Adoption: For Life??!

[Secre]

I've always considered that if you take on the responsibility for adopting a child - special needs or no - then they are your child, pure and simple. You don't get to hand them back if life gets difficult. I've been lucky enough to grow up in a loving biological parental home where when things went sour due to addiction issues, my foster parents who took me in as a teenager - and a hellish one at that - have stuck by me through thick and thin. I have just however read about an 'influencer' couple who raised funds from their blogs to adopt a child from abroad and have given up on him and fobbed him off on another family.

This makes me both sad and angry. Who brings a child in from China with special needs and then rehomes it like a puppy when the going gets too tough?? Hell, I know all about difficult adoptions - my foster parents have that in spades with me, a son who later abused one of their younger daughters and twins, one of them with moderate cerebral palsy - but would this couple 'rehome' one of their biological children if they developed issues!?

https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/28/youtuber-myka-stauffer-sparks-outrage-rehoming-adopted-4-year-old-autistic-son-12768327/

[shauns_fiancee]

I completely agree.  There is no accountability, honour, pride or decency these days for people who wrong.

 

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemcneal/myka-stauffer-huxley-announcement?utm_source=dynamic&utm_campaign=bffbbuzzfeedtasty&ref=bffbbuzzfeedtasty&fbclid=IwAR3hq037A3wiybxmekM1xgzBnHwa8eRs7Ncli_IdmtweeXsBxSSBQoOPpw4

 

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[GlitchtaleLover]

That is truly awful, if you are to adopt a child in need, why ever give up on them? You must make a commitment when you adopt them, if they can't handle it, they never should have done it in the first place. It's really bad for the kid to have had an opportunity like that, then have it be ripped away. I hope they get a true loving home, which they need after all this.

[Sciurus carolinensis]

I have a friend whose family raised foster children for years, and adopted two sisters who they love not as if they were their own but because they are their own. The younger one had a number of developmental disabilities due to their birth mom drinking (and worse) while pregnant. She is currently getting treatment at a facility for children with her condition, and from what I hear the placement is permanent. It was not a matter of giving up on her- I swear to you, they tried everything and will never stop loving her. I will never stop loving her either, and regret deeply that I didn't get a chance to say goodbye. Ultimately, she needed more care than they could provide. I have not read the article you shared yet. Will do so now. 

edit- Read it. My feelings are that we do not and should not know his placement, so I do not know if such outrage is warranted. I will save my outrage for cases where I know it is deserved.

[Secre]

In terms of this family, I think my additional issue is that they monetised this child for their own ends; she has gained deals with companies for her blog, has become an 'expert' in the field of international and special needs adoption. And it was clearly all a lie. She painted a picture of a perfect life to her hundreds of thousands of followers and used that image of herself and her family to make money. There;s something very wrong about that.

There are references to potential safety concerns but I can't buy that - even if the child is violent, he is less than five years old. At no point should be left unsupervised with a younger more vulnerable child anyway!! 

16 hours ago, Sciurus carolinensis said:

I have a friend whose family raised foster children for years, and adopted two sisters who they love not as if they were their own but because they are their own. The younger one had a number of developmental disabilities due to their birth mom drinking (and worse) while pregnant. She is currently getting treatment at a facility for children with her condition, and from what I hear the placement is permanent. It was not a matter of giving up on her- I swear to you, they tried everything and will never stop loving her. I will never stop loving her either, and regret deeply that I didn't get a chance to say goodbye. Ultimately, she needed more care than they could provide. I have not read the article you shared yet. Will do so now. 

edit- Read it. My feelings are that we do not and should not know his placement, so I do not know if such outrage is warranted. I will save my outrage for cases where I know it is deserved.

She can be living in a different place - treatment facilities for example - and still be their child; a lot there depends on how they are handling this and knowing nothing about your friend or the case I can't comment. What I will say is that my foster brother - all three younger children are adopted, I'm fostered as I was a teenager when I came into their home - has been liming in a facility for behaviourally challenged young men shall we say for several years now. He legally - and let's be honest, morally - cannot be in the same house as the girl. My foster parents still consider him their son even though he cannot live with them - in order to prevent him being put in an unsuitable placement, my foster father moved out of the house to live with him for close to twelve months before this placement was found, they have visited every weekend and ensured he still feels part of the family.

One of the twins has cerebral palsy - also due to in utero exposure to alcohol and drugs - and has required a lot of additional support. Now admittedly, the UK system means they knew exactly what the condition was when they adopted her, but they knew they were adopting a child with additional needs and have moved heaven and earth to get her the support she requires.

But treatment facilities are a very different ball game to washing your hands of a child and saying, here's your new mummy. 

16 hours ago, GlitchtaleLover said:

That is truly awful, if you are to adopt a child in need, why ever give up on them? You must make a commitment when you adopt them, if they can't handle it, they never should have done it in the first place. It's really bad for the kid to have had an opportunity like that, then have it be ripped away. I hope they get a true loving home, which they need after all this.

Yes. And to bring the boy over from China, knowing he had significant additional needs only to then hand him over to a new mummy. She's just taught that young boy that he is disposable and her biological children that children are expendable, especially if they have disabilities.

18 hours ago, shauns_fiancee said:

I completely agree.  There is no accountability, honour, pride or decency these days for people who wrong.

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I'm almost hoping China charge them with a crime. Unfortunately US extradition laws would could a crimp in that.

[WhiteWolf]

Anyone who adopts, or fosters, a child- special needs or no- is a hero in my book. This world needs more people like you!

[Secre]

On 5/30/2020 at 8:43 PM, WhiteWolf said:

Anyone who adopts, or fosters, a child- special needs or no- is a hero in my book. This world needs more people like you!

Not me - my foster parents! I'd love to foster, but we don't yet own our own house or have our own children and I'd like to know that I'm bringing a child - particularly such a vulnerable one - into a safe, stable and committed home. At the moment we don't even have a dog for exactly that reason! We both work full time, I commute four hours a day when not working from home for the COVID-19 pandemic - and that wouldn't be a fair environment to bring a new life into.

But yes, my foster parents are definitely unsung heroes. They went from me - a difficult if intellectual teenager - to an exceptionally disturbed young child and then two toddlers (at the time obviously), one of them with significant additional needs. Throughout it all, they have shown the patience of saints and have worked through every challenge, if not without complaint then certainly without any flagging in commitment and effort.

[Naamah D.]

Seriously? They adopted a child and after two years rehomed him like when people get a puppy only to find out it will use the bathroom on the floor.

They brought the kid from another country for crying out loud. There are plenty of parents in this world who would’ve loved to adopt and help a child with special needs. Take women who can’t have children biologically for example. Or people who have enough common sense to know what they are getting into. 

[jellysundae]

Everything about this couple reeks of white privilege, they disgust me. .___. I really don't have words to describe how repellent I find them.

[Secre]

On 6/28/2020 at 3:49 AM, Naamah D. said:

Seriously? They adopted a child and after two years rehomed him like when people get a puppy only to find out it will use the bathroom on the floor.

They brought the kid from another country for crying out loud. There are plenty of parents in this world who would’ve loved to adopt and help a child with special needs. Take women who can’t have children biologically for example. Or people who have enough common sense to know what they are getting into. 

You say that in jest about the puppy, but my foster brother quite literally used to do his business on the floor. He'd do it in revenge whenever he had been thwarted or punished. He would also urinate up walls, destroy things and all manner of other destructive and aggressive behaviours. This got worse the older he got - I have an abiding memory of darting in front of one of the girls - about six at the time- because my brother was waving a boiled kettle about and threatening to throw it. He was too big to safely restrain by then and the only thing I could think was that it would be far less catastrophic for me to be covered in boiling water than a child.

With all this and then some, my foster parents have still never given up on him. They were thrown completely in at the deep end with him, but they learned and the developed new strategies as they went.

On 6/28/2020 at 12:36 PM, jellysundae said:

Everything about this couple reeks of white privilege, they disgust me. .___. I really don't have words to describe how repellent I find them.

They've since released a public apology. Which personally, I think has more to do with their loss of income than any feelings of guilt they have.

[jellysundae]

1 hour ago, Secre said:

They've since released a public apology. Which personally, I think has more to do with their loss of income than any feelings of guilt they have.

Just doing what pretty much all white people are doing right now with the BLM stuff, right? Wallet-protecting token gestures.

i guess it's a learning curve for people right now with the saturation of social media and consequent mass over-sharing. Learning as you go by getting severely burnt... But still, monetizing your children is never gonna be anything but that, ever. Social media isn't to blame for putting the ability to do it into people's hands, they've got to be the kind of person who's gonna do it in the first place. : /