In December 2000, David Mehnert discovered Rex, then five years old, playing a toy piano in the corner of a room at a tenants' party in a Malibu apartment complex. Born with a benign cyst one-fourth the size of his brain, Rex is congenitally blind (from Optic Nerve Hypoplasia/Septo-Optic Dysplasia), has mental retardation, autistic behaviors, and several severe motoric delays. In his early years, a number of specialists feared that he might never be able to walk or talk.
Noticing the boy's attentiveness to music, David, who is a talented amateur musician, invited the child and his mother to his own apartment. To his mother's surprise, Rex was enchanted by David's full-size piano and by David's playing. David began working with Rex nearly every day, and helped his mother acquire a professional keyboard for Rex's home use.
It took nearly a year before Rex would use his thumbs on the keyboard, and months more before he would play three-note chords in one hand. But early in 2002, Rex began to have a series of astonishing musical breakthroughs. Now seven years old, Rex has been diagnosed as a "prodigious musical savant," perhaps one of the best in a generation.
Rex's first conversations happened through singing, and he is now beginning to acquire basic conversational speech. He is also reading Braille, and now walks easily and uses a cane. Thanks in part to David's tutoring, nearly every other aspect of Rex's life has opened. Far from being condemned to a life of isolation, Rex may well have the possibility of a career as an able-bodied musician.
According to Dr. Darold Treffert, the world expert on Savant Syndrome, fewer than 25 such "prodigious musical savants" are thought to be alive in the world today. It has long been thought that these talents are uncoachable, or that they just "occur" spontaneously. David has shown that this perception about savants is incorrect, and that in fact, savant talents can sometimes be nurtured from unpromising beginnings. David thinks there are many more to be discovered and nurtured, and the research community believes he may well have stumbled onto a method of "waking up" unexpected talents, by focusing intently on the musical aptitudes and working off of them into other developmental areas, including speech acquisition.
This story is all the more remarkable because David is not a teacher by training. In fact, he had no prior experience teaching music or piano, and had never before worked with "special needs" children. He has tutored Rex for two years on a volunteer basis. Thanks to his unflagging support and belief in a child many had abandoned, and thanks to his extremely innovative teaching methods, David might be forging a new path for music therapists and for parents of other children with the same diagnosis. His diligent work is now setting the scientific world on fire, and is serving as a model for other researchers.
Please visit www.savantacademy.org to learn more about David and his efforts.
For more information about CBS's 60 Minutes report please click here.
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