Myka Stauffer said she decided to “relocate” Huxley, a child with autism she adopted from China, because of his “medical needs.” “He needed more,” she said.
Myka Stauffer, a popular YouTuber, adopted a little boy from China years ago. In her account, she documented the entire adoption journey as well as her life with him. Everything seemed to be going well, however, on Tuesday she sparked controversy online when she announced that, together with her husband, they had decided to “relocate” their son due to behavioral problems.
Both Stauffer’s followers and other users criticized the YouTuber’s decision after she spent years sharing intimate details of her son Huxley’s life on her channel, through which she generates money.
Myka has shared content about adoption even before Huxley joined her family in 2017. The channel, which has more than 700,000 subscribers, has videos talking about the issue since 2014.
In July 2016, the couple posted a video titled “BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!!! || BABY # 4”, where they announced that they wanted to adopt a child from China.
Myka produced 27 videos about her “adoption journey”, including a series consisting of 13 adoption updates. In the series, Myka answered questions about the adoption process in China and how she felt about it.
Myka even organized a fundraiser to cover Huxley’s needs. In the “campaign”, every person who donated $5 would unlock a different piece of a 1,000-piece puzzle, which would, at the end, be a picture of Huxley that she’d reveal to the world.
The videos Myka creates generate money through her sponsors and she’s confessed to using those profits to bring her son to the States from China.
Although everything seemed to be going perfectly, Myka assured Parade that Huxley had a tumor and brain damage. She confessed that, at first, she and her husband weren’t open to adopting a child with special needs, but “as [they] let the idea soak in, God softened [their] hearts. Before [they] knew it, [they] were open to almost every special needs in the book,” she wrote.
When Huxley was 2 and a half years old, his new parents traveled to China to meet him. The video was a big hit, reaching 5.5 million views. The little boy arrived at his new home, but the documentation of his life didn’t stop there. In fact, the amount of videos Myka produced just kept growing, as did her number of subscribers.
The YouTuber didn’t skip a beat, writing about her experience on different blogs and giving interviews to parenting magazines.
In the Parade article, she shared that when Huxley came home, they realized that his special needs file information was “inaccurate,” and that they found out that he had suffered “a stroke in utero, had level 3 autism, and sensory processing disorder.”
“He is a great kid and his condition doesn’t involve that much overall care—all you need is a big heart and practice patience every day. It’s a different kind of patience,” she wrote.
In another interview with Moms.com, Myka spoke about the challenges she encountered when adopting, but insisted that it had all been worth it in the end. On February 16 of this year, Myka commented how difficult it was to attend to his special needs in a video.
The little boy continued to appear on his mom’s Instagram and YouTube channel until the end of 2019, into 2020. However, some time ago, her followers noticed that he was no longer showing up in them. Mother’s Day went by and no one had known anything about Huxley. Her followers demanded an explanation.
Some fans even started accounts like Justice for Huxley and MykaStaufferFan to pressure Myka to answer their questions, Buzzfeed reported.
Days later the cruel truth came to light: the Stauffer family posted a video where they said that Huxley had been taken from his home and relocated to another family. They assured that it was for the emotional well-being of the child.
According to her story, the child had several special needs that they weren’t aware of until he arrived in the United States. “After multiple evaluations, numerous medical professionals have felt that he needed a different fit for his medical needs, he needed more,” Myka said.
The couple said they hadn’t mentioned what had happened until now to give Huxley privacy as well as for legal reasons, adding that they wouldn’t be elaborating on the topic. Myka added that “99% of the struggles” were never shared with her YouTube channel for the same reason. In a comment on the video, Myka said “multiple scary things happened inside the home towards our other children.”
Huxley now lives with another family, which Myka says is “perfect”. She says that they’ll always love the little one. The video was flooded with supporting comments. However, many people were uncomfortable with the situation, especially since Huxley had been such an important part of the family’s monetized channel.