Family Talk

Dr. James Dobson: Hello everyone, you’re listening to Family Talk, the radio broadcasting ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute. I’m Dr. James Dobson and thank you for joining us for this program.

Roger Marsh: Welcome to Family Talk, the broadcast ministry of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I'm Roger Marsh and we have a special program for you today. The emphasis is on special because of a brand-new resource that's going to help literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions of families all across the country.

Dr. Joe and Cindy Ferrini know what it's like to care for a child with special needs. They know that it's a full-time job, an undertaking that really can't be imagined until you're thrust into that life that you never saw coming. It can feel overwhelming and it can feel a little bit isolated at times.

Often times, if you are the parent of a child with special or different needs, as we like to say in our household, you don't have a lot of free time. You don't have a lot of energy left at the end of the day and sometimes it can be a financial strain as well. Well, the Ferrinis have been ministering to families and couples for years and they have been talking about this very issue of special needs parenting for quite some time.

They have a brand-new book out that just came out recently called "The Special Needs Parent: A Guide to the Life You Never Expected." We have a link for the book up at drjamesdobson.org. Today, Dr. Joe and Cindy Ferrini join me to talk about this very important issue. Joe and Cindy Ferrini, welcome to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.

Cindy Ferrini: Thank you so much.

Joe Ferrini: It's great to be with you.

Roger Marsh: Now, I was teasing you as we were getting our mics set up. Joe, knowing that you finished your dental school at the Ohio State University, I had to get special dispensation from the Dobson family to let you guys on the program. I'm just kidding. Dr. Dobson is a tried-and-true USC Trojan, but he would trust me.

If he were still here and in the studio, he'd be elbowing me out of the way and saying, "This is the kind of topic that we need to have a conversation about," because as you write about in your books, and you've got a couple of them that we'll talk about throughout the course of our conversation today, this is a journey that parents don't choose. And yet, you say that there's a joy that you didn't expect.

I'm going to start with Cindy first because I want to get Mom's perspective. You are the parents of three children and one of those deliveries turned out to be a "special delivery." Take us through the process of what it was like knowing that God had blessed your family in a way that you really didn't think was a blessing at first.

Cindy Ferrini: We have three children. Joey is our oldest and he's the one that has special needs. He just turned 45. Then we have two daughters, Christina and Kathleen, who came a little bit after him. They have developed typically and wonderfully and are just wonderful young ladies, which we'll probably get into a little bit later as we talk about this journey.

When I was pregnant with Joey, everything went really, really well. My delivery was long, but the delivery was not the problem. I don't think it helped, but I don't think it was the problem because Joey's diagnosis is pachygyria, which is a brain abnormality.

He came into this world looking perfect. He was just really a beautiful baby. His head was a little large and so we thought, Joe's head is a little larger and my dad's head is a little larger, so we just thought that's what it was. But as time went on, we began to see he was not hitting his milestones.

It began pretty early to be able to see in his eyes that he wasn't tracking with us and it was hard. It was a hard thing to see because both of us looked to our past and we don't have anything in our past that would directly link to a problem with pregnancy or having a baby with this kind of abnormality.

Joe is a former dentist, but he's still a dentist. He is smart, so we thought all of our kids would be smart and develop fine and everything would be great. When Joey wasn't doing anything for a long time, we had great concerns. From a mother's heart, it was not going to change my care or love or devotion to him, but it was a shock to us both.

Roger Marsh: Joe, how did it resonate with you knowing that this is your firstborn child and it's a son, too? I know for fathers to bring a son into the world, that's a big deal. Did it ever occur to you that something like this might have happened?

Joe Ferrini: Not at all, Roger. Just to give you a vision on this one, when we brought Joey home from the hospital, he was wearing a sleeper from the Ohio State University. I had an autographed Jim Brown football stuffed in the corner of his crib and an autographed Cleveland Indians baseball in the other corner of his crib.

You can imagine I had some pretty high expectations about my son and where he was going with this thing. Anyways, we began this journey with real high expectations and as Cindy said, some of these milestones were not being met.

At that point in time, we began the process ourselves because this is about 50 years ago. The medical-legal environment was real high at that point and everyone was afraid to make a diagnosis of anything that might cause some legal ramifications.

Cindy decided to go to the library and pick up this old medical book or old biology book. She gave it to me and said, "Do your research." I began the process of just beginning to line up what Joey's symptoms were at the time and got to a point of saying, "I think I know what he might have here."

We went to the doctor and he sat down with us. I said, "I think this is what my son has. I think he has cerebral palsy, he's going to have epilepsy, and he's going to be mentally challenged." The doctor looked at us and said, "Yes, you're right." He just got up and walked out the room. That was it. Cindy and I just kind of looked at each other and burst into tears because we realized that our life was now going to change forever at this point.

Cindy Ferrini: We realized that some of our worst thoughts became manifested right at that moment in our minds, that we were going to have a totally different life based on this new diagnosis that we somewhat wondered about.

When we share this diagnosis, the diagnosis was mental retardation. I think it's really accurate and I do see that being used periodically now these days, but I think we drifted away from that diagnosis for a long time because there were so many negative connotations to the way people used that term.

Really for Joey, to say that he is mentally retarded is really accurate because he's very slow. He's very behind and it's mostly mental, but also physical and certainly intellectual as well. He's probably between a three and five-year-old on behavior and the way he understands things.

Wonderfully, he can read. Verbally, he's very slow verbally. He kind of needs us to interpret for him most of the time. Yet if you put a children's book in front of him or even the sports from the newspaper, he can kind of gather things that are happening from it because he can read. I just want to clarify that for people who are listening, we don't mean that derogatorily at all, but it does suit him for his abilities and disabilities.

Roger Marsh: I really appreciate that explanation and the use of the term because it's too easy for people to weaponize it and make it something that is such a derogatory statement instead of an actual factual statement.

We've jumped right into Joey's birth and the original diagnosis. We didn't really get a chance to hear your love story, Joe and Cindy. We're going to talk in just a moment about how things changed for you guys and changed very dramatically. But up until that point, there was courting, there was dating, there was marriage, there was dental school. Who wants to take a swing at describing what your life was like prior to the gift of Joey coming into your family?

Cindy Ferrini: Each of us went to high school together, but I always said I would never have dated you in high school and he says, "That's okay, I wouldn't have asked you." We had high school sweethearts, for me all through high school and for Joe toward the end of high school, that we each became engaged to.

Then the Lord redirected our lives. I became a Christian and then I called off my engagement. Joe, through some different things, he had some things happening within his relationship and then he called off the marriage and then became a Christian.

While we did not ever keep in touch over all those years through our college years, the Lord had us on a direct path to meet each other. All of those things I just described happened sort of simultaneously. We remet in the summer, August actually, of 1978. Joe's motto was, "Find a mate in '78."

There I was at church and I was happy single. I was doing fine walking with the Lord. I loved my life. I was a teacher. I taught high school home economics. I'll let Joe pick it up from there. Find a mate in '78.

Joe Ferrini: I graduated from Ohio State in '78 and actually one of the things I applied for was full-time staff with Campus Crusade's Medical Ministry, Agape Ministry. Actually, I was assigned to go to Iran in 1978.

If you know your world history, 1978 Iran was not quite a vacation destination point, that's for sure. God miraculously just closed that door for me. I wasn't sure if it was God completely or the government, but anyways, I just came home and I started my practice.

On one of the first Sundays I was home, my friend invited me to a local church. So I go to it and there in the front of the church was what I thought was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. I said, "I need to get to know this person."

I started working our way up towards her. As I get closer, I realize that this was Cindy Kamileck. I'm thinking, "Cindy, she married one of my friends." My first question to her was, "So where's your husband?"

She said to me, "Well, we never got married." She knew my fiancée and she said to me, "So where's your wife?" I said, "Well, we never got married." Immediately at that point, fireworks and balloons are popping in my head. I'm thinking to myself, "This is really a good thing that's happening here."

As I was walking out the church, I really received from the Lord the fact that she's the one. She's the one that I'm to marry. But Cindy, she had actually before that invited me over to her place to have lunch.

Cindy Ferrini: I was having friends over for lunch, all single women, and my roommate and I, she and I would just invite people over. Our home was an open house. So I said, "Why don't you just come on over for some brunch? We'll continue chatting."

I was clueless. It was Joe Ferrini from high school and a nice guy. I had nothing going on in my head like "He's the one." I just proceeded to tell him that I was just happy in the Lord and we just had nice conversation. Then I think it was just a few weeks later he invited me to go out to dinner and the rest is history. We were married a year later.

Roger Marsh: As you begin to navigate married life and the honeymoon and everything, family starts to become a conversation. Then of course here comes Joey. What an interesting turn of events for you guys to go from young newlyweds, starting out together.

As you were describing what it was like when you first came to terms with the fact that this is Joey's way he's wired, this is the way he's put together, talk about what it was like to basically, you have a chapter in your new book called "Death of a Vision." Talk about what it's like for parents with special needs kids to have to say, "I think we need to see where we are really and realize that some things aren't going to happen."

Joe Ferrini: Everybody, when you first get married, you walk down that aisle with an invisible set of blueprints tucked underneath your arm. Upon those blueprints, you set off to build your marriage. For both Cindy and I, we both were very positive people and we were sure that for better or worse, it's going to be better. For richer or poorer, it's going to be richer.

We're thinking all the very positive things and all my life, my life revolved around sports. I was really looking forward to someday at least being able to play catch with my son. If I had a chance to coach him or whatever, that would be great too.

But again, those dreams came crashing down around us as far as our marriage was concerned. We realized that this is the very fork in the road point where many people either decide "we're in" or "we're out."

A lot of people basically say at that point, "Hey, I didn't sign up for this one." So I'm bailing out and I'm just going my own way. It was a tough time, I'll be honest with you. Cindy, thankfully, she jumped in both feet forward on this one. I came in kicking and dragging my feet because I was just having a hard time realizing that I'm going to have a son who I'll never be able to play catch with at the minimum or just spend time with him like I thought I might be able to.

That was difficult to accept. I remember this one time I was, Cindy's father, he too was quite the outdoorsman and he had a fishing pond in the backyard and we went fishing one day. He said to me that, "Someday Joe, you're going to realize that Joey is a blessing."

I had to say, "Well, that may be true, but I'm telling you right now, I just don't feel that." I was having a difficult time obviously at that point because we were beginning to get into parts of his diagnosis of having epilepsy and Joey had many seizures when he was younger.

Whenever Joey would have a fever and he would spike in that fever, he would just roll right into a grand mal seizure. It was not unusual for Joey to have one or two grand mal seizures an hour. His record for one day was 37 grand mal seizures. That's in addition to many petit mal seizures as well.

Trying to look on the sunny side of things was not easy for me at this point. But again, Cindy was the trooper on this one and she just plowed ahead. She began engaging with therapists and doctors. I can't remember exactly the day it was, but I just as I looked at my wife as she was going through all these things and realizing it's just difficult for her, I need to step up and just be the husband that she needed me to be and I needed to be that father that Joey needs.

Roger Marsh: Cindy, what was it like for you as you put your nose to the grindstone and said, "We're going to get through this and I don't know how, but we're going to figure it out." Did you ever take moments to stop and look up and say, "This would be a lot easier if Joe was actually in this battle with me?"

Cindy Ferrini: That's excellent the way you just put that. Honestly, no, because I feel like a lot of what was happening was in his head. When he came home, I feel like one of the things he was really good at was not bringing his dentistry home.

Maybe on occasion he'd bring a chart home or something that needed a little bit more work, but most of the time I would say when work was done, he came home and there wasn't a lot yet to do at home. I was thankful for that, so I don't remember feeling that way.

But I can understand what he was going through emotionally and thinking, "This is just so hard." Even in marriage, if we could share our every thought with each other, it would be wonderful, but I don't think we even do that all the time.

I probably had times where I was just frustrated, not because of him, just life. This is hard. I do remember in those early days, I had two women that I reached out to that were in our church that had older children, sons actually, one who I could see would be Joey.

I would say that person is exactly who Joey is and we kind of could, like we looked in that book, we could kind of foresee where he was going to wind up, what he would be like, what his limitations and abilities and lack of abilities would be.

I reached out to these two moms who were probably a good 15 or 20 years older than us. Both of them had the same response individual from one another, and that was, "God is good and everything will turn out okay."

I remember thinking, "It's not happening here every day. It is hard." If we fast forward a number of years when we spoke for Family Life, one of the things that was wonderful for us was how many people would come to us after one of our talks.

It's a marriage conference, so we didn't overemphasize Joey or our girls or anything, we just had one short session on being a parent. So many people would come up and they'd be like, "I can't believe we get to be here when you're here to tell us and help us through this journey."

So we would give people surveys to fill out for us to then write a book, not this particular book, but a different book. Nonetheless, it was something that was real and raw and through everything that we've written, particularly on the special needs journey, we wanted it to be real and raw.

We wanted people to understand that it is hard. It is hard. One of the chapters in this book is called "Every Day is Different Every Day." It's like Groundhog Day, but the same. It's the same and it's different. You know it's not going to be easy and yet sometimes things change. So it was one of those things where we just felt like if we're going to write about this, if we're going to speak about this, it's got to be real.

We are not going to stand up and talk about everything turns out just great. Day to day, we have wonderful moments and we have many times of great memories, but I've got some doozies that are not the kinds of things that, we share them, but they're not the kinds of things that are like "everything's fine."

Joe Ferrini: Writing that book was one of the things I did not ever want to do because it was one of those things that required us to cut back open those scars that we thought were all closed up and we forgot about it.

As Cindy said, if we were going to be really helpful for people and get some practical knowledge, then we had to be real and raw with them. That was not easy to write the book, especially the first book which is "Unexpected Journey."

It was one of those things that it had to be done and written the way it was written. Just going back a little bit, those two beautiful ladies in our church, at the same time I had one of the elders come to our home who knew that we were entering into this arena now.

His concluding comment to me after about an hour's interaction with him was, "You can be assured that God made Joey just the way he wanted him made." I have to tell you, I wasn't too happy with that comment at the time because I was just in that early stages just having a hard time with things.

Looking back, he was absolutely right. We're just so thankful that God has brought us to the point where we are in this journey that we can be realistic and straight up with people and just not hold any punches back and just tell people just the way it is.

There are many blessings to having a child with special needs, but it really takes a surrender of your life. The spirit-filled life really is necessary at this point to really begin to enjoy the journey that you're on.

We can tell you honestly, if God came to us right now and said, "I'm going to heal Joey for you right now," I think we could both confidently say, "That's okay God, we're going to keep Joey just the way he is." In fact, you can give that blessing to that young parent that's just beginning to hear about this. Give that blessing to them. For us, we have been blessed and we have learned so much from him. He has taught us so much without him obviously even knowing that he's teaching us things. It has brought us closer to the Lord as we began to just step out in faith and surrender our will to God's will.

Roger Marsh: Amen. What a beautiful sentiment. This is a very rich and fulfilling conversation, but unfortunately our time for today's program has come to an end. We still got more to talk about with Dr. Joe and Cindy Ferrini about "The Special Needs Parent: A Guide to the Life You Never Expected," which is up at drjamesdobson.org. Joe and Cindy, can you join us again next time as we can continue this conversation?

Cindy Ferrini: We'd love to, thank you so much.

Roger Marsh: What a picture of surrender that truly is. To say if God offered to change everything tomorrow, they would keep Joey exactly the way he is. That is really amazing. You've been listening to Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk and part one of my conversation with Dr. Joe and Cindy Ferrini about parenting a child with special needs.

Their brand-new book is called "The Special Needs Parent: A Guide to the Life You Never Expected." We have a link for this book up at drjamesdobson.org. There's also a link for today's broadcast as well. Again, drjamesdobson.org is the website or if it's easier, just type in jdfi.org.

Here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, we are committed to preserving and promoting the institution of the family and the biblical principles upon which it is based. Whether you are raising children right now, you're in that season, or if you're looking to strengthen your marriage, or maybe you're walking a road you never expected to walk, we want to come alongside you regardless of your situation with biblical truth and encouragement.

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Well, I'm Roger Marsh and on behalf of all of us here at Family Talk and the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, thanks so much for joining us today. Be sure to tune in again next time for part two of my conversation with Dr. Joe and Cindy Ferrini discussing "The Special Needs Parent." That's coming up right here on the next edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. The voice you trust for the family you love.