Recent posts have focused on Autism-related organisations and events in the American state of Indiana.
Based in Noblesville, Indiana, My Jacob’s Place is a nonprofit founded in 2000 that helps 200 children with Autism. The charity was started by Kristine Barnett, mother of Jacob—a Savant on the Autism Spectrum. Jacob helps tutor special needs kids at Jacob’s Place during Wednesday night ‘Homework Buddies’…
…[Kristine Barnett] keeps [Jacob] at home – while running a daycare center from there, too – and focuses on preparing him to enter kindergarten in the fall, supplementing that social training with the freedom to pursue his insatiable appetite for knowledge and learning.
She also insists that he have a childhood. Into the never-ending “serious” work that makes up the days of most autistic children, she injects ice-cream outings, runs through Indiana cornfields, and, finally, organized sports – an area of development often denied to autistic children.
…Autistic children, Kristine wants us to know, harbor beautiful worlds, which they will happily share with anyone willing and able to join them there. Her memoir provides many practical tips on how to do this, along with the constant reminding that a community’s job is to support even its most unique members. She invites other autistic children to join Jake’s kindergarten training, and instructs their parents in the process. She teaches one mother to see her daughter’s knack for writing fascinatingly complex and sophisticated stories, another to see her child’s special gift for making perfectly decorated cakes.
One decade later, Jacob’s Place, Kristine’s charitable center for autistic children, is thriving, along with its students. “This is my lifelong goal,” she writes, “to be running a place where nobody ever tells a kid what he or she can’t do or tries to ‘fix’ anyone.”…
…But not all autistic children have Jacob’s capabilities. Do either of them worry about giving parents false hope? “Everyone has capabilities,” Jacob replies. “It’s who recognizes it,” his mother adds. “It’s the human spirit to overcome, and we all have it,” she asserts. In 2000, she started a not-for-profit learning centre for autistic and special-needs children, called Jacob’s Place, where she will often bring in animals, to engage the children.
“The animals change,” Jacob explains. “One time it was a llama. One time it was a sheep.”
“There was a rabbit farm one year,” adds his mother.
“And currently, we are in cats,” he deadpans.
She believes in a learning technique she calls “muchness … It is finding that thing that children are truly passionate about within themselves. It can’t be something that you’re telling them to do. And then it has to be total immersion, very rich experiences built around those interests.”
‘Muchness’ sounds like an endorsement of hyper-parenting Tiger-momish culture, I point out. But she shakes her head. “All I’ve done is follow him with wonder into the stuff that he loves … But it’s very hard for many people to take a leap of faith and put everything you have into [some interest] that doesn’t look like it will turn into a job on Wall Street. As a parent, you have to let go of your dreams for them, because they are yours.”…
Here is a link to photos of the free Jacobs Place Martial Arts (JPMA) with guest instructors which have been held at the nonprofit within the last couple of years: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.216776721719604.57053.118167411580536&type=3
(sources: Middle Feast | Great Food Truck Race Winners ; How Kristine Barnett nurtured her autistic son’s spark of genius - The Globe and Mail )