If you adopt one and if things aren’t working out, you can just “re-home” them.
A couple, where the wife is supposedly a famous YouTuber, who had adopted a baby two years ago through an adoption in China of a then two year old boy, have re-homed the baby because he has autism.
I’m going to play devil’s advocate here. From her posts, it sounds like there may have been some problems with violence with this child hurting her other children. She may have felt that she could not offer him the extra attention he needed with 4 other children at home. He may now be in a home where he is able to get individualized attention. There are people out there with children with autism and other problems who give them up for adoption or place them with the state because they cannot care for them. There are also those who neglect and abuse these children. Some are taken away by child protective services and placed in foster homes. It sounds like she made an effort to have this child placed in a loving home. I am giving her the benefit of the doubt for now. However, I still disapprove of using children for social media content and I still condemn her for that.
Obviously not a pittable issue, but the misuse of “devil’s advocate” still is a (minor) pet peeve of mine. The point is to try to give the best argument you can for your opposition, for that argument to be fairly debunked, not to state something you actually believe.
Then they had no business adopting the kid in the first place. Having children isn’t a privilege that only works if it goes according to plan. They had 3 children already when they adopted Huxley from China. Somewhere around 7-8 months after the adoption, they decided to have a 5th child of their own. Oh, poor Huxley isn’t working out with our plan, let’s get rid of him. Now, I’m sure there was some difficulty in the decision that they made, I’m not that delusional to think that they didn’t struggle with the decision, but that’s not a decision you even make, after you’ve adopted a kid.
It’s not like Huxley has no clue who these people are. This is his family. At age 4, even autistic children understand the concept of mom, dad, brother, sister, etc.
They specifically asked that he be placed in a no-kill orphanage. I don’t know what more you expect.
Alright, now for a more serious response to what is a sad situation. The unfortunate reality is that if the parents don’t want to have a child in their family anymore then it’s probably best for the child to comply with their wishes. If you forced them to keep the child, the results would probably turn out worse than you’d get from placing them with a different family.
I try to reserve judgement on parents who end up having their special-needs children looked after by other people … because parenting special-needs children can be really really hard - and in fact I have at least one friend who ended up having her (biological, older than Huxley but still a minor) living full time in a care home. And I know my friend loves her child, and is still involved in their life as a mum.
But still. There’s so much stuff in this story to feel uncomfortable about. Like, honestly, I don’t feel good about monetised family youtubing to begin with. And then - one adopted kid among four bio-kids? That’s more like a charity project than building a family. How could you *not *feel like ‘not a real son’ once you grew old enough to understand people and society? Especially as the one asian in a sea of white faces … this was a terrible idea to begin with.
They probably did the right thing for the wrong reason. It’s shitty what they did and I always find it kind of odd that people with biological children or several of them decide to adopt as well.
But at the same time maybe the child will find a home where he can actually be loved, it would suck to be stuck in a home where you aren’t loved. I’ve seen numerous stories the last couple years of biological parents killing their children with autism and other disabilities.
Although you have to agree that given their attitude it probably better for everyone involved that he not continue to stay with them. Just about the only thing worse than taking a child away from the family that raised him is forcing him to stay with parents who don’t want him.
this goes on all the time it was a somewhat big issue a couple years ago … it’s one reason Russia banned foreign adoptions … but the “rehoming” scene gets about shady as animal breeding but there’s reports of child trading/selling and the like to literal abandonment
I was making a joke based on the thread title’s comparison of children to unwanted pets. When some people decide they want to get rid of a pet, they send them to a “no-kill” shelter because it makes them feel less guilty. Shelters with a no-kill policy do not euthanize animals for any reason other than the animal being untreatably ill.
There are, of course, no orphanages that euthanize children. In fact, there are really no orphanages at all operating in the United States. Children are all placed in foster homes.
To be clear, the four others kids thing isn’t entirely accurate. When they adopted this child they only had two other kids. Makes it seem like, now they have four, of their own, they don’t have time for this one any more.
But mostly I think a lot of outrage is because this special needs adoption ordeal was the basis for their rise to internet fame. They may have even raised funding for parts of it.
