NEWS

Chinese adoption big step for small Mason couple

Rachel Richardson
rrichardson@cincinnati.com
Kara and Adam Ayers of Mason share a disability that causes brittle bones and short stature. Their 4-year-old, Hannah, doesn’t have it. Now they are adopting a boy with another form of dwarfism.

MASON – Adam and Kara Ayers first saw him in an online adoption listing.

The beaming 6-year-old Chinese boy with achrondroplasia, a form of dwarfism, seemed to jump from the screen and grab their hearts.

For the next week, the Mason couple studied the photo, committing to memory the boy's gap-toothed smile, his bright eyes and closely cropped hair as he stood alone inside the institutional walls of his Chinese orphanage.

"It's hard to describe. It's a connection I wouldn't have expected. It felt like he was the one," Kara said.

The process to adopt a child from China would be an arduous one, they were warned, fraught with complicated international rules and regulations and no guarantee of a child.

The Ayerses weren't daunted. The couple, both of whom have a form of dwarfism called osteogenesis imperfecta and use wheelchairs full-time, have spent their lives defying barriers and challenging stereotypes about disabilities.

Adam and Kara Ayers do not consider their disabilities as limitations for being parents. Their daughter Hannah enjoys helping out around the house. Here, she grabs dough from the fridge as Adam greases a pan to make cookies.

The yearlong process to "roll Eli home," the couple says, marks their largest leap of faith yet.

But it wasn't love at first sight for Adam, 33, and Kara, 34. The couple first met at a national conference for people with osteogenesis imperfecta, or OI, when Adam was 10 and Kara 11.

Also known as "brittle bone disease," OI is a genetic bone disorder in which bones break easily and often. As many as 50,000 Americans are believed to have the condition, which ranges in severity and type, according to the OI Foundation.

Back then, Adam, the rough-and-tumble boy from Goshen with an appetite for adventure, was more interested in hanging out with Kara's younger brother, Nick. Together, the two boys "terrorized the hotel" while Kara, the quiet "girly-girl" sporting a purple wheelchair, huddled with her girlfriends.

"That was my buddy's sister," Adam recalled. "I never thought about her like that. I was more concerned with doing boy stuff."

"I'm more of the rules-follower. I was in the sessions that Adam was supposed to attend," added Kara with a laugh.

But when the couple met again at a conference nearly a decade later, Adam had eyes only for the pretty brunette from Frankfort.

"I thought, 'She's all grown up. She looks really pretty!' " Adam said. "Her mom wasn't around. Her brother wasn't around. I'm seeing her in a totally different light."

Adam Ayers works as an inclusion specialist with the Cincinnati Recreation Commission, where he works to make sure children are not limited from sports and physical activity due to a disability in addition to providing awareness of those with disabilities.

Kara was also smitten with the fun-loving "free spirit" who never let his limitations define or restrict him.

"Out of all those people, we found each other," she said.

The couple married five years ago. Both wanted to start a family.

"I always assumed adoption would be my only option for parenthood," Kara said. "Once I started to learn more about the fact that I could have a healthy pregnancy, we pursued that route."

Four years ago, the Ayerses welcomed daughter Hannah, who does not have OI. While the couple is able to have more biological children, they both felt called to adopt a child with a disability.

"Our disabilities have not been something that we wished we never had," Adam said. "We thought we could instill that disability pride in a child, too."

"Every child deserves a future," Kara said.

Hannah Ayers, 4, holds a picture book that will welcome Eli into their family. "I like him already because he is going to play with me," she said.

For children like Eli, that future can be bleak.

Chinese orphanages, once overwhelmingly filled with girls due to a cultural preference for a son in a country that enforces a one-child policy, now mostly abound with children who are sick or disabled.

The children's conditions range in severity from correctable conditions like food allergies, hypothyroidism and cleft palates, to more serious disabilities, such as missing or malformed limbs, congenital heart defects and cerebral palsy

"Anything that's not perfect" – that's how China classifies children with special needs, said Shannon Phillips, a promotion and outreach manager with Great Wall China Adoption, a nonprofit Texas-based agency.

"Children with disabilities in China face a very dim future," she said. "The orphanages don't have the money for medicine. Some of the children get put out on the streets."

Sometimes, children with disabilities won't be listed for adoption for years, if ever, said Phillips. Under Chinese law, children there age out of the system at 14 and are no longer eligible to be adopted.

"A lot of times, they think it's a lost hope for these kids," she said.

Despite Chinese laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability, the estimated 85 million Chinese people with disabilities still face discrimination in employment, education and access to health care and government services.

"Specific to dwarfism, there is an additional cultural taboo that (Eli) would likely be mocked in the streets and definitely not allowed to go to school or get married," Kara said. "His only option for survival would be begging on the street."

Abandoned in a public square when he was 6 months old, Eli, now 7, had been on the adoption list for just two years when the Ayerses found his listing in a Facebook group dedicated to finding adoptive homes for children with dwarfism.

China represents the largest source of international adoptions of children with dwarfism, said Colleen Gioffreda, an adoption coordinator with Little People of America, a nonprofit organization that provides support to people with dwarfism and their families.

LPA volunteers work with private agencies to help facilitate adoptions. Of the 200 adoptions Gioffreda has assisted with in the past 10 years, only 15 have been for children in the U.S., where dwarfism is more readily accepted, she said.

The average wait to adopt a healthy child from China is about five years, but families can often adopt Chinese children with disabilities in 12-15 months, Gioffreda said.

"China is very particular about who can adopt. With their special needs program, sometimes they waive requirements based on the health of the child," she said.

Money is often the largest obstacle, Gioffreda said. Adoptions from China average about $25,000.

The Ayerses have applied for more than a dozen grants. They've held fundraisers at local restaurants and sold T-shirts on their website at ayersadoption.com.

On July 18, they'll travel to China to formalize the adoption of a boy they know only from photographs and orphanage reports who speaks no English.

The couple have prepared dozens of flash cards with pictures of common words and phrases in Chinese and English. Members of a nearby Chinese church help with translation.

"There's so many questions marks in getting to know him," Kara said.

But the Ayerses aren't worried. Love, they know, is its own universal language. ⬛

HOW TO HELP

Donations to the Ayers family adoption fund can be made at www.adopttogether.org/ayers. Follow the family's journey at www.ayersadoption.com