Myka Stauffer of The Stauffer Life: Where's Huxley???

[Alisamer]

4 hours ago, Toothfairy said:

I agree. I dislike YouTube families. The child's entire life is online. I especially hate foster parents and adoptive parents showing the child off. Even when foster parents blur the face out. There are so many influencers who only care about money and attention. They'll do anything for it. Myka showed the child's tantrums too. That's online forever 

I don't really have a problem with it if the channel is about something else, and the kids just occasionally show up there. There's one I follow where the pregnancy was announced, a photo of the baby was shown, and then after that it's just a brief mention now and then. Now the kid is a toddler, and if he's participating in what they're showing he'll be there, but he's never the focus, and I don't think he's ever been in an entire video. I've even seen them do a video where part was filmed one day, then they cut and the rest is filmed the next day, and they explain that the kid needed their attention so they couldn't finish the day before. There are a couple others with kids who are elementary age, and they sometimes ask to participate and do, but again - even if the kid is a focus of that particular video, it's in relation to the purpose of the channel which is NOT the kid. 

But yes, these family channels do seem problematic to me. It's one thing to have a couple videos a year where the child participates because the activity relates to the purpose of the channel. It's entirely different to have the family itself BE the focus of the channel!

[OhNoNike]

7 hours ago, Alisamer said:

I don't really have a problem with it if the channel is about something else, and the kids just occasionally show up there. There's one I follow where the pregnancy was announced, a photo of the baby was shown, and then after that it's just a brief mention now and then. Now the kid is a toddler, and if he's participating in what they're showing he'll be there, but he's never the focus, and I don't think he's ever been in an entire video. I've even seen them do a video where part was filmed one day, then they cut and the rest is filmed the next day, and they explain that the kid needed their attention so they couldn't finish the day before. There are a couple others with kids who are elementary age, and they sometimes ask to participate and do, but again - even if the kid is a focus of that particular video, it's in relation to the purpose of the channel which is NOT the kid. 

But yes, these family channels do seem problematic to me. It's one thing to have a couple videos a year where the child participates because the activity relates to the purpose of the channel. It's entirely different to have the family itself BE the focus of the channel!

Totally agree. There is one blogger I watch - she is religious and homeschools but seems pretty normal (as opposed to the religious homeschooling crazies we discuss here —I know most are not crazy) and I’d be friends with her in real life. I’m interested in what she does. Now, her oldest got married and she only briefly mentioned it on her Instagram and has casually referenced a daughter in law, but I don’t even know the DIL’s name.  The kids occasionally show up, but it’s really clear it’s not about them and is not geared to kids. 

Then there are others where the kids are definitely part of it and I feel like the whole thing is some huge fake production.  I despise those.  They are the kind that draws my kid’s attention.

Edited June 10, 2020 by OhNoNike

[OutoftheShadows]

1 hour ago, OhNoNike said:

Totally agree. There is one blogger I watch - she is religious and homeschools but seems pretty normal (as opposed to the religious homeschooling crazies we discuss here —I know most are not crazy) and I’d be friends with her in real life. I’m interested in what she does. Now, her oldest got married and she only briefly mentioned it on her Instagram and has casually referenced a daughter in law, but I don’t even know the DIL’s name.  The kids occasionally show up, but it’s really clear it’s not about them and is not geared to kids. 

Then there are others where the kids are definitely part of it and I feel like the whole thing is some huge fake production.  I despise those.  They are the kind that draws my kid’s attention.

Are you referencing Jamerill Stewart? I love her! 

[Shaquillle Oatmeal]

14 minutes ago, OutoftheShadows said:

Are you referencing Jamerill Stewart? I love her! 

I too love Jammerill.

[squiddysquid]

So, has  CPS located Huxley yet?

[OhNoNike]

13 hours ago, OutoftheShadows said:

Are you referencing Jamerill Stewart? I love her! 

Yup!  I wondered if anyone else would know.  I really do listen to her while I do work at home, and I’m a full time working athiest who sends her kids to public school. Despite differences, I find her delightful.  I’ve also started saying “all that to say” in my daily life now. Haha. Some of my favorites - her recognition that many moms also work outside jobs and her comments on how she also worked nights as a nurse for a while, and when they went to I think the creation museum, she specifically said to one child that some people believe different things and “that’s okay”. 

I feel like I’d love to have coffee with her and take my kids to her new homestead, lol. 

8 hours ago, squiddysquid said:

So, has  CPS located Huxley yet?

They said “he is not missing”, which I interpreted to mean that they know where he is. 

[OutoftheShadows]

11 minutes ago, OhNoNike said:

Yup!  I wondered if anyone else would know.  I really do listen to her while I do work at home, and I’m a full time working athiest who sends her kids to public school. Despite differences, I find her delightful.  I’ve also started saying “all that to say” in my daily life now. Haha. Some of my favorites - her recognition that many moms also work outside jobs and her comments on how she also worked nights as a nurse for a while, and when they went to I think the creation museum, she specifically said to one child that some people believe different things and “that’s okay”. 

I feel like I’d love to have coffee with her and take my kids to her new homestead, lol. 

They said “he is not missing”, which I interpreted to mean that they know where he is. 

I catch myself saying that too, along with, “Yes and amen.”  I’m suburban, live in a cookie cutter subdivision, only have three kids, who are mostly grown, and I would faint at the thought of having to “process a meat bird”, and yet I find her videos mesmerizing and soothing. I’d love to hang out at her house and be her irl friend. 

[usedbicycle]

4 hours ago, OhNoNike said:

Yup!  I wondered if anyone else would know.  I really do listen to her while I do work at home, and I’m a full time working athiest who sends her kids to public school. Despite differences, I find her delightful.  I’ve also started saying “all that to say” in my daily life now. Haha. Some of my favorites - her recognition that many moms also work outside jobs and her comments on how she also worked nights as a nurse for a while, and when they went to I think the creation museum, she specifically said to one child that some people believe different things and “that’s okay”. 

I feel like I’d love to have coffee with her and take my kids to her new homestead, lol. 

They said “he is not missing”, which I interpreted to mean that they know where he is. 

I follow Sarah Mwania of "Our Tribe of Many" for the same reasons. Our lives have very little in common but she's such a laid back, positive, humble person that I would love to be IRL friends with her. Does anyone else follow them?

[OhNoNike]

2 hours ago, usedbicycle said:

I follow Sarah Mwania of "Our Tribe of Many" for the same reasons. Our lives have very little in common but she's such a laid back, positive, humble person that I would love to be IRL friends with her. Does anyone else follow them?

I follow them too!!  Haha!  I like her as well!

6 hours ago, OutoftheShadows said:

I catch myself saying that too, along with, “Yes and amen.”  I’m suburban, live in a cookie cutter subdivision, only have three kids, who are mostly grown, and I would faint at the thought of having to “process a meat bird”, and yet I find her videos mesmerizing and soothing. I’d love to hang out at her house and be her irl friend. 

Not gonna lie.  It’s not that I haven’t wanted chickens anyway, but I really wish we had some. She makes it sound so easy. Haha. (We cannot have them in our area bc rules... but I’ve thought if I got a house on some additional land it would be fun).  But I don’t have a Travis to build be a coop out of metal, so that would have to be a big purchase. 

[Pleiades_06]

The video explaining why they gave up Huxley is gone. So is the entire Stauffer Life channel-before it was still up but the videos were made private. I wonder if they are cleaning things up so they can return?

[JermajestyDuggar]

56 minutes ago, Pleiades_06 said:

The video explaining why they gave up Huxley is gone. So is the entire Stauffer Life channel-before it was still up but the videos were made private. I wonder if they are cleaning things up so they can return?

I am hoping they are just gone. For good. Go get 9 to 5 Jobs, get permanent birth control, and give your children privacy. 

[hoipolloi]

18 minutes ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

I am hoping they are just gone.

Don't count on it. According to one of their critics, they may just be rebranding and focusing instead on James, his Stauffer Garage YT channel, and his auto detailing business. Since Myka has gotten the lion's share of blame for Huxley's treatment, they may be figuring James can pivot & become the family's new YT influencer.

[Cults-r-us]

First time posting! Any family would crack under the strain of homeschooling e kids, having a baby and dealing with Hux. So why didn't he go to public school preschool? His IEP would have provided OT/PT & speech. That would have given Myka time to film herself eating breakfast, lay out the kids' lessons and do the cleaning she loves. I think he would have qualified for some respite care (for which they would not have to part with their riches) 

[Cults-r-us]

First time posting! Any family would crack under the strain of homeschooling e kids, having a baby and dealing with Hux. So why didn't he go to public school preschool? His IEP would have provided OT/PT & speech. That would have given Myka time to film herself eating breakfast, lay out the kids' lessons and do the cleaning she loves. I think he would have qualified for some respite care (for which they would not have to part with their riches) 

[Pleiades_06]

1 hour ago, Cults-r-us said:

First time posting! Any family would crack under the strain of homeschooling e kids, having a baby and dealing with Hux. So why didn't he go to public school preschool? His IEP would have provided OT/PT & speech. That would have given Myka time to film herself eating breakfast, lay out the kids' lessons and do the cleaning she loves. I think he would have qualified for some respite care (for which they would not have to part with their riches) 

Welcome!

He got outside services and went to pre-school. But that’s a good question-was he at a public school pre-school and did he get early intervention services? In my state all kids with disabilities are entitled to this. Myka was talking about the high cost of one therapy he was doing, so they were doing some out of pocket.

[Cults-r-us]

 We do out of pocket in addition to the school. They appear rich as Roosevelt - couldn't they afford respite care? I think the new baby sealed the deal on ending the honeymoon phase of adopting Huxley.

[Aine]

On 6/14/2020 at 6:54 PM, Cults-r-us said:

We do out of pocket in addition to the school. They appear rich as Roosevelt - couldn't they afford respite care? I think the new baby sealed the deal on ending the honeymoon phase of adopting Huxley.

Utilizing an IEP for some of the medical and therapy costs is a good point! Also, for a child that is still learning a new language (disability or not), it's a good thing for him to be around a range of people to interact with and listen to even when they aren't speaking directly to him at all times. Just being able to hear language being spoken changes the neural networks in the brain to recognize inflections, phonemes, and sentence structure.

The "out of pocket expenses" argument never flew with me. They were just fine with their viewers and the wider public contributing financially to funding the adoption (including the 3 older children also flying to China with Myka and James to pick up Huxley). Also, they're shameless self-promoters for financial gain so why not utilize the platform you have to raise money for Huxley's treatment and/or to donate to some local support services to enable these providers to service more children or be better resourced?

Obviously the answer is that they didn't want him. They were privileged to have hundreds of thousands of people who truly cared about their family and Huxley, which is why the rehoming became huge news. Any mention of not being able to financially maintain the help he needed is moot when they never asked their followers, never used their platform as a way to educate the public about intensive therapy modalities, and never tried to raise awareness of the very real financial/logisitical/availability barriers for millions of families around the country (and world) face with getting the best possible care for their children with disabilities.

[Cults-r-us]

 We do out of pocket in addition to the school. They appear rich as Roosevelt - couldn't they afford respite care? I think the new baby sealed the deal on ending the honeymoon phase of adopting Huxley.

[Cults-r-us]

Reactive attachment disorder seems to have gone both ways between Myka & Huxley. They could have hired a nanny or OT aide to help raise Huxley. Myka could have expanded her platform advocating for disabled children. Was rehoming him worth losing platform and sponsors?

[Glasgowghirl]

Myka opted not to get the more expensive therapy for Huxley and opted for the cheapest option citing the price being the reason, people have since noticed in that video she was wearing a Cartier bracelet. She could have paid for the most expensive therapy and could have also got a Nanny to help her look after all the children. 

People are also speculating that they exaggerated what issues Huxley had as he was signing and communicating with them in the videos before he was rehomed and when he did have tantrums it was usually because Myka or James were agrivating him more instead of trying to see what was upsetting him. In one video they send him to the naughty step when he was signing for food after he already had breakfast, if your child is telling you that they are still hungry, you shouldn't be punishing him for it. Either give them a snack or at the very least tell them you need to wait a bit longer before you get more food.

[Pleiades_06]

5 hours ago, Glasgowghirl said:

one video they send him to the naughty step when he was signing for food after he already had breakfast, if your child is telling you that they are still hungry, you shouldn't be punishing him for it. E

Exactly. Especially a child who has had issues with food and food insecurity in the first place.

[Glasgowghirl]

31 minutes ago, Pleiades_06 said:

Exactly. Especially a child who has had issues with food and food insecurity in the first place.

Definitely, I wonder if they even consulted a dietician for Huxley. The dietician my sister saw with my nephew about his food phobia, gave her a lot of good advice. 

[Ozlsn]

6 hours ago, Glasgowghirl said:

Myka opted not to get the more expensive therapy for Huxley and opted for the cheapest option citing the price

I'm going to assume she was referring to ABA as being the expensive option, which yes, it is very expensive. More importantly though any therapy requires a degree of commitment from the parents - the "cheaper option" is cheaper because it's fewer sessions per week, but the expectation as a parent is that you then apply what you've learned during the week to reinforce it. Hiring a specialised worker or a nanny to give the parents some space would have helped, but they'd still need to put in a lot of time and effort - and I get the feeling that was never going to happen.

Personally I don't think they should have been approved for adoption given they already had older children who were still needing a lot of time and attention, and also quite obviously weren't done with reproducing. Even adopting a child with no additional needs on top of the trauma of adoption would have been difficult, but they had really no idea what they were going into, and didn't seem to make much effort to find out. Geez, they didn't even seem to find out much about how adoption affects children, let alone international adoption into a new language/culture, let alone any additional needs on top of that.

[Cults-r-us]

I think Myka had stars in her eyes and plugs in her ears, in love with a fantasy orphan, sabotaging her own ability to understand Huxley's problems. She magically thought she could save or "fix" him.  Huxley gave her no narcissitic supply from the start, attaching to her husband (disabled toddler though he was, give the boy credit for having an intact jerk alert). A friend of mine said she secretly envies Myka for getting out from underneath the burden of a labor-intensive, frustrating, exhausting disabled child BUT at the end of the day, could never relinquish a child because of deep attachment (which Myka seems to have mostly for herself). 

 

 

 

[Glasgowghirl]

8 hours ago, Cults-r-us said:

I think Myka had stars in her eyes and plugs in her ears, in love with a fantasy orphan, sabotaging her own ability to understand Huxley's problems. She magically thought she could save or "fix" him.  Huxley gave her no narcissitic supply from the start, attaching to her husband (disabled toddler though he was, give the boy credit for having an intact jerk alert). A friend of mine said she secretly envies Myka for getting out from underneath the burden of a labor-intensive, frustrating, exhausting disabled child BUT at the end of the day, could never relinquish a child because of deep attachment (which Myka seems to have mostly for herself). 

 

 

 

Myka and James went into this adoption for all the wrong reasons. Myka mentions in an early video that she didn't fully take in the advice the specialists in the US had regarding Huxley, she admits that the image she had of Huxley before meeting him was different from the reality. While it is always good to hope for the best case scenario but they knew Huxley would have developmental issues and kept overlooking that.