A house full of special-needs kids makes for a special family
Adam and Amy Boroughs have 12 children, including nine special-needs adoptees from as near as Pennsylvania and as far as China.
Adam and Amy Boroughs have 12 children, including nine special-needs adoptees from as near as Pennsylvania and as far as China.
"Obviously, this is not a typical situation," says Amy.
"But we're so normal," Adam says. "We're a family."
They certainly are, as I discover when I visit their commodious, yet cozy, Logan Township home. Captain America is saving the world on TV, the younger children play games or draw at a banquet-size table, and a couple of the older kids come into the kitchen to check me out.
So does Thor, an adorable, if persistent, pit bull mix. He's also hearing-impaired, like three of the children. This, along with the variety of native tongues and profound developmental disabilities represented in the household, helps make sign language a popular mode of communication. Hugs are, too.
"It's been a blessing to grow up with people from so many different places, people with different abilities," says Zoe, 21.
In adopting and advocating for disabled and unwanted children around the globe, "my parents are responding to a call," she adds. "And it's good for us [siblings] to be aware of the injustice in the world, and to be part of working toward ending injustice.
"But it's a challenge," says Zoe. "On any given day, three of the kids have strep throat, the dog is throwing up, and someone misses the bus. There are a lot of moving parts."
Says her twin brother, Fred, "You never know what's going to happen."
I bet.
No wonder Adam and Amy, both churchgoing Christians, see structure as essential, particularly for the six of their kids with Down syndrome - two of whom also are autistic. Seeing all their children blossom has also strengthened their marriage, the couple say.
"Coffee is one of our strategies," says Adam, 46, an emergency-room nurse at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia. He writes a candid, wryly amusing blog (dadjusthappened.com) and describes his wife as "the chief operating officer of the entire thing."
A full-time homemaker, Amy, 47, buys five dozen eggs at a time - a quantity augmented by the production of her seven backyard chickens. The CEO specializes in soups and crockpot fare, and estimates the annual number of household wash loads at more than 1,000. "Amy makes 100 sandwiches at a time and freezes them," Adam says.
"There's no going: 'It's 4:30. I wonder what to make for dinner,' " says Amy, who like her husband grew up in Wallingford, Delaware County. They met on a blind date and have been married 23 years.
Employed as a social worker when they met, Amy had already planned to adopt the little girl Quan, now 25 and the couple's oldest. They also have three biological children: Zoe, a senior at Eastern University; Fred, a junior at Villanova (his dad's alma mater); and Caroline, 19, a freshman at Carleton College in Minnesota.
Rounding out the roster are Albie, 20, born in Liberia; Ivan, 18, and Blair, 13, who hail from Hong Kong; Yul, 13, from mainland China; a trio of Ukrainian 11-year-olds named Luke, Irina, and Sam; and Maddie, 10, from Bulgaria. The adopted kids are naturalized American citizens and all but two are attending local public schools.
"We want our kids to get the education they deserve," says Amy. "We want them to be valued by and contributors to our society."
On weekdays, the first school bus pulls up at 7 a.m.; others come and go for the next hour.
"I'm up at 5:30," says Amy, noting that seven of her children need help showering and three require assistance dressing and eating. "I try to be in bed by 10:30."
Although two of the older children do qualify for Social Security, "we pretty much do this on my salary," says Adam. "We don't get outside funding."
The generosity of their local and church communities - the family attends services at Calvary Chapel in Chadds Ford - are an enormous help. "Logan Township gave us five turkeys and all the trimmings," Adam says.
In turn, the couple support organizations such as Reece's Rainbow (reecesrainbow.org), which promotes international adoption of children with Down syndrome. They hope to encourage others to adopt, or to help in some way.
"We're not special people who can do this but other people can't," Amy says.
More than three years have passed since their most recent adoption, and I ask whether the Boroughs family has maxed out.
"I don't know if there will ever come a time when my heart won't break for a kiddo I get a picture of," says Amy.
"We dreamed that by the time we were in our late 40s our kids would basically be grown and we would be traveling the world," Adam says. "It was far better for us to give up what we thought was our dream, in order to have this.
"It's not the life we expected. But it's not a life we would change."
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