Wait Laura. You know it’s almost 2026, right? You just got your word for 2025?

Better late than never, ok? This time last year when 2024 ended and 2025 began, I didn’t know which end was up. We launched into the new year and I started to read many Facebook posts on people’s words of focus. I was like, “oh yeah. that’s a thing. people choose a word for the year. i used to do that.”

And those five seconds of thought were all I gave to a word for 2025.

All I could think of, instead, was WHAT IN THE WORLD IS HAPPENING IN OUR HOME?? AND WHAT DO WE DO?

Life at our house

As most of you know, seven years ago, we entered the world of foster care and adoption. One kid led to another until within five years, we’d added seven precious children to our family. This is, without a doubt, the most beautiful, blessed decision we’ve ever made. It is also the most difficult and life-changing.

As it turns out, being obedient to Jesus’ instruction to “lay down your life, take up your cross, and follow me” can be extremely challenging and ridiculously uncomfortable. I thought the foster care process would be the hard part – because IT WAS. But after all of our wonderful adoption days were in the books and we hung up our foster care hats, we learned that now the healing journey could really begin.

Our seven bonus children all have several varieties of extra needs, brought to them in large part by extreme traumatic experiences and exposure to drugs and alcohol in the womb. As Matt and I have walked this path with our babies, we’ve studied and learned all that we can about trauma, brain injury caused by substances, and how best to care for our children.

What we’ve learned more than anything is that God is faithful. His mercies are new every morning and His goodness never fails. We are on our knees more than we are on our feet, but with that, we know that we can STAND with the One who holds us up through His power.

Questions: What in the world is this??

The older these kids get, the larger their needs have become. And here we thought having five kids in diapers at the same time would be the biggest challenge. Bah. I wish.

As the kids have moved past the diaper stage (only one in diapers full time now, woot!) we have been blindsided by the screaming and yelling, the hitting and throwing, the fighting and meltdowns we endure with our kids, every day, multiplied by seven. As the months turned into years and the kids settled into security and safety with us, the meltdowns became more and more prevalent. Nothing we did as parents was helping.

This felt so shocking – because we have been parents before. We are on round two in our parenting life. While our four adult sons aren’t perfect, they are all incredibly wonderful humans who are an absolute delight to be around. Raising them was hard too, and we felt inadequate with them often. But with trial and error we grew together. To apply all that we learned while raising our boys and to not have any of it work this time around?? Oh, the discouragement and feelings of defeat.

Oh hey. Remember these cuties?

Our prayer changed.

Over our heads in trauma and questions, of course we sought additional help. But for a very long time, we got nowhere. I was shocked at professionals who couldn’t offer us any hope or point us in the right direction. No one is at fault in this. I’ve learned that it takes asking a lot of wrong questions to the wrong people at first to find the right people with the right answers. The phone calls, the meetings, and the appointments – so many ended up in dead ends. I can’t tell you how many times I heard:

• We don’t take kids that age
• We aren’t taking new patients
• We don’t take that insurance
• Would you like to have your child placed on our year-long wait list?
• It’s normal; all kids have meltdowns
• He looks fine to me
• She never acts that way with me
• Have you tried a sticker chart?
• Wow, are they always this sweet and well behaved?

No. No they are not.

Our deep dive taught us what “masking” is – that our kids are very good at putting on a false front as a form of self preservation – and then the minute they leave the school grounds, get back into our van, or find themselves in the safety of our home – they let down their guard, the masks come off, and the screaming starts.

The worst feeling through this has been that I’ve felt like a parenting failure. If our kids could behave at school and otherwise, but completely lose their minds at home, we must be doing something terribly wrong.

Friends assured us that we were good parents. They saw our hard work and affirmed it. Their encouragement held us up and helped us stay on our feet. But why was nothing working and what could we do to make a change in our parenting world for the good of these kids? And who could we turn to for help?

Prayer, prayer, prayer

Over and over we asked, God, give us answers. Tell us who to call. What doctor can help us? What are we dealing with and how do we parent this? Please, give us help. Point us in the right direction.

And the prayer on top of that prayer: God, we need help in our home. We need professionals who can come into our home and see our kids in their safe place to witness their trauma responses and help us with the healing that we need. Is that even a thing? Help in our home with our kids? Please, Lord.

The screech of our baby boy

Interestingly enough, a breakthrough for help for all of our kids finally burst open because of the special needs of our very youngest. He’d had extra struggles from the beginning of his life which had provided referrals to specialist after specialist, starting in his newborn days. He was very delayed developmentally, had whole body tremors that were frightening, couldn’t eat without throwing up, and wasn’t learning to talk. From GI Specialists to EEGs to MRIs to Feeding Therapy to Speech Therapy to Neurology – we became very comfortable with people from Children’s Hospital.

It was at one of Auggie’s follow-up neurology appointments that the Pediatric Neurologist heard his high pitched shriek. She stopped our conversation. “Wait. Does he do that often??”

YES. All.The.Time.

And that’s where our questions finally started to turn into answers.

Developmental Pediatrics to the rescue

Auggie’s neurologist quickly put in a referral for him to visit Developmental Pediatrics in Omaha. I didn’t fully understand why a baby screeching would send us there, but I did know that Auggie’s frequent outbursts were atypical and I trusted his neurologist. More than anything, we deeply appreciated that we would soon be meeting with a team of doctors who specialized in the development of children’s brains.

February, 2025. That’s when we got our first diagnosis. After a very intense assessment with the Developmental Pediatric Team, we heard the word “Autism” for the first time.

I mean, not for the first time. We’d heard of autism before, of course. But for our family – this was a first, and also a turning point. Learning that Auggie met criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder rocked us a bit as we weren’t expecting it –  but mostly it provided relief. Then as we learned more about autism, it all started to make sense for Auggie.

And also

During that appointment of Auggie’s – while we were working through his evaluation and assessments – all of our other kids’ behaviors and needs kept popping into my head. Every question that the doctor asked about Auggie’s special needs resonated with most of our other kids too. Because of this, at the end of his appointment, finally filled with hope, I tearfully asked the doctor, “How can I bring all of our other kids in to see you??”

We needed these assessments for all of them, and we’d finally found a place that heard us and welcomed our family. The doctor walked me through the paperwork and referral needs, and we started the journey of behavior evaluations for all seven of our kids.

Wow, 2025. You’ve been intense.

Millions of hours of questionnaires, phone calls, appointments, assessments, evaluations, meetings, and advocating later: we have answers. Throughout this year, we have taken all seven of our younger kids in for evaluations and diagnosis. Most to Children’s in Omaha. Some to Munroe Myer in Omaha. Some to a Psychologist in Lincoln. This process has been incredibly intense, multiplied by seven, and it has taken the entire year. But oh how thankful we are to have found the doctors we needed and to receive the diagnoses that help explain our kids’ needs.

Diagnoses

• Five of our kids have Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
• Some have a PDA profile as a part of their ASD (This isn’t an actual diagnosis because it isn’t in the DSM-5, but it fits, so we are learning to parent accordingly)
• Some have ADHD in addition to their ASD
• Some have ODD, PTSD, and MDD (I’ll let you look those up if you’re not sure about them. Please pray for our children.)
• Some have Alcohol Related Neurodevelopmental Disorder
• Some have Global Developmental Delay (Intellectual Development Disorder)

In addition, we were able to take all seven kids in for Genetic Testing through Children’s Hospital. We will receive these results in the new year and we pray that the findings will help us meet the kids’ needs even more.

And as an added bonus, we were also able to take one of our daughters to an eye specialist which provided a non-serious but very helpful diagnosis as we watch for potential complications that could result in her need for eye surgery in the future.

I Finally Know My Word for 2025

Answers

Answers

Answers

God is faithful. He is good. He led us to the places and to the doctors we needed so that we could find the answers we’ve been longing for so that we can better help our kids.

Having so many specific diagnoses doesn’t take away our kids’ challenges. But it does help explain them.

The unfortunate combination of many of these diagnoses mixed with trauma and drug exposure creates a complex and humbling level of challenge to our situation. We’re learning that our kids’ brains are damaged in ways that can’t easily be explained.

This hurts and I hate it for them.

But oh how grateful I am to be their mom. Somehow, God chose me – chose us for this. I’m so very humbled and honored to be the one God asked to raise these dear ones.

Our calling is hard, but joining Jesus in His Kingdom work has grown us in ways we’ve needed. I don’t always love it. The hard parts of our days are excruciating. But I love God and I love my kids, so I’m all in. I love that Matt and I get to do this together. He’s the best teammate in this.

God’s double answer

Not only did God give us diagnoses, He provided in-home help that we didn’t know existed. We had prayed for it – but had no idea it would come in this form.

Because of the autism diagnoses we’ve received, four of our kids are now provided with in-home ABA therapy which gives them a one-on-one behavior technician to work with them to teach them coping skills, calming techniques, life skills – so much.

We now have multiple therapists in our home for up to 30-hours a week, sometimes three at a time. It is a circus. There are kids everywhere, therapist everywhere, meltdowns everywhere, adults in and out, and somewhere in there we also do homework, dishes, and laundry.

But would you look at that? God is giving us everything we needed and asked for. He will continue.

We have answers, more resources, more help, and we are becoming more and more educated about all of our kids’ diagnoses now that we know what the specific needs are in our home as we live in the trenches with so many amazing special needs children.

So stay tuned, if you dare. I actually already have a word for 2026 that I’d love to share. Though first, I plan to share my runners-up. :)