Wednesday, October 24, 2012

My Little Pepper

Originally, I arrived at the Boyd residence with mental and written notes directed at the focused theme of how Mrs. Stephanie Boyd, the mother of the ten children, goes day in and day out taking care of them.  I was going to discuss with her things such as how she prepares a meal for a family of twelve, how she provides enough love for each of them, and how she and her husband, Warren, keep such a strong bond of marriage.

What I found when I arrived there was that the little girl, pictured below, was really just one of the children who would change everything which I had planned for prior to meeting this incredible crew.

Meet Summer. 




She was adopted in April from a depressed orphanage in Bulgaria.  She was biologically the age of five but developmentally she was about 18 months.  She wet the bed, could not talk, and seemed to be mentally pretty far behind.  She is missing her corpus callosum which allows communication between the right and left side of one's brain.  One of the issues which this directly affects in her life, which I witnessed personally, was that when she is upset, she needs to have someone or something take her mind off of her emotions or else she will never pass her mood.  What I witnessed was after her sister pinched her with her seat belt, she started crying.  I noticed that Stephanie instantly took over and got her mind on something else.  Stephanie explained that had she not done that, Summer would have continued to cry for hours.

Summer's story, just like each of the other nine children, is one of perseverance and strength.  Each of the children came to America developmentally far behind where they should be.  They have all over come so much more than teachers, neurologists, and other medical doctors ever thought they would.  These amazing children are really the focus and they each have an amazing story to tell.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Life Throws You Curves But You Learn to Swerve

Initially, the focus of my Capstone was how Stephanie Boyd, the children's mother, handles being a mother to ten children with disabilities on a day-to-day basis. 

After spending my first stint with the family in early July, I realized that the story was actually about how far the children have come since being adopted.  This required a change in everything I had initially prepared for my documentary.  However, I was very happy to see that in spending time with the family, a focus for my Capstone became so clear.