Posted on 06/03/2020 6:38:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
We tend to think if the road is hard, we are on the wrong road. With adoption, the opposite is usually true: The road is hard because we are doing it right.
Myka Stauffer of YouTube fame has “re-homed” her autistic, adopted Chinese child, Huxley. Stauffer became widely known in large part due to the video documentation of her adoption journey. Huxley’s emotional gotcha-day video has more than 5 million views.
Over the following two years, Stauffer posted regular updates of Huxley’s progress, including his autism diagnosis and references to his therapy. A few months ago, fans started noticing Huxley’s increasing absence in Stauffer’s posts. Then last week, Stauffer and her husband announced that due to the difficulties of his special needs and the strain it placed on their family, Huxley now has a “new mommy.”
As the mother of an adopted Chinese son with special needs, I can relate to many of her struggles: navigating the self-stimulating behaviors, the embarrassing public meltdowns, challenging sibling dynamics, and desperate midnight prayers. But I cannot relate to the decision to “re-home” her son — that is, independently selecting a new home for Huxley, one which likely did not undergo the vetting and screening required by state placement agencies. While re-homing may offer an escape to parents, it inflicts fresh trauma on the child, trauma that reawakens the pain of their original relinquishment.
My time spent as the assistant director of the largest Chinese adoption agency in the world taught me just how redemptive adoption can be. Unfortunately, many have romanticized it to such a degree as to ignore the built-in loss of adoption. We’ve repeated a simplistic view of adoption that goes something like this: “child in need + loving parents = problem solved.” If only it were that easy.
I’m all for presenting adoption as an alternative to abortion, which it certainly is. But the real solution for an unplanned pregnancy is not adoption, it’s parenting. Whenever possible, family and community should pledge support to mothers and fathers with an unplanned pregnancy so they can parent their child. That’s because parental separation, at birth or later in life, results in what many adoptees refer to as a primal wound, one which can result in ongoing trust, attachment, and emotional issues. That wound doesn’t magically heal after a child is placed with loving parents.
Despite the fact that on average, adoptive parents tend to be wealthier and more highly educated, adopted kids still struggle more than their peers raised by biological parents. Parental loss, while not insurmountable, disadvantages children.
Little Huxley has now been dealt a double blow, losing both his biological parents and those who pledged to be his “forever family.” The primal wound is hard to heal, even when it’s not reopened through repeated trauma.
I’m surrounded by adoptive parents. Most are like Stauffer; they have adopted special needs children, either from foster care or internationally.
After walking orphanage floors filled with blue-lipped children with bulb-shaped fingertips who lack the medical care to repair the hole in their heart; after passing between perfectly silent rows of infants, two to three per crib, who have learned that crying is futile because no one will come; after hearing about the abuse and neglect many foster kids suffered in the home of their mother and what is almost always a rotation of cohabiting boyfriends — I can unequivocally tell you these children are in a better place with their adoptive parents.
That doesn’t mean adoption has “fixed” everything, however. Adoption simply means these kids are better positioned to process and heal from trauma that may last a lifetime.
Yes, there are cases of seamless transition where children immediately thrive in their adoptive home. But especially with older and special needs children, adoption is seldom a perfect fix. Adoption more realistically resembles parents shepherding their child through multiple waves of adjustment as they unpack the layers of trauma resulting from their relinquishment and sometimes their institutionalization.
This idea that adoption will fix everything can lead parents such as Stauffer to believe that if the child is still struggling or experiencing challenges even after months or years, something must be “wrong.” Indeed, something is wrong. The child is being asked to do something no child should have to do: detach from their biological parent and reattach to biological strangers. Huxley now has to undergo that process again.
Attachment is like double-sided tape. It’s very sticky the first time you use it, but tape loses some stickiness each time it’s removed from one paper and reapplied to another. Like all children, Huxley first attached to his birth mother. Then that vital attachment was lost. The tape was then reattached, and now detached from Stauffer.
As many social workers and adoptive parents will attest, getting the child’s tape to restick even to one new family can be challenging. Stauffer alludes to that reality when she mentions, “[I]n family time with other people, [Huxley] constantly choose [sic] them.” That’s classic attachment disorder behavior — gravitating toward non-family members and even strangers — indicating Huxley’s attachment tape was losing its stick even before he was forced to reattach to a third family.
A friend of mine recently started a group chat with several foster and adoptive moms called “Asking for a little non-judgmental prayer.” She has three biological children and is now struggling to connect with her 4-year-old foster daughter with serious behavioral problems. I told her, “It’s not strange that you’re struggling. It would be strange if it was easy.” That struggle should prompt parents to pursue faithfulness, not an exit.
Stauffer isn’t the first adoptive mom to seek escape from the unexpected hardship adoption placed on their family. I’ve had several adoptive moms wonder to me, offline and in hushed tones, if they’ve made a mistake after discovering an undiagnosed medical condition, feeling overwhelmed by behavior problems, and seeing their other children suffer decreased mom time as a result. Some have said, “Our family would be so much easier without her.” I tell them they are not alone and that it’s OK to be honest with a trusted friend.
Our choices on how to parent and even whether to parent our children do not flow from our feelings, however. They flow from our commitment to raise our children, whether biological or adopted, no matter what challenges they bring, how many nights we cry, or whatever mental, emotional, or medical conditions they may have.
We tend to think that if the road is hard, we are on the wrong road, and we look for the nearest exit ramp. With adoption, the exact opposite is usually true. The road is hard because we are doing it right. We are providing something our children desperately need, parents who will not leave them nor forsake them, no matter how they struggle.
If you’re an adoptive parent and you feel like you’re drowning, you don’t have to tell everyone, but you do need to tell someone. Call your agency for post-placement support, schedule regular breaks, go to a Refresh conference, seek counseling for yourself and your child, and remain faithful. That dogged commitment and the resulting stability over months and years creates the safety and security kids need to reattach — and hopefully thrive.
My wife (now 66) was re-united with the son she was pretty much forced to give up for adoption when she was 17. it’s been an amazing blessing for everyone involved, and a real eye opener for me.
Giving up a teenager’s baby for adoption is creating a world of hurt for everyone involved - for the rest of their life. i.e. it is not emotionally benign.
I’m not saying I’m against it. I’m saying it is not an emotionally neutral thing.
Sheriff is trying to find Huxley.
Wow. This is true to a level I wish I could express so eloquently. Having been through some tough issues at home as a child and having adopted a child with major behavioral issues, my wife and I can COMPLETELY relate. We had both our son and his brother in the beginning, and only through fear of actual physical harm ( our son was physically violent towards his brother) did we relinquish his brother (only because we knew the parents that were taking him to be truly good, loving, Christian people). We chose to keep our son because we knew what would happen to a child of his disposition - home after home after home then ward of the state until he aged out. Keeping the difficult child was the right decision; still to this day he presents challenges that would have broken me earlier in my life, and I would not change ONE SINGLE MOMENT.
Ground penetrating radar?
It is sad it had to come to that. Though I am a firm believer in any child can be helped if abnormal behavior is caught early, it would not be prudent of me to second-guess any given situation. Our son exhibited said abnormal behavior right away, and with constant effort on our part and the help of others, he is coming along well. Needless to say the journey isn’t over but we have hope and will never stop doing whatever we can. Prayers to your friend for the difficult and torturous decision they had to make.
What do they think? AS an adoptee who turned 75 this week, I can assure you the primal wound is still there.
The article is correct, adoption does not “fix” everything. It doesn’t matter how loving the home they were raised in. Their mom still hose to “get rid of” them. That wound never goes away. Never.
My wife and I eschew social media to a large extent; we have a very few private accounts to keep track of certain things and in touch with select family members. In addition, and to a large extent because of our son, avoiding them affords him privacy from snooping persons who shall remain un-named - again, don’t want to draw attention.
I was adopted from birth and completely agree with you. My real (adoptive) parents were the most loving, giving, wonderful people on the planet. As for my biological parents, I have met my mother, at her instigation, but know nothing of my sperm donor. My bio mother is ok, but I am so, so glad my real mom and dad raised me.
I do not have a primal wound, because of the extraordinary people who raised me.
Not by my own efforts, certainly. Were it not for my wife, I’d likely be well on my way to liver failure or long ago having assumed room temperature due to my own failings. She is, without a doubt, my saving grace from God.
The elephant in the room is adoption disruption, and “rehoming”. You’d be surprised how often it happens. The adoptee doesn’t meet the adaptors needs, has too many of their own needs, doesn’t get on with new spouse, or doesn’t “bond”. It happened to me.
It seems to me that Myka expected Huxley to die. When he didn’t and became too hard to handle, she got rid of him.
I used to think that sort of thing myself. Then I began to discuss my issues with other adoptees and realized that they had the same issues I did. I thought the problem was me. I thought that there was something wrong with me because I didn’t really feel like a part of my family, even though I was adopted at birth.
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