Meet the Davis Family -Davis Family Andrea, Mike and Lacey

By Maria Smietana / Photos by Heather Gregg – 21 Vines Photography

Like all new parents, Andrea and Mike Davis were full of hope when they started their family. The two Indianapolis residents had met several years earlier at Primo Banquet Hall when the popular southside venue had Sunday night singles dances. Mike had attended IUPUI and Andrea graduated from ITT Business Institute. They married and led a frugal, low-key life, enjoying flea markets, coin shows, and going out for pizza on weekends.

The Davises brought their daughter Lacey home from Saratov, Russia, when she was only 1-year-old. Lacey appeared to have quite a sense of humor at an early age. When she started talking, Andrea has a sweet memory of her whispering what appeared to be a joke into her dad’s ear, and then bursting into giggles.

Lacey is now a 16-year-old high school junior and most memories in the intervening years haven’t been nearly so sunny. “Adopting Lacey was one of the best moments of our lives,” Andrea said, “but at the time we adopted her, we did not realize that she was a special needs child.”

Andrea remembers that Lacey was extremely hyperactive during her toddler years, with a non-stop, bouncing-off-the-walls kind of energy. But the first hints that something more serious was going on emerged as Lacey entered school. She naturally had an incredibly difficult time sitting still and paying attention during class, but her teachers also started to see increasingly troublesome incidents between Lacey and her classmates. Unlike most kids, she resorted to hitting and kicking when she didn’t get her way. That was a real red flag for Andrea. Our first visit to Riley Hospital was an entire day, in which she was evaluated by five different Drs. there and had been given the diagnosis of ADHD. From there began a years-long journey of visits back to Riley. Andrea wanted to continue therapy and behavior modification techniques rather than resorting to medication to deal with her daughter’s anger and excessive energy. “We were given things to try at home, like a reward board, where she could earn points for good behavior, leading to a reward at the end of the week,” Andrea recalled. Unfortunately, those approaches worked for less than a year.

So it was back to Riley, where the family was connected to Heike M. Minnick, Psy.D., HSPP, who had worked with internationally adopted children. “Dr. Minnick did get Lacey to open up some, so we saw that as a positive sign,” Andrea said. Lacey was also diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome around that time.

With each passing year, Lacey exhibited new troublesome behaviors. She started to lie and steal at 8, and at 9, oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), which occurs in about 40% of children with ADHD, was added to her growing list of diagnoses. Regular sessions at Adult and Child Therapy Centers became part of the family’s routine. Lacey’s doctors started her on Concerta, but it caused her to lose weight, so she couldn’t stay on it.

Over the years, she has been on several medications, including Ritalin and Vyvanse (for ADHD), Zoloft (an antidepressant), and Lamictal (a mood stabilizer).

Around age 10, Lacey started to make violent threats toward her mom. “While I couldn’t help feeling some fear, I really never thought she would act on her threats,” Andrea recalled. But three years later, she did, punching her mom in the face. It was a bitter turning point, earning Lacey her first interaction with the police and a four-month stay at Gibault Children’s Services in Terre Haute.

In 2018, Lacey was retested for autism and her earlier diagnosis of Asperger’s was confirmed. Her case also got a bit of a breakthrough when the family was referred to Indiana Brain Mapping in Carmel. Using a technique called quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG), it was determined that Lacey had been exposed to alcohol before birth. Although she did not have fullblown fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), the finding did provide a partial explanation for her constellation of behavioral problems. Children with FAS tend to exhibit poor judgment and reasoning skills and are often hyperactive as well. Additionally, maternal substance abuse of any kind during pregnancy is widely documented to be a cause of ODD.

“Every parent fears that when they have a child with behavior problems that they’re somehow a bad parent,” Andrea said, so she gained some comfort from learning more about what happened to Lacey before she was born. For Lacey, handling new knowledge about herself was more complicated.

“I’ve never hidden anything from Lacey about her past,” Andrea said. “She’s known for a long time that she’s adopted, and we want her to know about her heritage. She was fine with it when she was younger, but it bothers her more now.” As is usual in international adoptions, very little is known about the birth parents. “We do know that her mom just walked away and left her in the hospital after birth, and the conditions in the orphanage were awful.”

When Lacey entered her teen years, she wanted more freedom, and despite her track record, Andrea and Mike were willing to give her more space for a short time. “She had always said I’m too controlling, so we let her try to be a normal teen,” Andrea said. The results were sadly predictable — she started partying and doing drugs. While Lacey won’t trust adults, the opposite is true when she’s around her peers. “She’s very gullible, and wants acceptance from kids her own age,” Andrea explained. “She likes to think that everyone is her friend. It gets her drawn into the wrong crowds.”

Over time, keeping Lacey safe and looking for new ways to help her had become a non-stop battle for the Davises, especially for Andrea. “She’s always in that flight, freeze, or fight mode, and dealing with the arguments is constant. She’s not only impulsive, but very stubborn, and her anger level is literally off the charts. The stress gets to be overwhelming.”

Not surprisingly, Andrea admits there was a time when she was ready to throw in the towel. Between working full time (she takes care of accounts receivable for Dunham Rubber and Belting Corp. while Mike works for Community Health Network), caring for Lacey, and trying to maintain her own mental health, she was almost ready to give her daughter up. “I prayed for a sign,” she said, “and realized that I need to be there to be her voice and her advocate. Deep down, I do think she loves us and needs to know that we won’t give up on her.”

Of the many support services that the Davis’s worked with, it was the Children’s Bureau that helped Andrea the most. “We attended a monthly support group there with families going through similar issues, she said. “Our families have always been supportive, but it’s better to be able to talk to people who have been through the same thing we have.” Andrea also underwent therapy on her own. “I have to admit that I have some resentment toward Lacey. She has put us and other relatives at risk with her behavior, and that was hard to process on my own.”

Through all the struggles, Andrea and Mike have tried to maintain as much of a sense of normalcy in their home life as they can manage. They adopted two cats whom they dearly love. In calmer moments, they took Lacey roller and ice skating, two activities she enjoyed. There were even occasional trips to Gatlinburg.

In the last three years, Lacey has been returned to residential psychiatric care three times. It’s the only way to keep her safe when she becomes a danger to herself and others. With their private insurance exhausted, and with recommendations and guidance from Lacey’s therapists, Andrea and Mike resorted to involving the Department of Child Services (DCS). Lacey had to be made a ward of the state, which troubled Andrea deeply. She was classified as a “child in need of services (CHINS)” under state law, and through DCS, she was placed at Crossroads.

When she returned home in April of 2020 after her second stay at Crossroads, the plan was for her to resume her life while she and her parents underwent family therapy. But it wasn’t long, Andrea said, that Lacey reverted back to old behaviors, like making threats and destroying property when she was angry. Despite all her mental health issues, Lacey has a high IQ, and that means she’s sometimes smart enough to fake her way through therapy. “It was clear,” Andrea said, “that she had manipulated her way through her whole stay at Crossroads.”

Lacey was returned to residential care last September, this time to the Crisis Center in Gary, IN. “It was a very tough decision for Mike and me to make, but she was just not ready to be back home,” Andrea said. They are allowed to visit her periodically, and she is on medications (melatonin and aripiprazole) that seem to be helping. Lately, she has done well enough to earn passes for brief home visits. “Although her manipulation was strong in the past, Mike and I feel that she is starting to make progress,” Andrea said. “It’s still going to be a long road for us and her, but we think she’s finally realizing that she needs to work on herself to get better and we will be there for her when she’s ready to do family therapy.”

As other parents of special needs children can relate to so well, especially parents of a child who acts out in public, Andrea still finds it hard to overcome the judgment that seems to come from all directions. If there’s one message that she wants to get out to the world, it’s this: “Don’t judge me. Until you’ve walked in my shoes, you have no idea what my family and I are going through.”

If you would like to share your personal or family story or to nominate someone else to be in an upcoming issue of Special Needs Living, email us at SpecialNeedsLivingIndy@n2pub.com.

Save the Date!

Wine & Wags Thursday,

October 7, 2021 5:30 to 8 pm

The Biltwell Event Center Indianapolis

ICAN’s largest fundraising event, Wine & Wags, is an after-work program filled with testimonies from clients, handlers in prison, released handlers, and the powerful impact our service dogs make on people’s lives. There is no cost to attend, but you must pre-register. To learn more, contact brynnee@icandog.org.

Interested in hosting a table of eight or becoming a sponsor? Contact dino@icandog.org