Lauren Voiers
Lauren thrived as a professional artist for the first couple of years after she finished high school. She jaunted around the country doing group and solo exhibitions, made the media rounds, and completed multiple commissioned works. One of her paintings, Peace & Harmony, was made into a sculpture and installed in Liverpool in honor of what would have been John Lennon’s seventieth birthday.
She put her art career on pause when she parted ways with her agent. For several years, Lauren stopped painting.
She has since enrolled at Santa Monica College, where she’s studying fine art. She’s resumed painting and often creates dramatic, bold-colored pieces; she’s experimenting with pen and pencil drawings and has a burgeoning interest in photography.
Richard Wawro
Richard’s legacy lives on through his artwork and through his family. One of Mike’s daughters recently redid Richard’s Web site as a birthday gift to her father. Mike still hears from people through the Web site who own Richard’s artwork and talk about how important and inspiring it is to them, and he receives messages from people who are deeply moved by Richard’s story.
Jacob Barnett
Jacob reveled in every aspect of college. He loved his classes. He liked getting to know the other students and even tutored some of them: the only prerequisite was that they bring spoons to partake in the giant tubs of peanut butter he brought along to snack on during study sessions.
After his freshman year, he worked as a paid research assistant in quantum physics at IUPUI as part of an undergraduate program; during this time, he tackled a previously unsolved math problem. Afterward, he and his mentor coauthored a paper that was published in a noted, peer-reviewed physics journal. It’s titled “Origin of Maximal Symmetry Breaking in Even PT-Symmetric Lattices.”
At fifteen, he enrolled at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario. The Barnetts sold their home in Indiana and moved to Canada, and Jacob is now a Ph.D. candidate. His TEDxTeen talk, “Forget What You Know,” in which he urges listeners to stop learning and start thinking and creating, has been viewed more than six million times.
“I think he is just happy being him. I don’t know if in the future we’re gonna make all of the decisions that everybody expects us to make,” his mother, Kristine, said. “I think that the compass that’s always gonna drive Jacob is just, is he doing what he loves to do? Then we’ll be doing that thing.”
Jourdan Urbach
Jourdan’s last two years at Yale had the same frenzied pace that marked his years growing up on Long Island. He was selected to score a short film at the Columbia University Film Festival. He built and ran a recording studio, performed as part of a Haiti benefit concert, and served as a United Nations Art for Peace goodwill ambassador. He found out that the paper he had coauthored with Joanne on child prodigies would be published while he was at the shooting range with the Yale Pistol & Rifle Club.
At twenty, he received a Jefferson Award for Outstanding Service for his philanthropic work and a Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award alongside Jack Dorsey, Justin Bieber, and others.
He graduated from Yale a year early (in part through credit for high school AP classes; in part by stuffing a large number of courses into a single semester) and began a one-year stint as the national director of the Jefferson Awards.
Jourdan still plays the violin, but these days it’s just for fun (or fund-raising).
Ocho, the eight-second social video platform that he co-founded, received $1.65 million in seed funding by the end of 2014 from a group of investors that included Mark Cuban, the billionaire investor of Shark Tank fame.
“I wanted to build products that had a mandate to exist, and I think Ocho has a mandate to exist. There needs to be a way to share your life with people through videos, not just through photos,” Jourdan said. “I won’t work on products where I need to win on marketing. That’s my nonprofit background coming into it. I feel it’s immoral. I think it’s immoral to win on marketing in the nonprofit world, and I think that it is wrong and probably dumb to work for a company that wins based on marketing, even if it’s a for-profit.”
Josh and Zac Tiessen
Josh and Zac Tiessen are both blossoming professionally.
Josh was named one of Canada’s Top 20 Under 20 for his art and charity work. By the time he was nineteen, his gallery included paintings priced over C$17,000. He recently sold a painting for over C$23,000. He exhibits his work frequently, and his painting Ahoy Sleeper, a haunting depiction of a diver emerging from the water at night, won the Creative Achievement Award at a selective International Guild of Realism exhibition in Charleston. As his mother, Julie, noted, “His only challenge as a teenager at these events has been booking into hotels, renting cars, and being underage at his own wine and cheese exhibition openings!”
Zac has composed more than thirty original songs; he put four of those songs on his first solo CD, which he released when he was seventeen. His YouTube channel has been steadily growing, and he’s received a number of endorsements from music equipment companies. A few months after his CD release, he opened a concert for Animals as Leaders in Toronto with “a blistering three song set.”
He completed a specialist certificate in guitar skills through the Berklee College of Music online program. Zac had hoped to apply for the full-time program at Berklee, but his concussion specialist nixed that idea. Instead, Zac bought the textbooks used in the Berklee bachelor’s program and worked his way through them independently. He’s now studying master’s level jazz theory. At eighteen, he was written up in Guitar World for his work on the eight-string guitar; the magazine also recently spotlighted one of his playthroughs.
Personally, the road has been much more difficult for the Tiessens. The boys’ Lyme symptoms worsened over time. Josh noticed some mental fogginess, flu-like fatigue, and physical discomfort. Zac, too, experienced some difficulty concentrating along with fatigue, mood swings, and insomnia, though in his case it was less clear whether his symptoms stemmed from Lyme or his concussions.
The entire Tiessen family was treated for chronic Lyme disease at the Sponaugle Wellness Institute in Florida. The doctors there also discovered signs of exposure to mold and industrial toxins in their blood. Their friends and family rallied around their cause and raised more than $250,000 to help pay for the family’s care. Even in the midst of the temporary relocation to Florida and ongoing medical treatment, Zac stayed up all night to finish a music video and opened for a progressive band in Orlando; Josh continued to paint several hours a day.
Autumn de Forest
Autumn travels frequently these days—New Orleans, Orlando, Scottsdale, Minneapolis, San Antonio, Boston—discussing her work with art collectors. She recently visited Savoy Elementary School in Washington, D.C., in connection with Turnaround Arts, an organization that provides arts education programs to low-performing schools.
She’s still a media darling, was recently featured on a Times Square billboard in New York as part of P.S. from Aéropostale’s “epic kids” campaign, and donated a painting for a world hunger charity fund-raiser.
And she still loves the way that painting lets her express herself and her imagination. “I’ve never taken lessons; it’s all come from me,” Autumn said during a Disney Citizen Kid spot. “I just go for it. I let my heart go.”
Ping Lian Yeak
Ping Lian continues to paint in Sydney. Rosa C. Martinez, the founder of Strokes of Genius, has helped him to secure representation at a Manhattan art gallery. His mother is working on a book about raising Ping Lian.
Alex and William
Lucie’s children continue to thrive, and they continue to do so outside the spotlight.
Her older son, Alex, has completed fifth grade. He’s a strong athlete, loves skiing, and recently took up gymnastics. He also enjoys music, especially (to Lucie’s dismay) classic roc
k and heavy metal.
He’s voraciously interested in the mechanics of how things work, and he’s a Lego fanatic. He builds quickly, and he does it every day, often in the mornings before Lucie wakes up. He has exhibited some of his builds at Lego conventions.
All signs of his autism (other than his keen eye for detail) have disappeared. He’s a happy-go-lucky kid. His latest report card, including the behavior report, was excellent. He’s a popular student, participates in class discussions, and was chosen to speak at a school assembly based on his communication skills.
Alex’s little brother, William, technically just completed fourth grade. But he’s a couple of years ahead of grade level in most subjects, and he’s almost finished the tenth-grade math curriculum. In a math competition for eighth-grade students, he placed first in the school.
His mind continues to amaze—and, often, delight—his family, friends, and teachers. When William was seven and taking a seventh-grade math class, another student asked whether it was theoretically possible to raise an exponent by another exponent—2 squared, to the power of 3, to the power of 4, for example. His teacher, Josh, answered that it would be a big number, but it was possible. A few minutes later, William began rattling off numbers: 16,777,216. Josh asked another student to check it on the calculator; that student verified the figure. William had correctly calculated the eight-digit answer in his head.
He computes ages in binary and hexadecimal. Once, when Lucie came downstairs, he told her the new population density (in person per square kilometer) of the upstairs of the house. During a conversation between Alex and Lucie about women’s suffrage, William chimed in by reciting the year in which each of the Canadian provinces gave women the right to vote. The books on his bedside table include a treatise on infinity and an overview of physics concepts. He still plays the piano and has found some music apps that allow him to compose multi-instrument pieces. He’s recently taken up writing computer code.
There are still challenges for William. Transitions between activities can be difficult; he requires prompting throughout the day.
But it’s been a landmark year for him socially. He’s developed several close friends who often request playdates. His anxiety level has dropped, and he’s increasingly willing to try new things (Lucie whipped out her credit card the second he showed interest in jujitsu). He, too, was singled out to speak at a school assembly based on his communication skills.
Alex and William both recently opted for a summer of personal projects and unstructured fun instead of day camps. The family has a pool and a trampoline, but Lucie has to prod them to go out and play; they still find the mental gymnastics they can do inside to be the most captivating sort of activity.
“Both kids are very bright, but my priority is that they’re happy,” Lucie said. “I don’t care if they don’t win a Nobel Prize. I just want them to be happy and to have a social circle that’s supportive. I want them to be around people who are healthy for them and truly appreciate them for who they are. That’s what I want in life for them; that’s successful.”
Acknowledgments
Writing this book introduced many wonderful people into our lives, and The Prodigy’s Cousin would never have existed without them. Our lovely agent, Rachel Vogel, is a staunch advocate and trusted friend who offered a steady hand at every turn. We are grateful to everyone at Current who devoted so much time and thoughtfulness to shaping this book, including publisher Adrian Zackheim; executive editor Eric Nelson; our editors, Maria Gagliano, Emily Angell, and Jesse Maeshiro; and editorial assistant Leah Trouwborst. Associate publisher and marketing director Will Weisser, publicity director Tara Gilbride, publicist Taylor Fleming, and publicity assistant Kaitlyn Boudah brought tremendous energy, creativity, and enthusiasm to this project.
Thank you to the other members of the Penguin Random House team who did so much for this book, including Karl Spurzem for the jacket design, Leonard Telesca for the interior design, Ingrid Sterner for her eagle eye during the copyedit, and Bonnie Soodek for handling subsidiary rights. Thank you to the managing editorial and production teams who worked hard to keep this book moving along, including senior production editor Bruce Giffords, executive managing editor Tricia Conley, senior production editor Jeannette Williams, and production manager Madeline Rohlin. We are also grateful to Jane Cavolina for pitching in with the endnotes.
Many friends and colleagues offered feedback at various stages of this project, including Soren Aandahl, Jennifer Caughey, Bryan Choi, Geraldine Cremin, Caitríona Palmer, Sonali Shah Pier, J. Maarten Troost, Diane Young, and Alexandra Zapruder. The members of the East Side Writers in Providence and the D.C. Science Writers Association freelancers’ group offered thoughtful comments and friendship. Joe Camoriano was an enthusiastic supporter of this project and created a knockout book trailer. To everyone at the Writers Room DC: thanks for making it fun.
Joanne’s research couldn’t have been done without the psychology department at Ohio State University; her research partners, including Chris Bartlett, Stephen Petrill, and Guy Rouleau; and funding from the Marci and Bill Ingram Research Fund for Autism Spectrum Disorders and Ohio State. We also want to acknowledge all the prodigies with whom Joanne has worked over the years. Only a few are profiled in this book, but each one is not only marvelously talented, but also charming, bighearted, and fun to hang out with.
We would like to thank the scientists, experts, journalists, and other professionals who shared their time and their insights with us, including Tania Barkat, Julia Bascom, Ryan Bogdan, Carrie Borrero, Bruce Cuthbert, Geraldine Dawson, Roger Detels, Doug Detterman, Deborah Fein, Jason Flannick, Uta Frith, Nancy Greenspan, Matthew Hill, Gero Hütter, Vicki Jenkins, Maria Kozhevnikov, Francis S. Lee, Jean Mercer, Laurent Mottron, Daniel Notterman, Adam Piore, Allan Snyder, Pablo Tebas, and Darold Treffert. For additional great stories, thank you to Audrey Curran, Gerald Mastellone, Michael Mastellone, Sara Mastellone, Donna McPeek, Gerri Ruthsatz, and Judy Ruthsatz.
We owe a special thank you to David Feldman, a smart, funny, gracious, and thoughtful human being who gave us an insider’s view of his early days as a prodigy researcher and made every interview more fun than work. His thinking very much advanced our own, and his zest for his work inspired us at every turn. Our sincere appreciation to David for his boundless encouragement.
We’re grateful to Jim for cheering us on at every step of this journey and for accompanying Joanne on that first fateful trip to Louisiana and her many adventures since. Thank you to Dan for poring over every draft, going to prodigious lengths to create more time in our lives for this book, and for the constant support. Kyle braved the icy roads on several harrowing prodigy road trips, and Ryan kept Joanne’s computer running despite its best efforts. Katherine and Jack provided very creative edits to the manuscript and lots of squishy hugs. Our heartfelt gratitude to Bob and Dianne Stephens, Julian (Jim) Ruthsatz, and the late Marie Mastellone. Our whole family shared our enthusiasm for this story, making every part of the process all the more exciting.
Finally, a very warm and heartfelt thank you to those we profiled in this book, along with their families, teachers, and friends, who added great depth and perspective to their stories, including Alex, William, Lucie, Kathy, and Josh; Greg and Terre Grossman; Lauren, Doug, and Nancy Voiers; Jonathan Russell and Eve Weiss; the late Richard Wawro, Mike Wawro, and Laurence A. Becker; Jacob Barnett, Kristine Barnett, and Becky Pearson; Jourdan Urbach and Eric Drier; Josh Tiessen, Zac Tiessen, Julie Tiessen, and Valerie Jones; Autumn and Doug de Forest; Ping Lian Yeak, Sarah S. H. Lee, and Rosa C. Martinez; and Timothy Ray Brown and Dave Purdy. This book would not have been possible without their tireless cooperation, and we are deeply indebted to them for their kindness, generosity, and patience with our endless follow-up questions. Most of all, we are grateful for the way they welcomed us into their lives and shared their stories. We find them inspiring; we hope you do, too.
Notes
Epigraph
“To call specific”: Ogden R. Lindsley, “Can Deficiency Produce Specific Superiority—the Challenge of the Idiot Savant,” Exceptional Children 31, no. 5 (1965): 225–32.
Introduction
Others had argued: A few classic works and review articles on the importance of general intelligence, practice time, and skills specific to a particular field include Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York: Basic Books, 1983) (skills specific to a particular field); K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Römer, “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance,” Psychological Review 100, no. 3 (1993): 363–406 (practice time); Michael J. A. Howe, Jane W. Davidson, and John A. Sloboda, “Innate Talents: Reality or Myth?,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21, no. 3 (1998): 339–442 (practice time); Frank L. Schmidt and John Hunter, “General Mental Ability in the World of Work: Occupational Attainment and Job Performance,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86, no. 1 (2004): 162–73 (general intelligence); Arthur R. Jensen, The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998) (general intelligence).
it was the combination: For more information on this theory, see Douglas K. Detterman and Joanne Ruthsatz, “Toward a More Comprehensive Theory of Exceptional Abilities,” Journal for the Education of the Gifted 22, no. 2 (1999): 148–58; Douglas K. Detterman and Joanne M. Ruthsatz, “The Importance of Individual Differences for Exceptional Achievement,” in Talent Development IV: Proceedings from the 1998 Henry B. and Jocelyn Wallace National Research Symposium on Talent Development, ed. Nicholas Colangelo and Susan G. Assouline (Scottsdale, Ariz.: Great Potential Press, 2001), 135–54; Joanne Ruthsatz et al., “Becoming an Expert in the Musical Domain: It Takes More Than Just Practice,” Intelligence 36, no. 4 (2008): 330–38.
The Prodigy's Cousin Page 23