The Spark

A new book arrived yesterday in the mail: The Spark, by Kristine Barnett. I already felt some kinship -  Kristine’s younger sister Stephanie, a gifted artist studying art at our local university, worked for me as an amazingly creative cake decorator in my bakery in the 90’s.  Stephanie was incredibly proficient and always dependable.  She consistently motivated her co-workers, respectfully served our patrons, and made a special effort to encourage me.  She also seemed to understand and celebrate something I needed: hope.  From what I'd heard, it seemed Kristine shared her sister’s hard-working, optimistic approach to life.  Naturally I was drawn to explore The Spark.

I began reading with a casual but interested mindset, knowing I was going to learn about Kristine’s journey with Jacob, her autistic son.  However, before long I was swept into deep waters by the compelling nature of her story, and her honest and artful telling of it.  Simply put, I couldn’t put the book down.  I finished it today, all 257 pages. 

The Spark is the story of a busy mother who operates a daycare center and after-hour program for special needs children in her home, a mother who searches beyond trained professionals, even into the depths of her own intuition, in order to rescue her young autistic son before it is too late.  This is the story of a mother who embraces overwhelming struggle to fight her way through complicated parenting issues, crippling financial loss, and a crisis with her own health: a stroke.  This is a story of a mother whose stubborn love and relish for life – the kind of sacrificial, other-centered, hard-working, creative life she and Stephanie learned at the hand of Amish grandparents when they were children – lifts her above many obstacles that might daunt others.  In reality, she forges ahead to shine like a beacon in the community, founding a center for autistic children and their families.  It is an inspirational, captivating story.

Kristine invites readers to accompany her during the first fifteen years of her son Jake’s life. First Jake is issued an early autistic prognosis: “he will never speak.”  His life is controlled by a rigorous schedule of special ed classes and additional therapies.  Then in a rash but carefully calculated moment of clarity, Kristing ditches the schedule, enabling Jake to emerge and develop an identity as a brilliant child prodigy.  Because of Kristine’s persistent belief in him, and her insistence in helping him find and develop his own unique spark (which also means leaving behind trained professionals and following an uncharted course), he is unleashed from his autistic cage.  He enrolls in college courses as a 10-year-old, and soon tutors students twice his age.  At the writing of the book, Jake is 15 and considered among the world’s most prominent physicists.  A Nobel Prize potentially awaits him.

But there is so much more to Kristine’s tale than the story of Jake’s miraculous overcoming.  It is a story to inspire parents of young children everywhere, in all walks of life – parents raising typical children, and those who are not-so-typical.  Kristine’s principle, one now recognized by admiring therapists and teachers sprinkled across the globe, applies in every case: trust a young child to show you his passions (before he learns he’s supposed to please you and cram himself into a mold), and he will show you his own unique path in life.  The parent’s job becomes advocacy – enabling and supporting him to go for it.   

In her postscript to The Spark, Kristine says this:  “If you fuel a child’s innate spark, it will always point the way to far greater heights than you could ever have imagined.  It’s hard to trust your child to find his or her own path, especially when we’re told every day by professionals that children must fit into rigid boxes. We all want to give our kids the best opportunities we can, which is why it feels like such a disservice if we don’t push them in the “right” direction.  Celebrating your children’s passions rather than redirecting them, especially when those passions don’t line up neatly with a checklist for future success, can feel like jumping off a cliff.  It certainly did for me.  But that leap of faith is necessary if your kids are going to fly.”

Reading The Spark has inspired me, as a grandmother, to study my ten (soon to be eleven) grandchildren more closely – to respect them as individuals with gifts and passions that need to be recognized and nurtured.  A special needs grandson with a chromosomal deletion runs with our herd, and I have to wonder if his early interest in lines, and more recent interest in shadows, could actually be a port to another realm.  Perhaps this is where we can come alongside and share the reality that is uniquely his.  Perhaps in the process we might also foster his potential and set him free to be himself.