You tube influencer "rehomes" adopted son

[quizacabusi81]

Myka Stauffer a popular YouTube and Instagram influencer raised considerable funds to adopt a child from China, the child a boy she called Huxley had brain damage, non verbal autism and behavioural difficulties. Myka has 4 biological children and adopted 4 year Huxley 18 months ago.

After quite some time of not posting anything about him and after repeated questions from her "followers" she recently uploaded a video where in her words she's "rehomed him" and he was with people much more able and suited to deal with his complex needs.

The main issue people have is the money she raised for his adoption and the secrecy regarding this at one point one of her followers noticed that she had put a video up of her repainting his room and turning it into her daughters room with no mention of him.

Apparently it was like she wanted people to forgot she has ever adopted him and people are furious.

I can see both sides as it must have been a complex and difficult decision especially if they couldn't meet his needs. She had to consider her other children... one a small baby but on the other hand she wasn't very transparent about it...

Also there are allegations of her using duct tape on his hands and I have seen a video of her mocking him because of his meltdowns so hopefully he is now with people more suited to his needs.

Thoughts?

In no small part, I blame the people who allow themselves to be “influenced” and who pay money for these people to monetise their lives and their children. I will never ever understand this. I must be showing my age!

1 - it flags a real issue with overseas adoptions - it's all a bit white saviour - assuming this child would be better off with a wealthy american family - very complex but it just seems so wrong.

This is something I have felt, having watched a number of adoptions videos lately. But it is a specific group of adopters I've been concerned about, those from evagelical groups.

Significant numbers have quoted bible passages, and I would not be surprised to find a connection between the evangilical adoptions (and I read that artlce linked earlier) and the sentiment above. Like the adopters are going abroad for their chldren to satisfy their virtue signalling needs. Because the reality is there are children in their own countries who need adopting. But that wouldn't give them the brownie points, would it.

@SimonJT's post was really good, about adoptions breakdowns. I've heard for years that adoption agencies and SW gloss over the child's actual disabilities or SN, so it looks like many people are entering adoption without the full information they need. And circumstances can change.

So, in this case, if the child had needs that weren't being met, and that another home or placements suited that child better, then yes, move the child.

but I do judge the language used , like re-homing, and that they clearly made money off this child and his issues. And the taping of his thumbs worries me, what are they like with their biological children?

Aside from the word "rehome" which is a disgrace, I think people would be a lot less critical if these people were a genuine, misguided couple, hearts in the right place, who thought they were doing a good thing, and found out like a lot of adopters they couldn't cope. I think there would be a lot of sympathy if that was the case.

But the fact is, this childs purpose was to provide clickbait, gain subscribers, and generate revenue.

They should face some sort of prosecution for child exploitation but they won't.

My issue is not around the breakdown of his adoption. It’s how and why he was picked. Thank you @quizacabusi81 that was exactly the screenshot I was talking about.

It seems he was chosen because the adopters believed his disabilities would get them maximum brownie points from God/their followers without rocking the boat too much. When it turned out to be harder work than they imagine they rejected him.

There isn’t much scrutiny in the US when it comes to rehoming children adopted from overseas.

www.reuters.com/investigates/adoption/#article/part1

www.channel4.com/news/adopted-orphans-given-away-again-on-secret-facebook-group

www.nbcnews.com/news/world/unwanted-adopted-children-traded-online-underground-network-flna8C11120107

I think the use of the word "re-homing" is hideous, but I don't think that holding your hands up and admitting you can't cope with a child is a heinous thing to do

I actually think children whose parents, adopted or biological, don't want them or can't cope with them are far better off when those parents admit that fact.

My parents didn't want children. They were chaotic drug addicts and alcoholics. All 4 of us were unwanted accidents. We were neglected and abused constantly until my grandparents basically took us and dared them to try and take us back. Of the four of us I'm the youngest, I was 7 when we were taken away. I'm by far the most well adjusted of us all. We've all had counselling and we're all impacted by it, but I have had the best chance at building a "normal" life because I was the youngest (even though the most brutal of the abuse feature for my whole early childhood).

Adoption breakdown is often at least 50% the fault of the organisers involved. Even here, where adoption is so difficult and involves so many hoops, there is very often a playing down of difficulties children have, and an over playing of the help and support that will be offered.

I know of one case from working in schools where a family who had successfully adopted one child went on to adopt a second. They were told the child had very mild learning difficulties, but was basically just a little behind. They were promised a lot of help and support.

The child has massive learning and behavioural difficults. They were not obvious during the initial settling in period. It was only when they spoke to a previous foster carer that they discovered it was known that the child often masked in a new setting. They ended up with an extremely disturbed child with violent tendancies, who terrorised their other child, and all the support vanished.

Yet when the adoption was on the verge of breaking down all they got was comments of "Well, if you'd given birth to them would you give them away?"

Excellent post @lyralalala

It's horrible.
See some of her posts about the adoption and after Huxley had been with them
twitter.com/thatbonnielass7/status/1265674874862870529?s=20

It has broken my heart and I've been sobbing to DH.

I have an autistic toddler who looks alot like Huxley (irrelevant but perhaps explains why I've reacted so emotionally - it's like looking at my on DS on YouTube) and when I watched the videos it hurt me alot as I couldn't imagine ever giving up on him.

I'm so glad to see others are outraged by this, because it is deplorable. That cow has paraded him on her channel for years making alot of money from exploiting him and is still making money from his videos today as she has kept them up.

Then she witters on about protecting his privacy?

I've just been looking around and there are videos circulating on Twitter where she speaks to him like shit on film.

"That's why you don't see him on our vlogs because he's always having meltdowns, are you over yourself yet kid?" to a fucking disabled toddler

There are also accusations that she duck taped his hands to stop him sucking his thumb. I can't verify those unfortunately, perhaps others have seen evidence but idk.

Yes autistic toddlers are very hard work. We've had alot of what she describes as "scary incidents" in the home with regards to the other children, for example DS can be aggressive, unfortunately it's par for the course in many with autism. But would we ever consider "rehoming" him? Absolutely not.

That poor, poor little boy. Orphaned and shipped from his home country to America and then shipped off again after bonding with the family and them becoming all he knew.

I'm so hurt by this. All I can hope is that the new family are everything he deserves and more

I've just watched both the adoption video and the rehoming one. The first looks just like they've gone shopping to China for a baby. I don't doubt that they fell for him, but what were they thinking with four young children?!! And the part where she uses curling irons on her young daughters hair! It seems very image driven. How did they think that they possibly would be able to take on a fifth, let alone one with such complex needs. On the second video, I very much get the impression that they were forced to give him up by authorities. I am sure that they had good intentions and that it has been a difficult heartfelt process, but they created this mess through their own naïveity and the adoption agencies allowed it.

Sounds like a modern version of baby farming. Without the actual need on the 'adoptive mother's' part.

In fairness, she didn't seem to use the rehoming word on her video, unless I missed it. So perhaps that came from the press?

Stupid fucking bitch
We could all go on YouTube and report all her videos - without watching them of course.

And someone that knew them went on instagram and told of how Myra would shout at Huxley, giving him instructions in English and concluding he was very slow because he couldn't understand her.

Her initial adoption video was her saying the adoption agency gave her lists of different conditions that he had and she said it doesn't matter what conditions he has, he's their son and they can't wait to bring him home and he would be with them forever. She kept saying she just wanted her beautiful son home and they would cope with any conditions he would have. Really sad.

I never understood why people would want to be "influenced" and would follow influencers. Make up your own mind about things. Avoid influencers.

He probably will have a better life in the US than China with his new family and I am not against adoption from abroad but people do need to look into these things very carefully. It is not a simple matter and it is not easy to take on a child with disabilities.

This is awful. I actually watched her videos in the past and she always says she loves Huxley so much, no different to her other children! Then she goes in to have another baby, Onyx. Terrible. This exposes how fake she really is.

Haven't RTFT but Myka and James Stauffer were told by the Chinese agency that Huxley had a brain tumour and they were willing to adopt him despite the unknown factors of his future needs that that would bring. They took him away from a foster family and his language and culture.

When they brought him back to the US they discovered he didn't have a brain tumour but had had a stroke in utero and he was subsequently diagnosed with autism.

My opinion is that they adopted him to gain followers and views on YouTube and abandoned him when he didn't fit into their aesthetic. Myka in particular never seemed to have bonded with him.

I don't buy that he was violent towards the other children, he's four years old and should have been properly supervised if he had shown any such tendencies.

I sincerely hope Huxley is now receiving the care, love and support he deserves.

I’m wondering if it’s a coincidence that Huxley is named similarly to Angelina Jolie’s adopted son, Maddox, who was born in another Far Eastern country.

If true, then they actually are disgusting and should be called out for it @peona

I hope people unfollow/unsubscribe/stop watching so she ceases to gain profit over the exploitation of a child.

Utterly appalling on so many levels.

I can't help but wonder whether their decision was influenced by the awful racism directed toward Chinese people at the moment.- aside from the real-life implications of this (I can imagine racist people might make comments in the supermarket, etc), perhaps they thought a Chinese kid wasn't a popular look now so he didn't align with their brand anymore.

I can't imagine the lack of self-awareness they must have to make a video defending this behaviour rather than accepting that such an appalling parenting decision probably signifies the end of their time in the limelight.

I think people are upset about the way it's been done, more than just the fact that the adoption broke down. The little boy gave them a massive increase in income, but when he was 'rehomed' (as they put it) there was not a mention at all, they just kept playing happy families minus one to the outside world.

The way he had his hand duck taped to stop him from sucking his thumb is absolutely disgusting, especially considering all the trauma he must have experienced already.

I haven't read the full thread so apologies if it's been said a million times but I just looked on her Instagram and she has been posting approx every second day (possibly more as I didn't look at her stories). So she gave him away and went straight back to posting picture perfect photos. How heartless can someone be.

@CatherineOfAragonsPomegranate they referred to the tumour diagnosis in numerous videos but all the videos on the family channel have been taken down now. I don't know if what they were saying is true of course, but I struggle to see why they would make it up as Huxley had better abilities in many ways than a child of the same age who had a tumour or side effects from treatment. I.e. they claimed they were prepared to care for a child who had more severe disabilities than he in fact had.

In any case I think Myka and James are despicable.

I knew they were white Christians before I even opened a single article on them. White fucking saviours where a child that's ethnically different is just an accessory to be bought and discarded like last season's handbag.

I doubt very much their pleas for privacy are anything to do with this boy's privacy - they strike me as the type to make sure they are always portrayed in a wonderful light so if he had been harmful to their household they'd make damn sure everyone knew who's fault it was that the adoption broke down. It's entirely possible the boy was removed from them because of their behaviour towards him, not the other way around.