Neurodiversity, Special Needs and Foster Care with Christopher Wyatt

A common question would be, why would someone who is autistic with adhd, why would you even consider a family? And that kind of comment, or, well, as soon as you found out your wife had cancer, maybe you should have, you know, returned the kids to the system.And it's like that. That's not what we signed up for. We signed up to be the best parents we could be, whether it was for a year or for a lifetime.And they are important people. They are my daughters. We love them. And whether they had been in my life for a year or forever, we were going to do everything we could for them.

It's the Foster to Forever podcast. Happy stories of non traditional families born through Foster to Adopt. I'm your host, Rachel Fulgenett.

My guest today is Christopher Wyatt. Christopher Wyatt is a neurodiversity advocate. He's a scholar, an educator. He's got two children adopted through foster care. Christopher, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm so happy that you're here. It's wonderful to get a chance whenever I can to talk to adult neurodivergence.My daughter is autistic and she was just recently diagnosed with ADHD as well. My first question for you is, when were you diagnosed? Were you diagnosed as a child or were you diagnosed as an adult?

So because of my age, the diagnoses have changed over time with the revisions to the dsm, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for the Mental Health Professions. So my initial diagnoses were brain trauma and mental retardation. So we obviously, we prefer not to use those labels anymore.As we have advanced our knowledge, the labels adjusted over time to add.Then that was supplemented by ADHD when there were further revisions to the diagnostic criteria, the autism diagnosis, the official autism diagnosis was in 2006, 2007, and again, that corresponded to the DSM 4 text revision. So when the labels get revised by the American Psychiatric association, what happens is we get massive shifts in numbers with different diagnoses.So for example, when I was diagnosed with autism, at the same time we saw all of the people who had been diagnosed with PDD nos, which is pervasive developmental disorder, suddenly they vanished. Well, they didn't go anywhere. They were moved. And so what happens is you end up with people saying, wow, look at the sudden spike in autism.It's like, well, not really everyone who was PDD nos, which is developmentally delayed, got moved into autism. They didn't vanish. And they didn't just suddenly get autism. The name changed.

Right? And that's a great Point, Point, actually, because I do hear so much people saying there's so much more autism now than there ever was.And I, I agree with you and you're obviously an expert that it's not that there's so much more autism, it's just that it's being diagnosed more. Is that correct?

Yeah. And we can actually track.So during my, my graduate studies now a long time ago, a few years ago, I looked at the Office for Special Education Programs data and what you could see is, gee, 34,000 students went from retardation over to autism. If you're only looking at the autism number, suddenly there's a 34,000 spike. But if you're looking at retardation, it vanished. Wow, we cured it.

Right, Got it.

If you are focused and a lot of people hyper focus on the autism label and they will say, wow, look, we've got tens of thousands of people who were never autistic and now they are, and it's because of this or that or, you know, whatever.

Yeah.

And a lot of times these things happen with labels, not just autism. They have happened with bipolar disorder.They have happened with a number of other things that have been either re categorized or modified by the DSM. The DSM 5 in particular has adopted what's called a matrix model.So as an example, my autism is labeled according to its severity on two axes, the A and the B. And so are my daughters.So what happens is you might have someone who is a level 1A, which means they don't need supports for those areas that deal with speech communication, but they might be A level 2B. And B is in the self injurious harm, the repetitive motion, some of the, the other things that we see.So what happens is now you get people who are not just, we used to use the phrase as high functioning and low functioning. Well, we don't do that technically anymore. We do it high support needs, low support needs.But we also do it in the new dsm we do it based on criterias A through, oh, I want to say it's D, but it might even be E now. But A is communication, B is some of the repetitive motion and so forth.So what happens is you go in and you get an evaluation or an assessment for your child or for yourself. And now you get this complicated feedback depending on which assessment was used.So in my case, I know that I am low support needs with verbal communication, but high support needs with executive function, time management, repetitive motion, some of those things. So it makes it more complicated. So when I Hear politicians or self appointed medical experts saying we're seeing a sudden increase in autism.My question is, well, yeah, and we saw a sudden decrease in pervasive developmental disorder. What happened? How do we cure it? And then they just give me kind of a blank stare as I don't know what you're talking about.

Right.

But the numbers, the total numbers, receiving services, it has increased as we have improved our diagnostic strategies, our testing instruments. We're now better at identifying women with add, adhd, autism, learning disabilities.We're getting a little better with people from marginalized communities. So we're seeing higher numbers of Asian, black, Hispanic students getting those diagnoses.But it really isn't that they didn't exist, it's that we're getting better at doing the assessments.

Yeah, got it. One thing I want to clarify is just the actual term. How do you self identify? Is it I have autism? Is it I am autistic? And why?Because I know that that has probably changed and I want to make sure I'm kind of on the right way of even talking about it.

Most of the self advocates who are able to communicate on their own, whether it's through text or verbally, prefer to say that they are autistic. I look at like. But diabetes. If I say I'm diabetic, nobody gets offended. This idea of I'm a person with diabetes. No, I'm a diabetic.Okay, I'm autistic. I'm a diabetic.

Right.

You know those things. And I think that we need to respect what everyone wants to call themselves in that sense, as long as it's a valid and legitimate label.I really dislike the label wars between some advocacy groups, especially some parents and some of the autism self advocates. It doesn't matter if I say I'm an autistic individual. My daughter's. I will frequently. My daughter has autism.Well, okay, I should say my autistic daughter.But you know, I don't want any pitchforks coming out because I said she, she has autism because you know, if I'm making the list, my oldest, who is about to turn 13, she has the autism diagnosis, the ADHD diagnosis. She has number of other things, including ptsd.As you know, coming from the foster system, there's always trauma, so there's childhood trauma that affects individuals. She does have scoliosis. She has. So she's in a back brace. You know, all the things that preteens love. You know, the back brace, the teeth braces.You can't sit there and decide which One is a width and which one is an IC or an IA in.

Right.

We get. We lose the person.

Yeah.

And what really matters is the child or the adult, not all the labels that we get attached to.

Mm, that's really interesting. And so just to piggyback on that, what are your feelings about Autism Awareness Month? That kind of thing.I know there's some people who don't want to call it that. They want to call it something else. What are your feelings about that?

It often gets very exhausting. So I've ranted on this or, you know, I've had the blog and podcast since 2007. And so it reached a point at first where I was like, this is awesome.Glad we're paying attention to how these are done. And then after about 10 years, it became, gosh, again, people are asking the same questions.Here we are almost 20 years later and we're still having the same, in my opinion, somewhat pointless debates. Because the first concern should be how can we support the individual? How can we support the people we already have?Walking around trying to find jobs, trying to succeed in school, trying to have part time jobs as teenagers or, you know, anyone with a special need, finds that our disabilities or differences, depending on how we want to describe those, become hindrances to feeling like we're a productive member of society. So everyone raising awareness of autism, and I'm like, okay, we've done this for a long time now.Can we actually start planning programs, hiring initiatives? Yeah, great. We're aware. We are so aware. After 25 years, how about we do something?

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it seems like some stuff is starting to happen. There's a sensory.Did you see the thing about the airline that has the sensory room now?

Well, I was on two autism boards in Pennsylvania when we lived there, and I was really excited that the Pittsburgh International Airport did some autism awareness training, that they trained the airport staff as well as TSA screeners and others. I think that was wonderful.I was really involved in a group called Glade Run, which is a Lutheran Family Services that does what we might call life experiences training, where they have a house, where they teach those with developmental delays how to wash dishes, do laundry, things like that. So, yes, there are programs that are emerging. But my fear is that with at first it was just Covid.At first my thought was, okay, we hit a wall with COVID and a lot of funding vanished and a lot of personnel left the field. So it's very hard now to find school psychologists, school assessment specialists. So at first I Thought, okay, we're dealing with it.We're slowly coming back from COVID It's been a few years, but we're starting to. And then in the last three months, a lot of things have been undone very quickly. I mean, very quickly.Some of the things that people don't realize is that the cuts that have occurred federally to grants. Most of your local schools, they do their special education programs through federal grants.So when the federal grants were frozen, our schools, like my youngest, goes to a special charter school that addresses her needs. That charter school didn't know if they were going to be able to continue their lunch program.They didn't know if they could continue some of their language therapy, their speech language pathologist, a lot of that. Even though the Federal spending is 4%, when you look at special education, it's as High as 20 to 30%.So school districts and states might say, okay, we're the, the Department of Education. Today there's an executive order that says we're going to wind it down and shut it down. What's the big deal? It's only 4% of our budget.But if you're in that special education classroom, it's 20% of your budget. That is significant. So the hope I had that we were making progress has just been crushed. You know, I worked as a consultant here at the local city.We had still have until some changes come through. But we had a diversity, equity, inclusion and accommodation, which we also called belonging.But unfortunately, the very first executive order was not just diversity, equity and inclusion. You will notice that the order from the White House included the letter A for accessibility and accommodation. So accommodation is technically.Now it's complicated because obviously I've had to study the law to help schools in classrooms implement these laws idea. The Individuals with Disabilities Education act, the Americans with Disabilities act, did not go away.But the Trump administration has said that they will not enforce the lawsuits and they've been dropping lawsuits. And so a law on the book that has no enforcement mechanism doesn't matter anymore.The first thing that they cut from the Department of Education was they laid off all of the statisticians. So the department that is involved in educational services testing is gone and their data sciences team is gone.So now we won't have the data that helps schools anticipate the needs of students with differences. So this happened very rapidly. So some of us, we don't know how to, how this will eventually settle. We don't know.You know, will, will the court step in? Will Congress step in? Will the states pick up the slack.Unfortunately, a state like Alabama, there was one individual in the Department of Education who was tasked with checking the entire state of Alabama's compliance with idea, ADA and other educational needs. That one person has, to my knowledge, been let go. That's for an entire state.

Yeah.

Nothing against states, but having been through the foster system, it took us four years for our children to go through foster to adopt.

Yep.

There are federal mandates, state mandates, you know, federal protections for these children without any enforcement or without some of the funding for the grants that were helping these programs. I do not know if private donors will step in. I don't know if state legislatures will step in and provide the necessary tools. I'm very concerned.I would normally have said, you know, six months ago, I would have told you, here's where we stand. As foster to adopt parents with special needs or as individuals like myself with special needs. But I don't know.

No one knows.

I just don't know.

And the weird thing about it is, so my daughter has an iep. Um, we're, we're not feeling anything right now. So people may not be too active about this because they're not feeling it right now.But if I understand what you're saying, it's like within six months, a year, this is really gonna make a big difference in a negative way. Like it's gonna be really bad because they're not doing research anymore.They're not, you know, you know, they're, they're firing people who are in charge of, of compliance. That kind of thing is. Am I correct with that?

It's disconcerting for me. My now I had grant funded research through the National Science Foundation.I was, I have an ORCID number which is the research ID that tracks my research that I got funds for. Those funds have been frozen. I am currently not at a university. I was until this summer, until August.And you know, I am looking to, to find out what the future holds because I'm in a state, I'm in the state of Texas, which also has its own ban on dei, which meant we closed our first generation student support center. We closed a lot of our support services for students from marginalized communities.I don't know what's going to happen to those students because I don't think it's an unfair advantage to them to have those programs. I was a first generation university student, plus I had special needs.And these programs, a lot of what they do is they say, oh well here's where what a bursar is. This is what a Registrar is. And here's how you go find the person to verify your classes.A lot of students, especially first generation students, it's not that they're ignorant, it's just no one in their family has ever said, well, when I was in university, I went to the bursar's office and filled out. I don't know what a bursar was. I didn't have a clue.

Sure.

So when we talk about, oh well, merit will take care of this, we forget that a first generation student is coming into a culture that I don't care how great your high school was, they didn't tell you about these things.

Right.

And so I am very concerned. The other thing you mentioned, ieps. Now I teach at the university level, but My daughters are 11 and 12.An IEP, an individualized education program, is good for three years. So we just had our meetings for the next three years, the assessment stands.We may not notice any changes until that third year when they come back and say, oh well, we didn't get the grants we needed for the assessment personnel, so we'll just keep the old IEP in place. But we're not going to update it.We don't, you know, so I don't, I don't know what the long term effects are and I don't know if there will be, I don't know if there will be a whiplash back. You know, it's, it's ironic. A few weeks ago I saw ads pop up on LinkedIn saying, you know, apply to be an air traffic controller.And I'm like, but you just let go of, yeah, people at the faa, you know, oops, we need you back. So I don't know if that's going to happen with a lot of special education parents saying, wait, we voted for you.We support good governance, but good governance doesn't include cutting our children. So I don't know if there's going to be a backlash.I don't know, or I don't know if they're going to go to their states and say, hey, Texas, California, Florida, we have millions of people getting special education. What can we do to fix this? I just don't know.But I know that in my experience as a parent, schools were already struggling to employ support personnel. Support people are already underpaid. They have to have at least a master's degree.A lot of them do have terminal degrees, PhDs, or they are doctors of within their specialty. So I'm thinking a physical therapist will often be a doctor of physical therapy.A dpt and they do the occupational vocational rehab that our children often need. Yeah, my child in the back brace is going to need physical therapy.

Yeah.

So if the school doesn't. Can't afford a DPT because let's be honest, a private practice chiropractor can make more money.You know, off they go to do physical therapy for a gym or something. And now the school's short the DPT to do ptov.

What, what do you recommend beyond calling your representatives? Like, what else can we do about this, in your opinion?

The first thing I say is as a parent, I make sure that I am in constant contact or my wife is in contact with the school.You know, a day or two ago, you know, driving home my, my 12 year old saying, oh, in speech therapy, we were practicing conversations and then she stopped and I was like, so what did they teach? Okay, honey, let's see how that one went.But you know, if that's the person they cut, I'm first going to talk to the school and say, okay, I know our school is on a tight budget. You know, we, we're expanding here in Texas. Lots of new growth. How can the parents help? What can we do to keep the funding from the states?And like I said, I know only 4% of education is federal money, so how can I convince my state to prioritize it? That starts with your school. Ask your school what you can do. Do they need volunteers? Do they need someone to check on things?We already have a hard enough time because a lot of parents go in confrontational. You know, my kid needs an IEP and I want these things. Trust me, every teacher wants to help. They didn't go into teaching to argue with parents.They went into teaching to help.

Yes.

So if you go in and say, look, I know my child's getting services, but we're having some problems getting the assessments or getting these new services. To whom do I need to write? To who? Because the teachers and the principals.The assistant superintendent in charge of special education, maybe it's the assistant superintendent in charge of curriculum. Those people will know where you should focus your energy as an advocate.They can tell you, okay, well, there's a House committee on education and boy, they're doing hearings right now.If you write to them right now, here's the address at your state capitol, the leaders of your schools, a lot of people complain, you know, why do we have so many superintendents or assistant superintendents and so forth, deans. But the reality is the assistant superintendent in charge of curriculum or the assistant superintendent in charge of, of special education.That is a highly focused job. You've got to know all the regulations, all your state standards, the national standards.You've got to be competitive on an international level with testing for your graduates versus say the special attention needed for your physical plan. So the assistant superintendent in charge of buildings and maintenance schools are million, million dollar know 13, $14 million buildings.So that's again, it's someone who has to know building code, contracting, bidding.So I'm not so concerned with the fact that my school district has four superintendents, you know, one superintendent and three assistant superintendents. That doesn't bother me as much as it used to. I used to think, my gosh, we've got all this top heavy and why aren't we getting more teachers?And then the more I did my research as a student, a graduate student, I'm thinking I would not want to have to be the person who understands curriculum, law and the person who understands building code. I don't want to be that. No, no.

Right, yeah. Totally different.

They are totally different. So that's given me a whole lot of insight because just the special education portion of it is so overwhelming. That's why you need that person.

Yes. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.

And that's going to be the person who knows who to contact.

I love that advice and I haven't heard that. To just really start local in your own school and go from there. That's great. A great piece of advice. Thank you.

Well, writing to your president or calling the congressional switchboard or the Senate switchboard and leaving a voicemail because that's where they go is voicemail. Most of the time, writing a letter, it's just sending an email. They spam filter it, right? It goes into.And they count them, you know, oh, we got 1, 500 emails from this parent group. They, they do data analysis on those. But people I know who have worked as professional pages, that's true. That staff may not exist.You know, I am all for efficient government. I am all for, you know, not having programs that make zero sense to anybody on planet earth. But special education is an easy place to cut.It's an easy place to, I don't know, it's, it's an easy target because, you know, if you think that you're, I hate to say it, but most people are mainstreamed. Most, you know, the special education they're familiar with might be ADD and a learning disability.Most people don't think about the child with spina bifida, the child who's in a wheelchair, the child with, you know, assisted breathing. And I've had those students in my classrooms. I've had students with ALS or muscular dystrophy, you know, at the university.And they're using mobility wheelchairs that are driven by breath or eyesight. This summer I met a wonderful young lady who has typed an entire memoir using her vision just by eyesight. SHE TYPES Wow.But those are the people that will unfortunately suffer because the supports, those will be the ones that get cut.

Yeah, yeah.

Personally, that's what concerns me.

Thank you for that. Let's, let's talk about foster care because there's an intersection there.I'm not sure what the statistic is, but I know that many, many children that come through foster care will end up with special needs of one kind or another. I'm curious about your personal journey into foster care, why you made that decision and what was your journey into foster care like?

As with many people, you know, we suffered two miscarriages, so two pregnancies that terminated. And we were discussing other paths, including just treatment, you know, hormone treatments and other things.And then my wife was diagnosed with an enlarged thyroid and she had been receiving thyroid treatments. So they said that, you know, if, if we do the treatments, we won't be able to pursue having a family.So we talked about it and we said, oh, well, you know, we could become foster parents and see if we're, if we're good at it. Right.We went through the training, we did all of, all of that through combinations of groups that, as you know, are both publicly and privately funded. So that's what the foster care system is really. It's a net of private organizations, public funding.You know, it's your court system, but it's also your court appointed advocates. It's a lot of moving parts that are both federally and state funded as well as then. So much private money has to be invested and donated.And our daughters arrived in October of 2015.

They were part of siblings. They are biological siblings. Okay.

Yes, they are. And they also have two brothers who are in other placements.The, the system took four years because as you know, they keep giving the parents opportunities to prove that they can parent. So, you know, there was court appointed therapy and check ins with the parents. So there was a lot of time going in and out of court.Well, the judges kept, you know, offering, okay, well you can have this much time, this much. So it was a four year journey for us.

Early were the girls two and three.

And within. I want to, I would need to look it up as probably within the first two or three months.My wife went in for her thyroid check since we had known that that had caused some of the problems with fertility. And she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. So early on in the foster experience, my wife ended up having surgery.During the surgery, they found that the cancer had spread. Difficult time to be in the waiting room, and they say, oh, we'll come out if there's any news.And they came out and they said, okay, we never have to call anybody. And yet, you know, you hear your name, you're like, well, they just said, this is routine surgery. And, yeah, what happened here?So they ended up doing a rather more extreme surgery and removed the thyroid, remove the cancerous lymph nodes, and then she had to start chemotherapy. And one of the things with chemotherapy is you can't be around young children.

Oh, man. So how do you navigate that solo.

Parenting right off the bat, so very quickly? And we have always been really good at that. The children. Here we are now, they're. They're. The oldest is about to turn 13, so 10 years later.And they joke that, you know, it's mommy, daddy, and, you know, my wife and I, we want to be good role models for the girls.So, you know, that foster journey of four years, we took turns deciding who would go to court, who would watch the kids, who would testify, who would do all the things that were necessary.Probably the most difficult part of foster care for me was even though I have the PhD, I have, you know, other graduate degrees, we had zero say in their medical care, their evaluations, their assessments, the services they received, the. The state, the. The judge gets to make those final decisions. So we did not get to say, well, we want to go to this testing center and get assessments.They said this. This is where you're going. We will. So you don't get to make very essential decisions.And that was four years when we may have gone one direction, but the state chose a different direction.

Yeah. Yep. Yep.

And, you know, now that, you know, obviously, when the. When the adoption was closed, we very quickly made sure we.We found a therapist for the girls that we started all of the medical care that, you know, the oldest, the neglect, you know, we have no way to know if she would have already had scoliosis, but the neglect of her just sitting on a couch or whatever day after day and not enough activity. The youngest didn't develop speech until almost. Gosh, I have to look it up. But she was very late with speech. Her first word was bubbles.In the math playing not mom, not dad, it was bubbles. But the speech delays and things, we would have probably been far more aggressive about those. So now they're in speech therapy.Now we've made sure they have the IEP, the 504 plan. As parents, we've been able to get them diagnosed. We have determined that they had severe myopia, very severe myopia.So they're getting experimental treatment for the myopia that, you know, thankfully is covered. You know, we, we pay for it, but it's, it's something that's possible here.

What is myopia?

Severe nearsightedness. So and at negative 6, you're considered almost legally blind. And they're at negative 5 and negative 4.5.So these are things where, because they didn't have glasses, you know, you can't see, you can't read. So the foster care system, you have the child and you're responsible for the child. Right.But two or three days a week, someone's coming into your house and checking on you.At least that was our experience because there was the court appointed person, there was the social worker, there's the person who takes them to family visits. So there's all this interruption going on, I mean, constant interruption.Now that we're the parents and have been, you know, for a number of years, then we could say, okay, you're going to go to this pediatrician, we're going to go to this assessment place. We knew that the vast majority of children in foster care because they've come from traumatic experiences, their brains have been rewired.Trauma rewires your brain, it just does. So reactive attachment disorder is our, our youngest has that diagnosis. That's rad. Is very common with foster to adopt situations.Attachment, because they weren't forming those attachments during those first two or three years when they really should have been forming those.

Yeah.

So ptsd, extremely common physical abuse and neglect, very, very common. We, we also know that there are other forms of abuse and neglect that unfortunately are all too common.So now as parents, we are now pursuing all of these things because we can.I think that that's the big change from being a foster parent to being the adoptive parent is now we don't have to go to the court and say we really think we need an assessment for a learning disability or we really would like to have this medical care. You know, now we can make that decision.

Right.

But you know, years of being monitored without control, you know, we couldn't really advocate for the IEP that we Thought the kids needed.

We couldn't. Did you have educational rights or did they not give you the educational rights?

Oh, I would have to ask my wife the exact date. But that educational rights sort of came in as they were entering. Because. Because I will say the.The youngest would have been in kindergarten as Covid struck, so it wouldn't have mattered.

So that's. That's a whole thing. Yeah.

You know, I hate to say it, but it wouldn't have mattered.

You know, Perfect storm for you guys.

Yeah.

Wow. I. The reason I ask is because we. We foster to. Adopted through. In. In California.And I'm thinking that maybe California is a little bit better in terms of. Because, like, we got the educational rights right away. And that was like. That was. And they said, you need these.I didn't even really understand what that meant at that time. My. My children were both infants when that occurred, so I was like, educational rights, okay. I mean, whatever. But like.And then the medical rights, it might have had something to do with our. We didn't have contact with either of my children's birth parents. So maybe that's why we got a little bit more control.I do resonate with what you're saying because, like, they were on Medicaid, so it only could be the Medicaid providers. And unfortunately, the Medicaid providers were a joke, most of them. I mean, we did have a couple that were good, but it was. It's tough.It's really tough.And we, you know, I would see all my friends with their kids going to a fancy pediatrician, and I'd be like, yeah, I gotta go to the, you know, this place. We had something called regional center, and it was an entity that would oversee services for children.And it was a process, but I mean, we got directly connected with them, and we. So we had services from the very beginning for our children. Did you have anything like that, or was it just kind of like you're on your own?

So the girls were born and raised in Pennsylvania.

Okay.

So we started off in Pennsylvania. They did have wraparound and they did have service coordinators. But again, because.Because the parents had been through the system repeatedly with their oldest, I. I forget the age of the. The oldest sibling, but we have the two youngest. My daughters are the two youngest of the four. And so the.The parents had a history of being in the system, and the children had been returned. So they had come and gone in this system, as you know, that's not uncommon.So Pennsylvania had services, but there were a number of issues, as you Said, you're on Medicaid or whatever your state Medicaid program is. Medi Cal here in Texas, Lone Star Circle of Care. Different states have different names for it.And that's one of the things causing confusion right now is people hearing, oh, well, they're making Medicare cuts, but we have Medi Cal. It's the same.

Right.

You know, trying to explain to parents that 50 states, only, some of them still call it Medicare. They have different names for it in different states. That's a.So, yeah, a lot of times people are saying, well, they're cutting Medicare, but that doesn't affect me. My. My child is on this other thing. No, it's Medicare. So when we moved, we moved as they were getting ready to go into second in kindergarten.And the reason for relocating was Pennsylvania at the time was. There is no nice way to say it. It's in political turmoil. It's in decline in the southwest region, especially around Pittsburgh.You know, the area we were in, Beaver county and then the New Castle area. These are areas that are shrinking. They just are shrinking. Schools are closing. You know, services are declining.So we made a choice to head back west. My wife works for a company that. It's an engineering firm, a lot of aeronautical, mechanical, electrical engineers. And we. We move because of.The sad truth is, is you've got to go where you can afford to raise a family if you're fortunate enough.

Yeah.

And we are fortunate enough to be able to do that.

Yeah.

And the Austin area is. Is. Is booming. There's no question the Austin area is booming.Schools are growing, districts are growing, but the support still go through the state system. You may be in a booming area, but you still have to navigate a state and federal system that right now is in turmoil. It's. I don't know.

Did you have to switch foster systems then? Like, how did that work? Like, you took the girls to Texas, and then did you have to get involved and enrolled with the Texas.

Okay. It gets complicated, the way it works. So we. We adopted on May 10th of 2019, I believe.

Okay.

That was, you know, after having them since 2015. So we adopted in Pennsylvania, which gave us full parental rights. We thought. And we thought, oh, well, now we move. Turns out that's not the case.We are still under Allegheny county for the daughters and for their stipends or any of their needs. So we get an Allegheny county card that covers those expenses. And we are under. We are under Medicaid, which is administered here in Texas through.Like I said, we're with the Lone Star circle of care. So we have to deal with two state systems to balance the services.So Allegheny county, we still file an annual report, we still file progress reports on how they're doing at the same time that we're. We're dealing with Texas. And so it's.

Right. Gotcha.

It's an added complication, but the reality is, as a college instructor and for my wife as a. As an engineer, the choice was difficult. It was either return to Minnesota, where her company is based, or look at other options.The decision not to go to Minnesota was driven not only by the weather but by other. Other factors. You know, for, for our family, we wanted something that was kind of, for lack of a better word, quaint. We're in a suburb of Austin.We've got our own backyard. You know, we've got a YMCA down the street. So they get, the girls get to go to the YMCA swimming pool. Yeah.It's a life that we couldn't have had easily anywhere else because of the cost of living differentials.

Right.

You know, I hate to say this, but foster and adopt is not affordable. And people who say, oh, well, you know, well, you're fostering, you're getting a stipend. It's like you, you have no idea.You're still paying out of pocket. Trust me. Yeah, you have no idea. The kids are kids and they have special needs.

Right.

As you said, you know, I would need to verify the data, but I know it's between 80 and 90%, not quite 90% do have severe special needs. Those could be intellectual, they could be emotional, they could be physical. And in some cases, like ours, it's kind of all of the above, huh?

Yeah.

Yeah. And no amount of stipend is going to cover that. So it is so unfair. It is. So I know that we're fortunate.We are so fortunate that we know what we are in the upper tax brackets. We know that we are fortunate to live in a. In Austin, Texas, where, you know, it's kind of high end for a lot, lot of people.We have a house that we would never have in California.

Right.

That was a choice we made. We both have family in California. I have family also in Texas.And, you know, we looked at California as an option, but the cost, we could not provide the life we wanted for the girls anywhere in California.

I know we left California because it was. We were outgrowing our home and we couldn't buy anything that would be comparable to what we had bought previously. So we were kind of stuck.Like we kind of had to move and then we ended up moving to New York, which is like a nightmare because it's so expensive. I mean, it's like the other most expensive place in the country. So that's been fun.But I have family here, so that's, that's why we made that decision.But yeah, there's a lot of factors to consider when you're going through foster care and medical emergencies, which I still can't believe you had to deal with that while you were going through foster care. Because foster care, I always say it's almost like a full time job, like a second job.

As you're doing foster care. You're keeping the binder, all of the records. You know, we have binders for both, both girls. You're keeping all those records at the same time? Yes.We were juggling my wife's health. I was working, working full time as a visiting assistant professor.So, you know, I was driving to and from Carnegie Mellon and she was, you know, getting cancer treatment and you know, for whatever insane reason I was finishing a, another graduate degree. You know, it's like, wow, we really made some choices that, you know, otherwise we might not have made.And you know, when you're a foster parent, part of it, part of it is, you know, you might not keep the children in our case because they're coming from a system where they can go back. So there's also that emotional, oh my gosh, are the girls going to go away? Do we have to do this again?Yeah, you know, maybe we don't if they don't stay with us, you know.

So there's also the single hardest thing for us was just that emotional toll of putting so much into these children and then just not knowing if we were gonna get to keep them, you know, and I. That's what you sign up for, right? It's not. That is the system, that is the way that it is.But it doesn't make it easy, doesn't make it any easier to know that on an emotional level. And that does take a toll. I have felt stress in my body physically dealing with, with physical issues.Now I think from all of that stress that we went through, I would.

Hear things and I, you know, I go to conferences and we don't always mention that the girls were adopted. But a common question would be, why would someone who is autistic with adhd, why would you even consider a family?And that kind of comment or, well, as soon as you found out your wife had cancer, maybe you should have, you know, returned the kids to the system. And it's like that. That's not what we signed up for. We signed up to be the best parents we could be. We. Whether it was for a year or for a lifetime.And they are important people. They are my daughters. We love them. And whether they had been in my life for a year or forever, we were gonna do everything we could for them.

Absolutely. I'm a little bit taken aback that people would say that to you. Why would you even wanna be parents?As an autistic person with adhd, that's insane to me. But I think it speaks to people. Just not really understanding what it even means to be autistic.And I think for so long there was such a stigma about it. And it's like, it's a brain difference, people. That's it. It's a brain difference. I mean, there's.Obviously, there's challenges and there's things that come with that, especially in a neurotypical world that you have to move through, But I find that incredibly insulting. And I'm sure that you did too well.

And what's really fascinating to me is how often it comes from autistic individuals.

Oh, really? Interesting.

And I have to remind them, autism is different for everybody. You know, you might be an autistic who is very sensitive to sound, very sensitive to order.And for you, maybe having even a pet is going to be a nightmare. And I understand that. But my autistic traits are more in the executive function and social skills realm. I don't like large crowds of people.I don't like trying to navigate those social situations. I'm not good at irony. I'm not good at sarcasm. I'm very literal. My time management stinks.I have alarms before I had a smartphone, before I had the iPhone. I had a pda, a Palm Pilot handspring visor. Before that, I had day runners, and I always had calendars everywhere. Checklists.We have checklists taped up on bathroom mirrors. You know, okay, here's the bathroom routine, kids.And, you know, quite honestly, we have, you know, dad has to run through his mental list, okay, I need to do this, this, this. I'm easily upset internally if I. If my routine gets messed up. And what I have done is I've taken my needs and my.My autism, and I've turned it into the way I approach teaching, the way I approach parenting. You know, I was talking to a specialist yesterday on neuroplasticity, which is the brain, how the brain develops.And it's really difficult to help a college student which is the level I teach.And what I have found is because of my autistic needs, long before COVID Long before COVID When I started teaching, as soon as we had online spaces in the early 2000s, I started putting my lecture notes online. I started putting recordings of them online. I started doing things. And I did it because as a student I always needed notes and I struggled with them.So I would use a handheld pocket record recorder. I would use the old Olympus tape deck, micro cassette, right. And then I would get a digital recorder.So what I did was I took all the things that I knew helped me as a student survive and get a PhD eventually. And I do point out to people it took five tries. So this is not like it was easy. It was. I failed many times, spectacularly.But from those failures, I learned what supports I needed. And so now for my daughters and for my students, I find that providing. In education, we call it multimodal input.So one daughter does really well with written lists, another does really well if I tell her the list. I have students the same way. I can give one student the list and they'll see the list but not remember it.So I make sure that when they give the list of tasks to students that I read it aloud. The same for my daughters. Okay, let's look. Task number one, start the water running so it will get warm. Step number two, get a clean washcloth. Step.You know, we have a facial care post. Trust me, when you have a 12 year old, you need a facial care list. Otherwise she, she will panic.

Good to know. Yeah, yeah, she's at that stage.

Gotta look good for school. But she doesn't remember how to do it. Yeah, she doesn't remember the how to. She just doesn't. She knows she doesn't want acne.

Right.

So, you know, we have these to do lists. I stand there sometimes and they use the little, little cleansing brush for the minute 30. And we set the timer.So my autism works really well for a kid in the foster to adopt system because it turns out they need structure.

Yes.

Structure is key to survival for, for my kids. And it turns out my need for structure and their need for structure, it's really complimentary.

That is so cool. I really need to hear this because I'm somebody who, I don't have a whole lot of structure. It's always been difficult for me.Structure has been tough for me. And my daughter definitely needs. I mean, I think all children do, but certainly my daughter does need like a very set structure.We have a loose schedule But I'm thinking like, yeah, we gotta get the visual aids up in, in the house. We don't have them in the house. She has them at school.Just, you know, I can't get mad at her for throwing her, you know, her jacket and her backpack on the floor when she comes in. If we don't have a list that says, this is what you do when you come in kind of a situation, I'm just kind of thinking out loud.So thank you for that piece.

Oh, and you know it. As I said, my autism is not everyone's autism. Right. I. I am sensitive to different things than my girls. My youngest is extremely sensitive to sound.Her sister and I were gonna go see one of their music teachers perform. The poor little one, we had to leave early. Her sensory processing is very severe.So again, just because someone's autistic, that doesn't mean that you know what their, their limits are, their needs are, their adaptations need to be. So the youngest, we need to talk about what she has to do or it won't register. My oldest, she has to read it and write it to remember it.She has to read, write, remember. The other one has to hear it. And so, you know, we teachers say this.Every teacher I've met says, oh, well, different people have different learning styles. And I'm like, yes, they do. So do you record your lectures? Well, no.

Okay, makes sense.

You know, so when Covid hit, I, I joked that, you know, Covid hit, I was, I was already prepared because all my classes, all my stuff was already online moving. Online class.

Right.

Oh, well, you know, but. But my, my daughters, their schools had no idea what to do. They couldn't get. I feel so sorry for them that that year was lost.

Yeah, for, for so many kids.

So we, we homeschooled the next year and caught them up, you know, and thankfully my, my wife and I could trade off some duties. And college professors don't teach Monday through Friday, 8 to 5, you know, a benefit of college, you know.But for what it's worth, the foster to adopt system, if you think about the children and what they have been through, that support shows them you care. It shows them you want to provide a safety net.And so my autistic needs, it may strike other parents as, oh my gosh, you guys are so programmed, you know, that today, you know, I can tell you today is Thursday. Thursday at 5:00. My oldest has music. So I will pick her up at 3:45 with her bass and her drumsticks to take her to Band practice.I will know what time. At 3 o'clock, I pack her her dinner, slash whatever you call it, for the two hours at band. This routine works really well for me. It's in my clock.It's on my computer screen. I won't remember it. Trust me. I. It's on the computer screen. I'm not, like, pulling it up the.

Top of my right y.

Even though it doesn't change, week after week, it's the same. I still have to see it.

Yeah.

And I know that that's how my girls are, too, is even though every week is the same, you know, the one thing they hate is like a spring break or a Christmas break, because what do we do? You know?

Right. Yeah.

I don't know what to do either.

It's true.

So foster to adopt. These kids have been through so much trauma. Their brains have been. They have lacked the support, the nurturing.So, you know, I look at it as, yeah, I was probably an unreasonable candidate on the outside. So I was saying, why would an autistic person who's gonna have to suddenly solo parent within the first month or two?You know, As a side note, my wife is getting ready to travel. She's traveling for a business trip to the West Coast. So, you know, she'll be going to Vegas and in for spring break.So again, I'll have solo parenting for a few days. And the good thing about it is we have a plan. We know on Sunday, this will happen on Monday, this will happen on Tuesday.So as a foster parent, you know, and then an adoptive parent, I'm sure a lot of people are like, boy, someone with autism and adhd, you're not going to be able to do it. But in the end, it. In the end, my needs actually aligned really well with foster and adopting.

I'm so glad you said that. And that's such a great place to end our conversation today. Thank you for that.A good piece of advice for neurodivergent or neurotypical people that are looking to foster, to keep that in mind. So thank you so much, Christopher. It's been awesome talking to you, and I hope you'll come back on the show another time.

Well, thank you so much.And as a podcast host myself, I always look for those connections because the sad truth is, a lot of parents, especially young parents or unexpected parents, the children that end up in the system, a lot of them are neurodiverse in some way. Learning disability, cognitive differences, physical challenges.And I think our audiences need to know that people who have been through those experiences, either as a child in a good family or through the system themselves. We can be great foster parents. And I hope I'm a wonderful adopted dad. I don't know. I hope I'm a good father, but thank you so much.And I think our audiences benefit from what we share.

This has been the Foster to Forever Podcast. Happy stories of non traditional families born through Foster to Adopt. Produced by Aquarius Rising, edited by Jason Cerubi at Split Rock Studios.Original music composed by Joe Fulginetti.For more information or to stay in touch, visit from foster to forever.com that's from foster the number two forever.com and stay connected with us on Instagram. Instagram @foster2forever podcast. That's foster the number two forever podcast. We'll see you next time.