Myka Stauffer Adoption Dissolution Analysis

welcome to my scientifically informed insider look at mental health topics if you find this video to be interesting or helpful please like it and subscribe to my channel hello this is dr. grande today's question asks if I can analyze the Myka Stouffer situation so just a reminder I'm not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this so mica Stouffer is a thirty two-year-old YouTube content creator and social influencer who runs a lifestyle Family Channel and it seems like she gets help occasionally from her husband James she has over 700,000 subscribers on her main YouTube channel I believe she has some other channels as well I think her husband James has a channel unrelated to what she does there she has four biological children and she had one adopted child from China his name is Huxley at the time making this video he is four-and-a-half years old evidently she adopted him in 2017 but then in 2020 micah arranged for Huxley to go to another family evidently he has autism spectrum disorder and is nonverbal he also has other conditions as well the situation has caused a significant amount of controversy we see that micah has experienced a good deal of backlash and lost a number of her sponsors critics have called her maneuver here rehoming that's typically reserved for like pets they've also referred to it as downsizing and right-sizing usually that has to deal with companies that are firing employees but either way I can see that the idea here is that she had this child and she moved him somewhere else technically what she did is referred to as adoption dissolution which can be distinguished from adoption disruption an adoption disruption occurs when an adoption ends prior to a legal finalization and dissolution occurs when it ends after it's already finalized disruption occurs in 10 to 25% of all adoptions dissolution occurs in one to ten percent so we see dissolution is much less likely to occur than disruption now to give the situation some context I want to talk a little about the risk factors for disruption and dissolution adopted children in general are at twice the risk as compared to their general population Pearce to have behavioral or conduct problems special health needs and depression or ADHD the solution happens for a variety of reasons there are certain factors that increase the risk of dissolution the greatest factor by far is H if somebody is above 3 they're at a substantially higher risk the next highest risk factor is the presence of special needs especially those that involve externalizing behavior so like acting out and hitting other children hitting pets destroying inanimate objects something like that something where the behavior is visible and potentially harmful so we see that Huxley is in two of these high-risk categories another significant risk factor is a lack of resources but it appears that this couple has access to sufficient resources to race Huxley there's no way to read Micah's mind and know which he was intending what was the real reason she gave up Huxley the real reason could have been just what she stated now she and her husband did create this update video and she made a few posts on social media which lists a number of reasons here are the essential points raising Huxley was difficult they were not aware of all of his special needs it seems like they're suggesting they may have been misled about some of those needs in a prior video she indicated that a physician did warn them that Huxley's conditions were severe and they recommended that she rethink her decision to adopt she claimed that this message went in one ear and out the other next point Huxley did not interact well with the other children they referred to scary in sense but they didn't really supply any details behind us they said they really tried to make this work they were dedicated parents they invested a lot of energy they said that medical professionals have told them that it's time to give up Huxley kind of making it seem like they wanted to keep them but they want to ignore the medical professionals interestingly as I mentioned Myka seems to have ignored that other physician but I guess now she doesn't want to do that she said that Huxley indicated through nonverbal communication that he would be happier living with other people so it sounds like other people were at their home and Huxley was expressing emotions through this nonverbal communication and somehow she took this to mean specifically he wanted to leave their care and go to these other people mica said that Huxley is thriving with his new family in his forever home now we see other people who have indicated the Huxley's actually in the foster care system and has not been adopted by another family I'm not really sure what's happening here now we also see mica says that the new mommy as she called her has medical training which makes her a much more suitable caregiver for Huxley I find this interesting because mica is a registered nurse it would be more helpful if she could have explained what exact medical training she lacks is this training something that she could not engage in something she could not learn doesn't make a lot of sense how this other caregiver could be that vastly superior so what's going on in a situation like this well of course I can't speak specifically to whatever Micah did but in general there are a few possibilities one that comes to mind of course is narcissism I think this is always the danger with social influencers people that offer different suggestions about a multitude of topics like parenting home schooling or whatever they believe they know something about essentially though much of the content is simply them sharing their lives with other people and of course they're going to be selective about what they show they're only going to share what they want to share they're going to share that which makes them look better at least most of the time this creates a pressure on them to seem perfect it is challenging to raise a child with special needs particularly if there are behavioral problems but Michael was fully aware of these before making the decision to adopt according to what she said again she ignored the advice of a physician and went forward with the adoption now her revenue went up quite a bit after the adoption process started making someone wonder if this wasn't done at least in part to increase the popularity of her social media presence it's interesting that in 2018 we see this post by Mikah to an adoption agency she wrote what special needs would you consider minor or relatively easy to manage that most people wouldn't consider easy it's not hard here to make the connection that she wanted to create favourable optics what would be an easy way for me to appear as a hero it does seem as though this couple was trying to protect their image they didn't want to talk about Huxley's disappearance until people noticed he was missing then they provide essentially no helpful information citing a concern for privacy so now privacy is something they're worried about before it didn't seem like that was a concern at all with narcissism there's a tendency to treat human beings like objects or animals was the calculation made here that Huxley was no longer valuable commercially like he couldn't earn the same amount of revenue now so it's like they may have been treating him like a puppy he grew up a little and he was no longer cute or useful there's a Tennessee with narcissism to get excited by people who are new and bored with people who are not and a tendency to be over cuffin about one's abilities it seems likely that when they first adopted they believed they would be successful I don't imagine they got into this thinking this would be the end result evidently even though they were struggling with raising Huxley that didn't prevent mica from promoting herself as an advocate for international adoption this helped increase her exposure because she was featured in a few magazines I wonder why she didn't simply represent herself as someone who is struggling that would have been much more honest instead she sounded highly confident for example in reference to the topic of International Adoption she said it's not easy you will second-guess yourself but you will get through it and never imagine your life without that child she said my husband and I are better parents to all of our children because of it I'm not sure what she meant by the word never perhaps the word she was looking for was definitely also in saying that they are better parents now if this is better what were they like before now two other items here the first is about that update video mica asked herself if she felt like she was a failure as a mom her answer was 500 percent the question wasn't did she fail as a mathematician I already knew the answer to that question the second has to do with the consequences of imprecise language in that video she said that it really hurts when people make insidious hurtful comments while insidious means destructive in a subtle way so is she asking for blatant hurtful comments I don't think that's what she wants either this type of language seems to be common in her videos now social influencers are often thought of as trendsetters so is this a new trend are we gonna see adoption the solution become normalized become popular in 2008 we see the safe haven law takes effect in Nebraska this law allowed any child to be surrendered at a hospital in Nebraska without any questions and without legal consequence initially there was no age limit as to the child who could be surrendered within a few weeks 36 children from across the United States were left at Nebraska hospital emergency rooms none of whom were infants this law was quickly changed to have a 30-day limit the children had to be 30 days old or younger this is a worrisome trend to think that 36 children would be turned in after a few weeks based on what was probably considered by most and obscure law yet people made their way from all different areas of the United States almost like they were waiting for some state to pass a law without thinking it through here's my chance to abandon my child so Micah Stouffer isn't alone the difference with her is that she's a public figure so everybody knows what she did fortunately most people are not social influencers but unfortunately narcissism is on the rise here we see more evidence that the threat of narcissism needs to be taken seriously I've noticed that this story has had a strong effect on a lot of people and I think this goes for beyond the potential narcissism angle I think a lot of it has to do with empathy for Huxley it seems as though his needs will be cared for in the long run at least I hope that's true but what's left here is this sense of rejection which he may or may not understand now but it seems very likely in the future he could understand the situation it's very troubling to think of him contemplating how he was adopted used in all the social media used to promote his adoptive mother to hero status then given away rejection is one of the risks of adoption but being used first is not a normal risk and it's not acceptable it really makes me question this drive that so many people have to include their children in their social media products I think a much safer policy for the children at least would be to leave them out of it right just leave them out of all of the money making and kind of narcissistic drives if people want to pursue grandiosity they can do it without using their children it just seems like a line needs to be drawn there we need to say okay there are certain types of situations that we can involve with social media and there's other types of situations that remain safe that remain protected the use of children like this makes them vulnerable now and vulnerable to again kind of processing feelings of rejection later on this isn't healthy and I think this is a type of situation where people really need to consider their motives and more importantly what's best for the children I know whenever I talk about topics like this there will be a variety of opinions please put in the opinions and thoughts in the comments section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always I hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

Views: 527,258

Rating: 4.9378738 out of 5

Keywords: Myka Stauffer, jame stauffer, Huxley stauffer, narcissism exposure, grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism, shame, anger, aggression, hypersensitivity, introverted, defensive, avoidant, anxious, depressed, socially awkward, neurotic, shy, manipulative, blame-shifting, gaslighting, self-esteem, manipulation, arrogance, self-centeredness, jealousy, special, unique, fantasy, entitlement, grandiosity, requires admiration, lack of empathy, Autism Spectrum Disorder

Id: Oy-bALdT3IM

Length: 12min 58sec (778 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 02 2020