14-year-old Jacob Barnett of Indiana was diagnosed with moderate to severe autism when he was just two years old, and is now on his way to earning a master's degree in quantum physics.
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Doctors had told Jacob's parents that he may never be able to tie his shoes or read as he spent years toiling around special education schools that couldn't cater to his needs.
"For a parent, it's terrifying to fly against the advice of the professionals," Kristine wrote in her memoir, "The Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing Genius." "But I knew in my heart that if Jake stayed in special ed, he would slip away."
That's when Kristine Barnett decided to take matters into her own hands and pulled him from school, and began focusing on what the boy could do and not what he couldn't, reported the New York Daily News.
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"He would create maps all over our floor using Q-tips. They would be maps of places we've visited and he would memorize every street," Kristine told BBC. Once they visited a planetarium when he was 3-and-a-half, and he was able to answer every question asked by the instructor, including complicated physics theories, she claims.
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