Myka Stauffer is a popular YouTuber with more than 713,000 subscribers, many of whom are outraged by her decision to “rehome” her adopted autistic son Huxley who’s featured in many of her viral videos since he joined her family in October 2017. Her decision to give up the little boy was apparently due to behavior problems that she claimed she and her husband were unaware of, though official documents prove otherwise.
- Myka Stauffer and her husband announced the adoption in July 2016. In a video, she told subscribers that she and husband James were adopting a baby from China. Not only did she make dozens of videos about the adoption process which featured sponsored content (profits from which she claimed were going towards funding the adoption) but she also accepted money via a fundraiser meant to cover Huxley’s special needs, Buzzfeed News reports.
- The couple was told about Huxley’s needs prior to the adoption. According to a letter from the adoption agency shared with Parade, Myka and James Stauffer were told that Huxley had a brain tumor and brain damage prior to bringing him home.
- They brought Huxley home in October 2017. The little boy was 2 and 1/2 years old at the time, and Myka Stauffer continued to make videos about her experience with him on her personal channel as well as her family channel, The Stauffer Life. She eventually claimed that Huxley’s adoption file was incorrect and that in reality, her son had “a stroke in utero, has Level 3 autism, and sensory processing disorder.”
- Huxley disappeared from Stauffer’s videos in late 2019. While he was regularly appearing on Stauffer’s viral videos up until that time, suddenly he was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t even in her Instagram photos, though she did share on February 16, “The last couple days have been hard I don’t want to sugar coat anything. We have had a lot of melt downs, and a lot of behaviors that have had us on our knees begging god for guidance.”
- The couple announced on Tuesday that Huxley was no longer part of the family. In a video titled “an update on our family,” James and Myka Stauffer said that Huxley had been rehomed with another family after they sought extensive medical help and realized they couldn’t cope with his special needs, many of which they didn’t know about prior to the adoption. “After multiple assessments, after multiple evaluations, numerous medical professionals have felt that he needed a different fit in his medical needs, he needed more,” Myka said. She also claimed that “multiple scary things happened inside the home towards our other children.”
- Huxley’s new family is apparently “a perfect match.” While it’s impossible to know whether or not the Stauffers’ claims are genuine, they say that Huxley is thriving with his new family and that his new mother has medical training which makes her a “perfect fit” for the little boy.
- Many people want YouTube to remove the Stauffers’ monetization on posts featuring Huxley. “These people need to stop exploiting and profiting off of Huxley immediately! Their YouTube channel skyrocketed thanks to Huxley,” reads a Change.org petition with nearly 23,000 signatures as of Friday morning. “He’s done enough for the Stauffers. He bought them a McMansion, multiple vacations a year, etc. What did he get in exchange? He got re-homed as if he were a freaking puppy!”
