If I had a blind kid, I wouldn’t do that. |
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That was the thought rolling around Amanda Nachtmann’s head as she watched one of her blind students interacting with her parents. As a “Braillist,” or a teacher who works with students without full vision, Nachtmann had learned a lot about life with blindness. So much, in fact, that she felt she and her husband could do a pretty good job at parenting children with it themselves.
Two international adoptions later, and the Missouri mother will now tell you without hesitation: parenting an adopted child who cannot see ― but can certainly feel trauma ― is no unicorn-accompanied picnic.
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Even so, “God meant for every child to have a family. I think we’re designed that way,” Nachtmann says. “There’s something about being in a family that feeds a kid, even when it doesn’t involve food.”
That Braillist position got Nachtmann to thinking about international special needs adoption about a decade ago. Her husband Chet “wasn’t on board with it at all,” Nachtmann says, but a chance meeting at a spelling bee for blind kids changed his mind.
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“There was this little three- or four-year-old kid named Will from China who was adopted, and he had a teeny, tiny cane,” Nachtmann says. “He was singing at the top of his voice and my husband looked at me and said, 'You know, we should add a blind child to our family.'”
That was the answer to prayer his wife had been waiting for. In 2013, they brought home seven-year-old Vika (“Victoria” on Reece’s Rainbow) and eight-year-old Lena from Ukraine. Both girls are blind.
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“Everyone thought we were nuts for getting one blind child,” Nachtmann remembers. “Then they really thought we were nuts for getting two.”
But no one could deny the miraculous way one turned into two for the couple. After initially committing to Vika, a child she had been watching for years on Reece’s Rainbow, Nachtmann heard about Lena from a missionary. She broached the idea of adding another with Chet. He agreed ― if they could raise $5,000 for her fees by the end of the weekend.
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Nachtmann posted about their situation on Facebook. Overnight, a distant relative whom she had never met deposited the exact amount the Nachtmanns needed. Two trips later, and both girls were theirs.
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So, it turns out, was all their unpacked trauma.
“Our kids have been really traumatized and are really broken,” Nachtmann shares. Both were diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), while Vika also has autism. There were IEP battles, strangers thinking they were being helpful but actually enabling, manipulation, obsessions and controlling behaviors.
There was, in short, a whole lot of eligible fan-hitting.
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And yet Nachtmann couldn’t help but notice as the years passed that there were changes in the girls. There were happy moments.
“Not a lot of people stick around for the funny parts because they’re scared away, but Vika has a funny, quirky sense of humor,” Nachtmann says. “And Lena can survive any situation you put her in.”
Those traits might be seen as off-putting, but Nachtmann (now a teacher at a behavioral school) found their advantages. When she dropped Lena off at a summer camp, for instance, she didn’t have to worry about her daughter feeling anxious about separation. Vika only needs socks for Christmas and birthday gifts, and she’s thrilled.
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The girls are now 18 and 16. Lena can cook for herself, travel on public transport and go grocery shopping. She even took extra classes so she could graduate a year early. Vika, meanwhile, can also get herself dressed and travel alone.
The camaraderie through Reece’s Rainbow has been a silver lining, Nachtmann says. Before she died, experienced adoptive mother Kelley Pruett Robinson chatted with Nachtmann at a Kentucky reunion. Robinson had an adopted adult daughter she never bonded with. But, she pointed out, that daughter had a job, a husband, children and a good life. “So I feel like it doesn’t really matter that we never really bonded or have a normal relationship, because she’s successful in the world,” she said.
The conversation really impacted Nachtmann, especially as Lena prepares to leave the nest.
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“If Lena doesn’t want to be with us, at least I can know I set her up with enough technology that she will be successful in whatever she does,” she says. “I think she will be fine without me ― and she never would have been successful in Ukraine. She has a better shot at life now than she had initially.”
Maybe that’s not a line that instantly brings fuzzy feelings and goosebumps. But it’s a reality that is uniquely the Nachtmann’s.
And that’s something Amanda Nachtmann can finally see with crystal-clear vision: she has blind kids ― and she would do that.
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Crystal Kupper is a freelance writer specializing in magazines and special projects. Since earning her journalism degree, she has written for clients such as Zondervan, Focus on the Family and the Salvation Army, among many others. |
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REECE'S RAINBOW | www.reecesrainbow.org |
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