YouTuber Myka Stauffer reveals she ‘rehomed’ her adopted son

YouTuber Myka Stauffer recently took to her YouTube channel to announce that she made the controversial decision to “rehome” her adopted son Huxley, who she says “needed a different fit” due to his “special needs.”

Myka Stauffer, who has two sons and one daughter with her husband James and one daughter from a previous relationship, has never been shy about documenting her family life on her YouTube channel — and Huxley has been a big part of that since he came into the picture in 2017.

Beginning with a “big announcement” video in 2016, Myka made 27 videos about her adoption process. In some videos, she even asked for donations toward Huxley’s “needs.”

All of Myka’s videos about Huxley did well, but easily her best-performing video was her “emotional adoption video,” which was “dedicated to all orphans around the world.” To date, the video has more than 5.5 million views and more than 98,000 likes.

Huxley’s adoption catapulted Myka into the spotlight. Not only did her YouTube following skyrocket, but she also scored partnerships with big brands like Good American and Fabletics as a result of her newfound fame.

From the moment Huxley came to the United States to live with the Stauffers, he was all over Myka’s YouTube channel. She even talked about her adoption process in interviews with websites like Moms.com and Parade, looking for publicity wherever she could get it.

Myka continued to post updates about Huxley through September 2019 — but after that, he only ever appeared in Instagram posts and in YouTube videos about family life in general.

By winter 2020, fans started to notice that Huxley was entirely MIA. When Myka did post about Huxley, it was only to inform her followers that she was struggling to raise him.

“The last couple days have been hard I don’t want to sugar coat anything,” Myka captioned a photo of her and Huxley on Feb. 16. “We have had a lot of melt downs, and lots of behaviors that have had us on our knees begging god for guidance! On social medial and Youtube we rarely show the behaviors or the hard stuff, because we try our best to respect our sons privacy and dignity. We have hard days, lots of them. I wish autism and adoption trauma had a manual to direct you through it all.”

Between the weird posts about Huxley’s “meltdowns” and the lack of transparency from Myka, fans started to demand answers. Some people even went so far as to create Instagram accounts with the sole aim of finding out what was happening with Huxley.

Well, on May 26, those fans finally got some answers. In an emotional video, Myka and James revealed that they had decided to “rehome” their son.

“Once Huxley came home, there was a lot more special needs that we weren’t aware of, and that we were not told,” James explained in the video.

“For us, it’s been really hard hearing from the medical professionals, a lot of their feedback, and things that have been upsetting,” he continued. “We’ve never wanted to be in this position. And we’ve been trying to get his needs met and help him out as much as possible … we truly love him.”

“Do I feel like a failure as a mom? Like, 500 percent,” Myka added, noting that Huxley was now living with a “new mommy” in a “forever home.”

“He is thriving, he is happy, he is doing really well, and his new mommy has medical professional training, and it is a very good fit.”

Myka’s announcement sparked a wave of backlash from fans, who criticized the YouTuber for “giving up on [her] own child.”

“My heart breaks for that poor boy,” one person said.

“Wow this is so sad. That poor little guy. Very upsetting to watch!” another user added.

“I’m sorry but you did fail as a mum,” a third person noted. “You wouldn’t have given up your own child.”

Many people even called Myka out for profiting off of Huxley’s adoption and then abandoning him — most notably, writer Sophie Ross.

“Extremely depressed reading about the influencer who raised funds to adopt a son, made this her ‘brand,’ discovered he has special needs, secretly rehomed him, blocked ppl asking about him (after her followers helped fund the adoption) & put out a video making herself the victim,” Ross said in a tweet.

In a follow-up post, Ross even suggested that Myka only addressed the Huxley situation after her followers started “tagging her sponsors” in videos “asking why they’re paying someone who … gave up their child after gleefully profiting off him for years.”

Some people, however, were sympathetic to the situation, noting that things don’t always work out.

“Sometimes, our part in a child’s story isn’t to be with them forever, it’s to be the bridge to get them where they need to be,” one person noted. “It’s hard being the temporary family when you thought it was for forever.”

“I assume this is a safety issue, it’s so heartbreaking bc he must have had an insecure attachment — so much trauma for everyone,” another user added.

Some people used this opportunity to point out that rehoming Huxley isn’t the only problematic thing Myka and James have done as parents.

In a Twitter thread, user shmailey_ highlighted some of the things Myka and James did over the years, such as taping Huxley’s thumb so he’d stop sucking it and using the hashtag #adoptdontshop to refer to their adopted son.

“Myka rehomed him like a dog,” one person noted. “She would never do this to her bio kids she would bend over backwards for any of her bio kids but since hux isn’t her blood she just uped and sent him away because he was to difficult to deal with and because ‘he didn’t fit them.'”

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