know.
To purchase The Spark: http://www.amazon.com/The-Spark-Mothers-Nurturing-Genius/dp/0812993373/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369792995&sr=8-1&keywords=the+spark+a+mother%27s+story+of+nurturing+genius
