I read the most amazing book, “The Spark” by Kristine Barnett. My husband and I were in a little bookstore in Penticton and the title caught my eye. I read the first page and was hooked!!!!! I basically read the introduction within minutes and told my husband that I was going home with this book. Even though my son is not Autistic I felt like Kristine wrote this book for every mother and father. The book resonated with me for two reasons:

1. In her dedication, Kristine writes “For Michael, who makes the impossible possible every day And for everyone who’s ever been told they can’t”.

2. Kristine ends her introduction by saying “But for me, more than anything it is about the power of hope and the dazzling possibilities that can occur when we keep our minds open and learn how to tap the true potential that lies within every child”.

After reading this, I had tears in my eyes. As a child, I always felt like I had to do things for my mom, because it would make her happy. I felt like instead of listening to what I wanted to do, I had to do things in order to appease her. When I had my son, I made a promise to myself that I would not force my son to do things in order to make me happy; that I would listen to what he is telling me. A great example is that we realized quickly that Aiden had not only a huge interest in dancing, thanks to Angelina Ballerina, but that he had a natural aptitude. The thought never crossed my mind that my son would be interested in dance but he totally is. My husband and I listened and watched and last year we put him into dance. He absolutely loved it!!!!!! We listened to him and what he was telling us and instead of forcing him into something he didn’t want to do we followed his lead. I know too many kids who are forced into things that they didn’t want to do because their parents want it. Rather then looking at what your child is good at, the parents don’t care, the child has to do what they want them to do. It ends up being about the parent instead of being about the child!!!!

One of Kristine’s main points in this book is for parents to foster what their kids are good at. She shares a story about when Jacob first goes to school after his diagnosis and how the therapists are focusing on all the things Jacob can’t do, therefore not only does Jacob not respond well to the therapy, he doesn’t respond at all. Kristine explains that if people around us only focused on what we couldn’t do, we wouldn’t want to do anything either. She realized that if for part of the time she did what he wanted to do, she was able to do some therapy with him and make some progress. Focusing on the positive allowed Kristine and Jacob to work on the things he needed to work on.

Kristine runs a daycare and she always fostered and focused on what the kids were good at. A little boy got frustrated playing blocks and Kristine realized that he was frustrated because he didn’t have enough. She filled her car with as many blocks as she could find and the boy built an amazing structure. Today that boy is studying at a world renowned school for architecture. Kristine didn’t have to listen to that child, she could have just passed his behaviour off as a tantrum, instead she really listened to the boy and realized he was frustrated. How many times do we get frustrated??? We have to give our kids the benefit of the doubt and enable them rather then label them and forget about them.

This is a beautiful story about a mother who never gave up on her child; who helped her son overcome insane obstacles to now be known to have an IQ higher than Einstein’s. And this is the boy they said would never learn to tie his shoes or the boy who was told not to bring his alphabet cards to school because he would never learn his alphabet let alone learn to speak. I hope those people read Kristine’s book and changed their way of behaving and treating Autistic children. If we always approach children with what they can’t do, what hope do we give them??? Kids can sense what we are feeling and feed off of our energy, so if we aren’t optimistic how can we expect them or their parents to be?

Jacob’s story will melt your heart and make you cry. You can see every child in Jacob. Every child has obstacles they have to overcome and it’s our jobs as parents to help them overcome them. Kristine went with her gut, defied conventional treatment and fought for Jacob.

This is a book that should be in every syllabus in College for anyone taking any courses that involve working with children, should be a must read for every one that has kids or who has ever taken care of kids. Our jobs as parents and teachers is to foster the potential in every child.

I want to leave you with a quote from Kristine: “If a child who was never supposed to talk or read can rise to such improbable heights, imagine what children without such challenges might achieve, and how far they might soar if we encouraged them to unfurl their wings- past any horizon, past even our wildest expectations. By sharing our story, I hope that will happen”.

Thank you Kristine for your honest, thoughtful story about you and your families journey. Thank you for also giving hope to thousands of mothers out there struggling with children that are Autistic.

For more about Jacob’s story, click here.

May this blog inspire you to read “The Spark” by Kristine Barnett and to foster the children in your life to achieve anything they want.

Happy Friday & Weekend Everyone!!!!!!

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