Family Returns Their Adopted Son
I’m sure we have all come across what seems to be a social media “influencer” trying a little too hard. Whether it’s obsessing over being relatable to their audience or always having to post the best of the best photos on their feed or even sharing a little too much for comfort in their content, sometimes influencers take it too far. Myka and James Stauffer, whose family YouTube channel had been gaining a lot of momentum the past couple years through sharing the adoption story of their son Huxley, has received a tremendous amount of backlash and has even resulted in an investigation.
The Stauffer family of six decided to take on adoption of a little boy from China and document the process on YouTube along the way. They even went as far as to ask their subscribers for support financially. After officially bringing the little boy home, the family continued to share with their audience the ups and downs of life with Huxley. Including how he was adjusting to life with the family and updates on his medical conditions since he was considered special needs. Huxley became the main focus of the family’s YouTube channel for a while.
At the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020, the family began struggling a lot with being able to take care of Huxley and handle his out of control behavior. Not to mention, they continued to discover the severity of Huxley’s medical conditions including a diagnosis of ADHD and level three autism. The family was told Huxley would probably need assistance the rest of his life, may never speak and may never become potty trained. This of course was devastating to Myka and her husband James. However, it seems as though after much thought, the family came to the decision earlier this year that it was going to be best to find Huxley a better suited forever family.
When the stauffer’s audience realized that Huxley didn’t appear in videos as much and the videos seemed to display the family spending a lot less time with the young boy, they began asking questions. Quickly, those innocent questions turned into major concern and the family’s fan base began drawing conclusions on their own which turned into a lot of accusations and backlash for Myka and James. An investigation even began taking place.
From my point of view, it seems as though the family didn’t make the best decisions as far as how they handled the whole situation from the beginning. I think it wasn’t right of them to ask their subscribers for money towards the adoption. I don’t agree that they shared such private medical information about the child. They also probably shouldn’t have made the initial adoption process so public, showing his face and everything as adoption and foster agencies advise against this for the privacy and saftey of the child. Now as for the choice they made to find Huxley a new home instead of taking responsibility to work it out as a family, I think it is heartbreaking that the family felt they had to make that decsion. However, I also sympathize with the family and that they felt they were ill-equipped to support Huxley and his specialized needs. The article took it as far as to mention that there may be a correlation between the giving away of the Chinese boy and the racial injustice of hating on the Chinese for the coronavirus, but I think that is a ridiculous statement and is obviously not what was going on here.
Overall, the Family showed that they truly cared for Huxley and thought they were all in for what adoption brought to their family, but the situation ended up being more than they could handle. Despite wrongly handling the publicness of the adoption process, they did follow through with finding a better suited forever family for Huxley that provided him the necessary support he needs in his life. I believe in the end this will be better for everyone including Huxley himself.
