Ashley is a wife, mother, writer, and former social worker who also happens to be totally blind. She and her sighted husband are raising two children who were adopted from Bulgaria, and they recently had a biological son of their own.
Their “unparalleled journey” is an inspiration for all of us!
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Her writing on Her View From Home
Foster Care: An Unparalleled Journey
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Transcript
foster care nation listen up this is foster care an unparalleled journey
strength for the powerless courage for the fearful hope and healing for wounded hearts
this week we wanted to shout out holly beal for becoming the newest patreon member and joining us here at foster care nation with on our mission thank you so much if you’d like to join holly you can do so over at patreon.com foster care nation when our son found out about holly he had this to say
hello and welcome back to foster care and unparalleled journey with jason and amanda today our guest is ashley wayne ashley has been featured on the revive real talk and the adverse effect podcast her writing can be found on scary mommy the mighty filter-free parents her view from home and for every mom ashley and her husband have adopted two blind children from bulgaria yeah i’ll say that eventually from bulgaria and they have been recently blessed with a biological child just five months ago ashley was also a case manager at a homeless shelter and at a group home for foster children she’s taught adaptive technologies to kids with special needs and was a director at a camp for both blind and sighted children you can find her on facebook at facebook.com slash a blind view or on her blog at life dash the braille edition.blogspot.com that’s life the braille edition with a lot of dashes in the middle we’re excited to talk to you today ashley how are you doing i’m doing great thanks so much for having me hey it’s it’s our joy to talk to you today okay i i found you on a forum and looked at what you had up there i went yeah this is wild i’ve never heard anybody with this story so you decided to adopt children being a blind mother and i can only imagine what the challenges we found that you have some extra challenges there and then on top of that you adopted international kids who are also blind as well
you must really like challenges um yeah you i suppose you would think that um i can’t say that i like them but uh i think i think in a lot of situations it just needs to be done regardless of how i might feel at the moment but uh yeah i i your remark about you know you have a very interesting story or i’ve never heard that story before i get that a lot i’m bad so yeah we um we had wanted to adopt for a long time um my husband had a lot of members of his family that had adopted and i had worked in the foster care system before getting married had my masters in social work so i did some work in that setting and it was just really on both our hearts but for a long time we just weren’t in the best situation we didn’t really have enough of an income we weren’t living in the greatest neighborhoods we didn’t really have enough space in the apartment that we were and then about seven years ago now
we were finally in a situation where we just looked around one day and suddenly realized hey we have no more uh reasons not to adopt no more excuses um because we had been married for close to close to five years um actually six with no children and so um it had gotten really easy to just sort of be in our own like happy um married no children bubble um and so it was a bit uh difficult to kind of get out of that and okay we’re going to actually start this thing that we’ve talked about for so long um and uh yeah so we kind of started that long process of trying to figure out how we were going to adopt and what that would even look like and and yeah i was very nervous about the idea of having kids as a blind mom i’ve done a lot of things without sight that probably a lot of people would think were kind of crazy i’ve gone actual rock climbing like with the ropes and the repelling down and all that ridiculous stuff um white water rafting now disclaimer i was 18 and 19 then i’m 37 now i probably wouldn’t be so eager to do that kind of a thing now um but yeah so we get to do that either and i am decided you’re not afraid of a challenge it sounds like no but parenting really scared me it really did um i wasn’t sure how it was going to work um i knew it it could work and it would have to work i mean once the kids were in our home it wasn’t as if i you know could just oh this isn’t working you know sorry guys i knew i had to figure it out but um i really had no earthly idea what that would look like i don’t think most of us did when we first got into parenting that’s very fair but i could see that being some extra levels of challenges there that could really make you a little bit nervous and apprehensive looking at the looking at it from your perspective so what about you and your husband’s journey with adoption has been one of the more surprising things for you guys we had dinner with some really good friends and they asked us you know why have you guys considered um overseas adoption particularly special needs and and even more narrowly focused blindness and as soon as they said it it was sort of you know the cliche of the light bulb you know moment uh it was just like wow that actually makes a lot of sense you know with my blindness it really seems like i would be much more equipped and prepared to raise blind children and so we started looking into that and i think the for me the most surprising fact was that we had a really hard time finding um a country program that would work with us in our situation there are a lot of countries for example china that there are a lot of blind children there but our income was too low for for them and so we’re kind of eliminated either through um lack of what would be considered by the country to be an appropriate income level or ironically enough some countries can solve my blindness as a barrier to successful parenting
so when we found the agency that we ended up working with we had gone through their whole list of countries and been kind of ruled out except for bulgaria and bulgaria was a very new program for them so they weren’t even sure if we were going to be accepted by them so uh as far as the most surprising element i would i would say it was that just the how difficult it was to find a country um that would work with us i know that you said that the kids are from bulgaria and to be honest before we started talking today i did go to google and have to look up where bulgaria was it knew it was over there in eastern europe somewhere because that’s all i knew as well
so yes i did the same thing so culturally speaking i mean has has that been a an issue that you guys have had to work around with the kids coming from a complete different country and being started in a different culture uh not and not to the extent that i think it would have been if they were significantly older um our daughter lexi who came home first was two and a half when she came home and she was barely um you know babbling in bulgarian so uh learning english for her came pretty quickly um and she doesn’t remember any of her time there we’ll talk to her about it kind of what we saw when we visited her and what her foster family was like and what kind of food she she ate and you know the little um playground that we took her to when we were visiting and you know we talked to her about what it was like and what the city looked like and things like that but she um has no memories of it and right now um is not exceedingly interested in uh you know knowing a ton about bulgaria she like sometimes will play like bulgarian music or you know talk to her about the foods that we ate there and try and uh you know find the only problem is things like gelato like americans we don’t do gelato like they do in europe we can’t we we can’t even really take her to oh this is authentic you know uh bulgarian food and where we’re living there just isn’t uh a bulgarian community we had looked um for our son it’s a little bit different um john was eight when he came home he’s 11 now he remembers um some a lot of kind of sporadic bulgarian words
and he has a lot more memories of his time but they both at least for now have really um
just um are part of you know consider themselves part of our family and don’t ask a lot of questions yet um but i’m suspecting that that will change in the years to you know years ahead um i’d honestly love to take them back over there and they can kind of see the cities where they were from i think that would be a really awesome thing to be able to do in the future that would be a really neat trip well assuming if you know air travel and everything opens up again well there is that but i know that we have found with our children you know as they get older they do have questions a lot more questions and i think that we owe it to them to try to figure out as many answers as we can i i agree um it’s it’s hard with international adoption so because there is just we have so little information on their on their parents on their biological parents and um you know my husband luke and i have talked about that a lot like trying to figure out if there’s even any way that we could get information for them when they ask you know but often the files for international adoptions are just so
very little information in them um yeah i mean even over here in the states um with some of our children you know it’s hard here too we’ve got a couple of kids that are like i want to see a newborn picture and i’m like i’m not certain how i’m going to find that or get a hold of that yeah you mentioned something about having a hard time finding a country that would accept you as a potential placement with your blindness but it sounds to me like your blindness has kind of become uh your superpower it’s it’s a little ironic yeah that that’s that’s the case so when we um first uh signed up with with the agency that we adopted lexi through and they said okay you know we have this bulgarian program but it’s new we’ll see if they’ll work with you you should hear with us hear from us within a month and so we okay we’re just gonna have to wait and we’ll see what happens well the next day i got a call back and the the caseworker had uh given our information to uh the contacts over there and they had uh gotten back with her pretty quickly and uh were like oh so yeah you’re calling because this family that you you you’ve mentioned they want to adopt lexi right the case worker you know over here in the states like who’s lexi i don’t oh i just had sent you an email recently about a little girl in one of our orphanages he’s totally blind we think this family would be a great fit so yeah from having gone from okay wait with a month to hear if you’re even accepted to okay we think we have a potential like a match a child right away was pretty crazy and a real miracle um and so yeah we we started that process and um it was long and expensive and so many papers and words that i had no idea what they meant like apostoling um it’s apparently it’s another four it’s like a you know you get a document notarized and the notary is verifying your signature if you get a document apostle it’s that person is verifying the notary signature now who verifies the apostolar signature i don’t know uh i don’t know where the chain would ever end but um
yeah so that was it was a long crazy process um but in regards to the blindness um when she came home i had this sort of it doesn’t every first time parent right had this beautiful picture of i’m gonna be able to teach her braille and how to use a cane and it’s going to be so great and we’re going to bond so well over these things and that those two cane travel and braille have been the hardest things for me to teach her i don’t know why i don’t know if it’s just learning from her mother or what but um my my beautiful picture of you know the uh bonding over braille has not gone as well as i had hoped but she is learning we are getting there well amanda and i can definitely feel you there um our children are not blind and the level of connection that we’re gaining while trying to teach our youngest how to how to read regular words on paper has been just as challenging i would say he is not happy about sitting down and doing school work since we’re all in the middle of this you know we’re in the middle of the coveted pandemic and and so we have this whole uh virtual schooling thing going on which we’ve been homeschoolers in the past so we weren’t really afraid of this but this particular boy is just he is not wanting to learn and i kind of get it i mean he’s five i don’t blame him but when we sit and try and learn it’s it’s a real challenge to find ways to teach those things now we’re teaching a typical kid how to well typical is a subjective term here but a typical kid how to read writing on paper i could only imagine that there has to be some real challenges there because if you handed me a child who was blind and asked me to teach them how to use a cane or how to use braille i i’m certain i would be completely lost what’s that journey been like for you oh it’s been it’s been slow um you know again i sort of had this picture that she would just take to it and be excited because well mommy’s doing it and so i can learn to do this too and you know being blind using a cane in braille it’s not it’s not that different or weird you know i can do this and um she actually prefers so we had i had never learned um the print letters i had only learned braille and i wanted her to also learn the the raised you know embossed print like you’ll see on signs right or elevators um things like that and so i taught that to her first and then we we moved to braille and many many many times over the last uh couple years that we’ve been working on trying to read braille uh fluently she’s much better now than she was seven so you know there’s still time but uh you know she would often just be like why can’t i just read the print letters it’s so much easier like because they don’t make books that way they don’t make books in raised embossed print so it’s been a slow journey and um you know i really had to just not worry so much about where i think she should be at her age and just you know work with her at her own pace i think you know she’s expressed that she’s had a harder time feeling the braille dots they’re much smaller than even the small even the smallest um embossed print that we’ve worked with you know braille is significantly smaller and it’s been difficult you know training her fingers to to recognize those but we’re getting there just with practice and um you know uh rewarding her with with um pennies has worked when she successfully reads the page you know she gets some money that she can save up to do whatever with and uh you know that’s worked um cane travel again kind of the same story you know we’re getting there um you know like most kids who would i think if they had a stick you know working on the impulses okay you don’t just swing it around over your head that’s that’s not what it’s for uh you know you don’t just drag it on the ground there’s a technique to it um so that you can actually see where you’re going and not fall off curbs or run into signs or walls
but you know we’re getting there it’s a long process like anything else like anything teaching a child but i think it’ll happen well having a lot of boys in our house i am terrified of the idea of them having a cane because sight or not i i could see them putting on blindfolds to the sword fight with that just for fun i was going to say somebody’s going down yeah our son who also has cerebral palsy uh doesn’t have a cane yet we’re really trying to work with him on just balance and coordination issues before we add in uh the use of a of a cane but i hope that he’ll get there i see i see so so he’s struggling with cerebral palsy as well yeah so um and that was um you know so our son so after daughter came home we were kind of figuring that out and you know figuring out how to be a parent and then some really awesome friends of ours um who had also adopted from bulgaria um sent us uh john’s profile and i don’t know we just felt like we couldn’t leave him there he was older and had was blind and had cerebral palsy and um it just didn’t seem likely that that he would um be adopted out and that’s not to paint us as you know the amazing uh heroes and i mean it’s been you know but we just felt like okay we can at least try and see if um we had adopted lexi so recently that we weren’t even sure if we could um pursue another adoption that quickly um but everyone you know worked with us and he came home about a year and a half closer to two years later and uh he wasn’t walking um you know had pretty much no mobility did not use his left hand left side of his body he’s been home for three years now and he’s you know walking you know he can walk and he can climb the stairs and he can play piano with you know both hands obviously he has a real talent for music we have a lot of work to do as far as the the physical coordination and balance and all of that but i think that will come but yeah we were not expecting the cerebral palsy um and so that was kind of a big uh you know obstacle okay how are we going to make this work um and so far it’s i feel like god has just been very gracious to our family and he’s he’s um you know john has really come honestly a lot farther than i would have thought in such a short time i mean three years there are many days when you know three years the days feel exceptionally long but taken as a whole um three years is not a massive amount of time to um compensate for eight years of multiple orphanages and very little if any education to speak of and extreme isolation when we visited him pretty much all he ever was doing was sitting on a couch like with a radio or in front of a tv um so yeah it was that was rough in that regard so i take it they don’t have any biological connections uh no no they were from different cities and you know kind of different regions of the country and actually she is ethnic bulgarian and he is roma which were which are people that came to eastern europe um from asia and uh they were also just commonly referred to over there as gypsies and they just are really not liked by most uh ethnic um eastern europeans and actually they were one of the groups that was targeted during the nazi regime as well um and so for the two of them to be siblings is um just just really awesome and really special yeah i know i’ve heard quite a bit in the news recently about the struggles that some of the roma people have had over there during the you know some of the refugee situations and people traveling and and trying to move from one country to another so that’s that’s amazing that you guys were able to help a kid who had that many things going against him and providing a home here especially not knowing about the cerebral palsy ahead of time what has that challenge been like for you and luke to clarify and i may have if i misspoke i apologize we we did know about it in that we just knew he had it but we had no real solid helpful information as to how severe it was um so yeah when we went to visit him is when we were able to really see for the first time you know kind of where he was at um that you know thankfully he could stand uh with help and so that was you know we weren’t sure we went over there like is he going to be in a wheelchair um and if so how you know what how uh would i be able to do that um you know as a blind person like maneuver with wheelchair and all that um but we were committed you know we had committed to adopting him and we weren’t going to um you know abandon him um again thankfully you know we went over there for the first visit and realized okay he can stand on his own if you know you’re helping him holding his hands okay we can we can make this work um when we got him home you know we did immediately start physical therapy and things like that and just work work with him around the house um and actually his you know the extended family the grandparents and aunts and uncles and most of them are back in florida we live in utah right now but we would visit as often as we could and i think just that um that family and the constant you know praise and encouragement um from them really has helped john with especially with walking i remember we’re trying to work with him to take those first tentative you know understandably very scared steps and i can only imagine you know having never supported your own weight on your feet for eight years and kind of always being told whether implicitly or explicitly that you can’t that you know that it’s it just isn’t doable for you um he was so scared to do it and we were working with him and working with him and we were visiting uh my my in-laws at the time back in florida and they have a musical doorbell like a doorbell that basically has little tunes to it you know instead of just the ring and he loved that doorbell and so we were okay if you can if you can walk you know from this chair uh it does at the beginning of the living room and take um you know i don’t remember what it was now but this many steps then we’ll ring the doorbell for you and we just kept extending it and extending it and then if you can walk all the way to the door you can ring the doorbell yourself and you know it was little things like that um just really i think motivated and encouraged him and you know now he’s he’s walking much better than than i think i would have if i had never walked in eight years as a kid and were suddenly asked to do such a thing so yeah he’s he’s a he’s an encouragement and an inspiration to me every day sounds like it really sounds like it so now do you have a good community of people around you who have who have met a lot of those challenges in their life whether it be the cerebral palsy or the blindness to be able to to help you guys out are you guys doing this on your own um i mean i have friends who are blind i have some some i know a couple people who are um blind um parents but they don’t live near us and you know so sometimes it’s just through like facebook you’re just kind of chatting that way and as far as cerebral palsy i have the the family that um were the ones who sent us john’s profile to begin with they have adopted um four boys from bulgaria who all have special needs of varying kinds so if you ever wanted to uh they would be another amazing story um if you ever need another guest but uh they they have a lot of experience with cerebral palsy um and you know in their situation and so they’ve been a huge help to us you know recommending resources and suggesting things and uh but a lot of it yeah i guess you know in a sense we’ve done it on our own in that and that’s not to say that we don’t research things and talk to people but um a lot of it is uh just you know being there for him and being his family and encouraging him and kind of working with him on skills and you can you can tell pretty quickly okay this approach isn’t working this um this method of trying to teach this skill isn’t working so we’ll you know kind of back off and regroup and try something else you know until we can figure out what what does work um yeah so it’s i guess it’s sort of been a little bit of a mixture of both um you know i think and we have an amazing um you know church family that that is just so helpful and um you know has been instrumental in just kind of helping us um you know raise these kids and so definitely grateful for that well you’re not the first person who has talked about their church family being a big part of it was your faith a big part of your journey into adoption was was that a part of that journey or was that kind of something that you and luke came to on your own it no it really was a part of that um in a way adoption is uh is a good representation you know kind of of um you know what we believe as christians um you know that we were adopted into um the family of god through christ and his sacrifice on the cross so really adoption um for us you know is a way to um live out that faith um and to you know try and be um as incomplete and as imperfect as we are but to try and be a picture of the incredible love that god has shown us through christ and so yeah i mean it’s a huge um huge part of that journey um absolutely wait you guys are imperfect that that’s one of the things that that always makes me crazy when i talk to people talking about well i could never do that i couldn’t this and for this you know and everybody has a handful of reasons but we all have the ability to to do something inside of our imperfection and that’s one of the lessons it took me a while to to learn was being comfortable being perfectly imperfect i haven’t known anybody yet to walk into this journey knowing what to do exactly and i cannot imagine walking into the you guys’s journey had to be a real challenge granted we have our fair share of challenges we have kids who’ve been through some pretty difficult things who’ve experienced more than than most people could even fathom but my goodness the idea of of what you guys are doing it’s incredibly inspiring to hear that you guys have stepped into this and done it without any real knowledge of where you were going or anybody to hold your hand and lead you through the parts and pieces but to to do that so willingly then provide so much to build your family like you said i mean every any parent you know there’s not a manual that comes with the baby or the kid as much as nice as that would be um yeah i i’ve kind of it’s been a slow process to realize that it is okay to um you know to realize okay this isn’t working let’s try something else and um you know and it when you when i do talk to other parents of blind kids or otherwise you know it’s it’s just interesting that so many we you know we really do have so many of the same questions like you know did i make the right decision about you know something as simple as um you know what i’m feeding my baby to you know uh am i teaching this subject in school the right way or should my kid go to this or that school or you know it’s it’s just always so many questions and um but you know you do the best you can with the resources and and tools that you have and and uh it works by god’s grace it all works well that’s what we all love to hope you know i’ll give you this little piece of encouragement uh our youngest is five yes he’s five right now sorry they change every year i have to work to remember but our oldest son right now is 22 and we made all the mistakes you could make we came out of the gate just swinging for the fences on the mistake front and he’s turned out pretty good
as you guys have walked through this journey how has that affected your marriage no that’s a really good question um and i think it’s i think that’s a point that um anyone whether you know you’re um having your first biological child or whether you you know are adopting for the first time or you’re considering foster care or whatever the situation i think it’s easy to kind of forget about your marriage uh in the first months and years of of all of that because so much changes and so much is suddenly expected of you you know you’re suddenly tasked with caring for this person who needs you you know essentially 24 hours a day really especially if you’re you know a very young child or a baby an infant and uh you know there there was kind of a point where um a while in um my husband and i just kind of realized that we were felt like roommates they were just caring for children um and uh you know we really had to kind of step back and just remember okay it’s our kids need to see a strong marriage you know our kids need to see um what a a strong marriage looks like as they grow up and um so just even just the simple things of making time at the end of the day um for each other um you know for us that looks like you know sitting on the porch with you know soda or whatever and just talking about our day or um you know something simple like that or going for a walk um you know in the evening and just making that time to still remember um each other and to to take put the work into keeping um the marriage uh healthy and and the forefront um because it was so easy to just kind of forget and you kind of think well we’ll deal with that later when things are calmed down and we know a bit more what we’re doing but that’s never really going to happen no it never really does happen and we we find that challenge too making time for date night and time for each other when you have a lot of kids and you’re working and at virtual school it’s so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day but you’re very much so right you know we owe it to our children to show them what a healthy marriage looks like and how to take care of your partner exactly that’s a really good way to put it i like that take care of your partner yeah absolutely in fact i’m hoping maybe we might we might be able to squeeze in a date night tonight for an hour or something we’ll see awesome i hope you guys can
yeah i think that’s the other oh i’m sorry go ahead i i think it really just depends on whether or not the kids decide to to cooperate with us tonight or not
i hope they do it’s amazing how five-year-old decisions affect grown-up stuff so much how opinionated a little person can be oh yes ma’am we’ve got a few of them side note i mean i had no idea so we have a third child who’s you know baby very unexpected but awesome surprise but i had just no idea i mean at six months how opinionated a baby could be and how strong they are just you know as a side note like go to you know change their diaper or change their clothes or whatever it’s like how are you like how are you holding on to that so tightly it’s a good thing babies are cute i may have said that when our first kids became or when our older kids first got into the teenage years it took me a little bit to figure that out so how has you know having a your own biological child been different especially because the uh your baby i don’t i don’t know the baby’s name no i’m sorry i don’t believe i ever said about william okay how has raising william been different than than your adopted children it’s been the biggest difference so far has just been the infinite stage um you know when when lexi came home she was sort of in this odd combination of toddler and infant in the sense that she wasn’t walking yet she wasn’t potty trained um you know she couldn’t feed herself um but she could talk a little bit and so
and so um you know that was kind of a bizarre stage but she very quickly um passed that and was you know walking and feeding herself very very soon afterwards um and so it’s been different in having an actual infant and having to learn all the infant tasks without sight like all right how do i you know feed um how do i bottle feed a pro you know correctly how do i um you know change the diapers like you know doing it all by touch is um you know interesting um how do i bathe uh a baby um you know and just just know all the you know questions like oh he’s you know um hasn’t eaten much today is that normal like oh he hasn’t you know gone to you know hasn’t hasn’t pooped in three days is that okay like you know just all these questions um that you assume if you have three kids you’ve already been through that but you know we really hadn’t so having an infant just navigating raising an infant is so different um you know but it’s it really has been awesome in that seeing him um you know pick up a rattle or toy for the first time seeing him roll for the first time or laugh or smile it’s amazing and it’s it’s awesome but even that even more um cements for me like my you know kind of desire to to talk about and advocate for adoption because i keep thinking about you know john and lexi that probably nobody was really there to see those firsts for them you know those things that we just take for granted like oh the baby laughed for the first time it was such an awesome moment you know but you know for for uh you know my older two kids and and i would imagine probably for you know a lot of yours and you know they’re probably what weren’t it wasn’t that happy excitement over the first laugh or the first roll or the first smile um and yeah so it’s kind of further cemented my um just advocacy for adoption and just the realization of how important it really is oh i imagine it’s got to be a whole new world understanding what firsts are like because i i laugh because amanda can verify my lack of knowledge of the importance of firsts when i took um our daughter to the to the beauty shop and had her haircut because it needed to be done it needed to be trimmed and nobody ever told me that you’re not supposed to take your daughter for her first haircut before you talk to mom about it i was at work i was not so pleased i thought i was doing something good i was trying to get a task out of the way so she didn’t have to do it little did i know that that matters it definitely did so yeah but those first are something that that you really can’t get back for those kids they’re with you and you’ll have plenty of firsts from there going forward exactly do you think that’s something that that affects your relationship with them you know not having all those those first stories for them i think possibly as they get older it will um although honestly it will probably be more of a sadness for for me um then for them i mean of course i can’t speak to how they’re going to feel in their teen years uh you know but um i think uh that that may be kind of a harder thing for me um right now they’re both they really enjoy the first for william like they love when you know he laughs or when he rolled over the first time or you know they find all that fascinating
and uh so yeah i mean i think like you said the best thing i can do is just sort of it’s just to highlight um the first that we we reach now you know and there’s been plenty of that um you know john’s first piano recital and lexi’s first gymnastics routine and things like that to make make a big deal out of those just as much as we do you know the baby’s first you know time crawling or whatever although i’m not looking forward to that when that happens
my other two kids can’t run away from me very fast you know as blind persons we don’t really book it you know it’s not really can’t just take off i would imagine that would have its own level of challenges i did have one one kid who’d never learned to walk he learned to run and we honestly had him evaluated because we thought he had a problem with the site at that point because he would stand up lean forward and he took off into a dead run and usually we’d go head first into the corner instead of do the doorway he was shooting for turns out he’s just a kid who who lives life that way
but that’s been part of our journey is just figuring out what these kids really need and so you’re on an interesting journey of understanding what kids need with a whole lot of special needs but i say a whole lot i guess all kids have their own their own level of special needs but you’ve got some some really specific needs there that have got to be a challenge for you guys to get through have you found any great resources to help you guys realize where you can find help and where you can find success without having to stumble through it on your own we’ve definitely found a great resource in the you know the the shriners hospital they’ve been uh really really great with with uh john and his physical therapy even resources like an adaptive bike that he can ride that has more support straps and things for his feet to be on the pedals you know things like that has been great and you know we found just a lot of different sites for ordering braille books you know which has been great for both the kids uh to find those those resources for them um to work on on reading and just uh enjoying learning how to read you know to read braille to really enjoy the stories and that type of thing we’ve also uh really sorry a lot of noise in the background there that’s okay we we’re a podcast about kids and families so while we do try and keep ours at a at a low roar we expect noise in the background i know i just you think after all these years it would not be as distracting but it still is to me um but yeah uh shriners is awesome um yeah that’s kind of i would say that’s the main one and then um for anyone you know as far as blindness is concerned like there’s a lot of sites where you can order braille books and great braille like homeschooling materials other other methods for teaching braille and that type of thing too i’ve gotten a lot of information from the national federation of the blind they have a lot of resources and a lot of products that we found useful with the homeschooling in particular have you guys been using the public school system or are you guys homeschooling no we we homeschool um and we pretty much have been doing that since the beginning um since lexi came home about five years ago so i imagine kovit hasn’t been a real big change for you guys not really no not in the schooling department anyway well yes there’s that the rest of our lives have changed
yeah we we have a couple kids a uh one middle schooler and one high schooler that are going to in-person school but our two elementary school age are staying home they’re doing virtual learning there and it’s it’s added a certain level of challenges but it sounds like you guys have already been doing the the homeschooling so you kind of have that figured out already i figured out i mean not to say that it’s not difficult i mean they’re like any kids you know most days they would rather be doing anything but school wait your kids don’t love it i know it’s amazing right yeah i would rather be playing outside who would have thought uh but you know it you do it one day at a time and um the thing i really have enjoyed about homeschooling is i can really kind of find a method that works like for example john can do crazy math in his head you know i just kind of discovered that as we were working with him and kind of teaching them okay well let’s kind of teach some basic math you know um and finding out that he got that really quick and so we kind of moved on to okay instead of um you know eight plus four all right let’s try a two digit number so you know 18 plus four oh he can do that pretty quick too okay so that would be um three digit you know plus or minus a one digit number and you know he was getting that so then we moved on to multiplication and he can he can do like a three digit number of times a one digit number so like five times 215 he can do it do in his head and a lot of times i have to write it down like you know i have to work it out before i have him do it but so lexi you know our daughter um i had started to kind of work with her in the same in the same way with math and it just was not going well um and finally realized okay it’s okay if she doesn’t learn that way i’m homeschooling i can find a different approach for her and so we ended up doing getting a magnet board because she doesn’t know braille numbers yet we’re still working on the alphabet in basic reading in braille um but she knows print numbers you know the raised embossed um numbers and so we got magnets and once she could see the problem in front of her like that and actually feel each number and you know it went much better and so that’s one of the things i really enjoy about homeschooling is that i can really kind of try and as best i can meet them where they are and find a resource that works for them uh well you know i think we get tied up a lot on what certain kids cannot do especially when it comes to special needs but it sounds like you know john has proven that some of the things that he can do are more important than the things that they can’t yeah absolutely absolutely and we you know we discovered his his gift for music when he came home you know i had just told him the names of the notes on the piano and then he discovered really quick that he has perfect pitch and not just uh limited to instruments like if our smoke alarm goes off you know burn to something in the oven or whatever like oh that’s that’s no g like you’re a car horn or whatever like or you know we’re tapping on our soda cans we love soda i don’t know if you’ve picked up on that but um you know oh that’s you know c or whatever and uh so yeah we got him into piano and he’s done really well um and yeah so it’s just awesome to find those things that that they can excel at and to give them that chance and of course to push them on the things that they don’t want to learn um because you know reading in my daughter’s case is pretty vital to life and um you know for john right now science has been difficult um but you know learning about the human anatomy and kind of how our bodies work is pretty important to know and useful so you know working through the things that are harder but yeah it’s awesome to find those areas that they excel in and i’m just grateful that you know that they have the chance to to discover those things um because i i doubt highly doubt if john had stayed in bulgaria that he would have ever anyone had would have ever known that he was uh could be amazing at piano and yeah just you know if anyone listening is you know considered adoption like but is on the fence i would really just encourage you to um to to to do it as hard as it is um and something that has always stuck with me when we went to visit john in his orphanage there were so many other um other residents there and um you know they all had various um you know uh needs and and and special needs and and they were all like very thin and looked malnourished and we found out that john was actually the only child in the orphanage all the others they looked like children they were shorter and thinner and they were actually adults like in their 20s who just had never been able to get out had nowhere else to be um and so um just malnutrition and probably lack of stimulation you know had really stunted them and it just broke my heart like to see these these uh adults in that situation and yeah i mean there’s just so many kids um here and and overseas who you know desperately need families to be able to have that chance to to learn you know what they can excel at and who they can become if you get on facebook or social media and you talk about things like adoption or international adoption all the wisdom of the masses comes out because that’s what facebook is right the wisdom of the match and they’ll always be somebody who will say something like well why would you want to go overseas to adopt kids when there are so many kids here in america who need it what pulled you guys heart towards a foreign nation like that
um the and i need to be i want to um phrase this well and i hope people will will understand me correctly and you know accurately a i’m going to go with blindness because that is you know what we originally um you know we’re leaning towards uh when we started looking when the when our friends gave us that idea you know that hey you should really think about adopting blind kids because chances are they probably wouldn’t be adopted um overseas by their own countrymen and from what we found that’s true and um having spoken with good friends from bulgaria you know who have told us that most likely the the kids would have ended up on the street or just living out their adult lives in an orphanage with minimal food and minimal interaction in you know in america a blind child or a child with other you know needs has access to
substantial resources and agencies and programs and supports that just aren’t available in so many of these countries and um we just felt like we you know wanted to try and um give the give our kids that chance you know to to have access to all of these things that we can so easily take for granted and uh and that’s not to say by any means that a child who ages out of foster care here has it easy i’m not at all saying that um there’s a lot of difficulties in that regard but it’s still a can be um a better better life than what would have been in a country where there just aren’t any of the resources and programs and the technology and generally here the attitude about blindness is better than it would be overseas like when we went to um bring we brought lexi home she was two and a half and not walking and there was nothing wrong with her legs it was just kind of an assumption that was made that you know walking was going to be hard for her because she was blind and so nobody ever taught her um so you know it was not out of any um disrespect or shrugging off the difficulty that um children in the u.s foster care system face but it was just sort of a desire to help kids get out of um you know what could be a very dire situation as they got older well we talked about your faith a little bit earlier and it sounds to me like you guys are really being the hands and feet of god wherever you find the need i’m trying to be um that’s you know that’s no small thing and no uh no simple thing either um but yeah i mean i feel like you know we’ve been so blessed um and just trying to to do what we can to um to live out our faith and not because we have to um but you know because it’s you know the right thing to do and um yeah we’re just happy to give give you know give our kids a home and however crazy and ridiculous as it might be on certain days i think i think you know it’s um it’s better than the alternatives for sure i hear you there i hear you there crazy and ridiculous does not mean bad no it means you guys are really stretching out and doing some some work that needs to be done and helping kids who needed help and that is something that you and your husband should be commended for because most of us even though people say things like there’s a special place in heaven for people like you you know people like you know people who are in foster care that’s you know the people who are doing it right there’s a special place god you know god knows there has to be somewhere special for you and i’m like ah no not really if you really knew me
the special place is it’s probably not a good one but you know you what you guys are are really doing the stepping out and doing the right thing as you said in a place even when it’s really hard to do and that that is something that should be commended and we want to thank you guys for sharing your story of doing the right thing in hard places oh we really i appreciate the opportunity and i i just love being able to tell kind of my kids adoption stories and um you know i hope it can be an encouragement to someone um you know anyone who’s considering it um it is hard i’m not gonna sugarcoat it but these kids matter like these kids are worth it being difficult um for us um they matter they matter more than you know my my comfort or my ease of life and you know and i have to remind myself of that every day sometimes they’re going to be a lot of hard days but these kids are worth it and to give them a chance at family and dignity and um yeah just all the things that we can so easily take for granted and you know there’s no one better you know method of adoption it’s not like oh you went the international route oh you that’s like the you know premium way to adopt like you know it’s so ridiculous um you know whatever form someone chose to do is is so needed and so so uh so important well i couldn’t agree with any of that more i want to thank you for coming on here and telling your story with lexi and john and well let’s not leave out william as well and i guess we’ll let luke and have some credit too even though he’s not here with us today because somebody felt like they had to watch the baby you know i mean watching kids who i mean who needs to do that let them do what they want i’ll be honest i trust a six-month-old way more than i trust a five-year-old especially in our house yeah for sure for sure you just never know what they’re going to be up to they have that’s very true every five-year-old we’ve had has surprised me in one way or another but absolutely thank you so much for sharing your story and putting it out there because people need to know that there are no perfect parents we’re not perfect none of us are perfect and just because we have an imperfection does not mean that we can’t take care of our children i’m gonna get my feelings hurt if she keeps saying i’m not perfect but again thank you so much and thank you for sharing your courageousness with us thanks so much for having me and thank you guys for doing this this um kind of a podcast it’s so awesome to see and um yeah i i’m grateful for you guys being out there and and sharing adoption and foster care stories because it’s so important it is very important and we just we just want to show the world that you know like i said there are no perfect parents absolutely but have a wonderful day and it was great talking with you same here
ashley has a story that hopefully has inspired you and encouraged you to help people who need it wherever you can if you’d like to reach out to us you can always find us on our facebook group at facebook.com groups slash foster care uj and as always