NEED TO KNOW
Emily Wallace and her husband are full-time caregivers to their children
Four of Emily’s six children have disabilities, including Angelman syndrome, autism, dyslexia and a rare bone disease
Emily shares with PEOPLE how she and her husband navigate full-time caretaking financially
When Emily Wallace learned she was going to have to be a full-time caretaker for her son with Angelman syndrome, she and her husband knew they had to make some changes to ensure they were financially supported.
Speaking with PEOPLE, Emily, 37, says that she learned of her son Griffin’s Angelman syndrome diagnosis when he was just 18 months old, and she was 20 weeks pregnant with her sixth (and last) child.
“We knew then we were done. I mean, we were kind of already sure six was enough for us, but it really was solidified,” Emily says.
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According to Mayo Clinic, Angelman syndrome is a rare genetic change that causes delayed development, problems with speech and balance, and intellectual disability, impacting nearly 500,000 people worldwide, including Colin Farrell’s oldest, James, inspiring the movie star to start a foundation to support families who have children with intellectual disabilities.
“His diagnosis we knew rocked our world, and knowing he needs lifetime care — he’s never gonna go to college, he’s never gonna drive a car — we are his forever caregivers,” Emily says.
Of Emily’s six children — 12-year-old Harrison, 11-year-old Wyn, 9-year-old twins Griffin and Sawyer, 8-year-old Posey and 7-year-old Lindy — she says four of them have disabilities. While she and her husband, William, 40, were navigating Griffin’s diagnosis, they also received a diagnosis of autism for Sawyer. Her youngest two were also diagnosed with dyslexia, while Lindy was diagnosed with Apraxia, a neurological condition where a person is unable to perform tasks or movements. Wyn, the second oldest, has CRMO, Chronic Recurrent Multifocal Osteomyelitis, a rare auto-inflammatory bone disease.
Griffin’s diagnosis alone means that Emily and William needed to make some changes to ensure they’d be able to have the resources to care for him for the rest of his life — but they also had to juggle the needs of their five other children at the same time.
At the time, the family was living in upstate New York, and Emily says they quickly realized that they wouldn’t be able to afford to live there and take care of their children. The family made the decision to sell their house and relocate to Colorado Springs — a move that Emily says was made because of the resources available to full-time caregivers in the state.
Emily Wallace with her three sons
Credit: Emily Wallace/Instagram
“Services where we lived were not great, and we decided to move to Colorado because services here are one of the best in the nation, and we knew we had to do that for him,” she explains. “And that is at that point, Sawyer got diagnosed with autism, and we knew other things were happening with our youngest. She wasn’t speaking. We just knew things were not adding up, so we needed more help. So we moved to Colorado.”
The resources available to the family now being residents of Colorado are much better than what was previously accessible to them, Emily says, making it “one of the best places in the states for people that have severe disabilities.”
The income she and William, who is also a full-time caregiver, make from the state is the couple’s primary source of income. Emily says she makes some money from her social media profiles, sharing the realities of being a parent to children with disabilities, but she admits it’s “not super lucrative.”
“There are good months, and there are some bad months,” she admits. “So we’re really good at saving. We made money when we sold a house in New York, so we built some savings there.”
In addition to income from social media, Emily says she makes some money from reselling antiques on eBay, but much of this side work can only be done while every kid is out of the house, either at school or at one of their various therapies. That window of time doesn’t come until after the morning routine that starts at 4:45 a.m., and even then, this brief window of time is still “100% nonstop” for both of them.
“That’s when me and my husband work,” she says. “I will make content, make TikTok shop videos. I will do my side hustle of eBay a little bit and cleaning the house, setting appointments, phone calls.”
The move to Colorado did put the family closer to some of their support system, but it’s still thousands of miles away, as Will’s family is based in California. For the most part, the two parents get the majority of their support from the various therapies their children are enrolled in.
“That is where we get our respite, is when they’re in ABA therapy, when they’re in school, when they’re doing speech, music therapy — that’s when we get our breaks,” she explains. “We are always looking for respite, but respite is hard to find. Finding people that can handle kids like our kids that are equipped with seizures and medications — it’s a whole process. We have had respite before, but again, it’s really hard to find people.”
The Wallace Family
Credit: Emily Wallace/Instagram
Despite all of these roadblocks, the pair have been making it work for all six of their children — and a big part of that, Emily says, is thanks to the support their new home state provides.
“Colorado pays caregivers well here. I mean, we’re not, we’re not rich by all means, but they pay us a living wage,” she says. “They take care of the people and the families, and that’s why if I could give Colorado a hug, I would.”
Though she admits it can be a lot to handle, Emily explains that she started her social media accounts to share the reality of caring for a child with Angelman syndrome — but she’s sure to share both the good and the bad.
“I wanted to show that these disabilities are not going to define our family, and we’re going to find joy through the crazy hard this is,” she says. “And my kids, even though they have disabilities, they deserve a quality of life. They deserve to go on vacation; they deserve it all. They’re different, but they’re just like us too. And I just, I wanted people to see that we could have it all, even with all this hard.”
Read the original article on People
