Worse, they had their fourth after adopting Huxley. Which begs the question, if he was so demanding and challenging, why would you add another baby to the mix? It doesn’t make any sense. What if their biological children were autistic?
It really, truly feels like they adopted him to exploit what an international adoption — one with special needs, at that! — could do for their profiles. They even said at one point AFTER bringing him home that they were going to adopt another child; this is before she became pregnant — Idk where that plan went but in the video I watched it really didn’t sound like her husband was ever crazy about it. He clearly wanted another biological kid and there was a comment she makes in that video about how he agreed that they could adopt and then they’d get her pregnant again. I’m paraphrasing but that was the gist of it.
In the video they released, which apparently came after months of speculation on why he hadn’t been seen, they talked about not wanting to mention the specific behavior issues because of his privacy. Really? NOW you care about his privacy? They also claimed that this child with severe autism who is all of 4 years old “told” them that he wanted to go to a new home by signing. Uhm, okay. Sure he did. That reminds me of when I was five and my parents were fighting (again) and I was crying that I wanted to go to my grandmother’s house. Later that afternoon my mother left my father and that’s exactly where we went. I spent years thinking their separation was my fault. I didn’t mean I wanted to go there FOREVER. Just for the duration of the fight. And I didn’t have the developmental delays Huxley does. :(
Certainly I can imagine situations in which, for the safety of Huxley and the other children, such a drastic measure might’ve been necessary. However, one would think that having to make such a horrible choice would be crushing to the degree that a family wouldn’t then take a month long trip to Bali. One would think that it would be crushing to a degree that they wouldn’t launch into a new YouTube channel about how to make money by monetizing content there — one that apparently mentioned a video featuring Huxley that made them $42k.
They should’ve been totally transparent about this situation from the start. It shouldn’t have taken fans to start questioning before they finally admitted to what had happened, and they should’ve immediately de-monetized any videos featuring him. It took months and a shitload of external pressure for them to make his adoption series private and for them to come clean about where he was. It’s also odd, at least to me, that after two years of being his parents, and while still featuring photos of him on IG (I’m not sure if any videos of him remain up, but I’d have to imagine they do, even if he’s not the “feature” of said videos), they’d erase him from their bio, saying they have 4 kids. I understand that they’ve given him up, but how could he not still feel like their child in their hearts?
I truly hope Huxley’s new mother is loving, wonderful and actually dedicated to his care. If that’s the case then I would say that this was 100% in his best interest.
