Just about anyone on Social Media who has a Special Needs Child, and many who don't will of seen the article doing the rounds about Myka Stauffer and how she's re homed her rescue puppy because she cant cope. Sorry, when I say "rescue puppy", what I actually ment to say was "adopted, Asian, autistic son".
Now I'm going to try very hard to be balanced and non judgey on this, because whilst I quite literally could slap the woman for her over privileged stupidity, I also think its important to discuss it objectively and at least try to see both sides.
Question: What do we learn if we just judge?
Answer: Fuck all.
Lets start with what I know about the lady concerned. Her name is Myka and shes a You Tuber/Social Media Mummy Blogger who apparently lives a life of near perfection with her 5 kids and "soul mate" husband. Because we all marry our "soul mates" on social media dont we?
According to her You Tube channel she "loves sharing" about her family life, her DIY tips, her advise on household organisation, fitness, cleaning and oooh so perfect "lifestyle". Already I hate her and I want to puke and at the complete unattainable bullshit that this portrays, but thats a whole other story. Of course I dont hate "her", I dont know her. But I absolutely hate what she stands for and whats she's a part of but lets save that for anther day.
A quick look at her You Tube Channel and I can see that her videos have titles like:
"Pregnant All Day Clean" Not sure what this one includes but in my case that would of be watching a fat sweaty heffer, with Big Mac sauce on her top, having impromptu nosebleeds and weeing when she coughed, reluctantly vacuuming and bitching about back ache.
"What I eat to Stay Healthy and Lean" Again I haven't watched but I doubt its, a lot of coffee, high sugar snack bars, multiple packets of potato chips that stain your fingers orange and fun packs of Tiny Teddy cookies.
"Decorate and Clean With Me" Cleaning up jammy hand prints, Nutella window licks, shit round the toilet seat "I missed!! It yucky"!! and multiple other bodily fluids that her kids have decorated with perhaps?
"Mummy Morning Routine" Maybe tantrums from 6.30am right through to school drop off at 9am. Having the crap beaten out of her by a nearly 9 year old who can't decide on which of 5 IDENTICAL school tops she wants to wear, eating no breakfast and dragging one of her kids to the car like shes trying to dispose of a dead body, still dressed in her PJs and has done her morning shit with a 20kg child sat on her lap? Hmmm I'm guessing not.
Now why am I even trying to compare my life to the idyllic glory and Nirvana of this family who apparently reside in Stepford? Because just like me, Myka has (or should we say had) a high needs child with physical and mental disabilities. My understanding is it was pretty severe autism.
For those who dont know, trying to group all autism together is like comparing all cancer and all amputations and claiming to understand those at the other end of the spectrum.
If you have a tiny skin cancer removed with no additional treatment, don't be such an arsehole as to claim to understand the person with stage 4 breast cancer on her 5th year of treatment, whose wheelchair bound from steriods damage to her joints and has lost count of her surgeries.
If you chop your toe off with a lawn mower, sure you now class an "amputee", but dont be a wanker and assume you get how the person who lost all four limbs to meningitis feels.
Now I know Im gonna get absolutely vilified for this but I literally give zero fucks, the same applies with autism and any sort of special needs. The spectrum is HUGE and just because your child has a few quirks or disabilities but can still function fairly normally, never ever assume to understand how grim it is at the extreme end.
And no I don't even necessarily mean the more severe the disability, I'm talking behaviours. That can include aggression, self harm, 24/7 screaming, eating and throwing poo, inappropraite sexual behaviours, attacking siblings, running into traffic, punching kids at school, punching parents, kicking strangers in shopping queues etc etc. Alice doesnt do half of this, but my god its hard and Id be a liar and an arsehole to claim we even have it that bad compared to some.
Most people have no idea about full on autism and neither did Myka, clearly.
This story brings up so many points of discussion and questions and thoughts. All are just my opinion and I'll gladly admit I only have the information I have found in the media, but with that in mind lets look at some of them:
Did she do it for money and internet followers?
Im pretty sure she did, but I also think she genuinely thought it would work out. That makes her naive and short sighted beyond measure but little else.
I'm also reading she asked subscribers for money to help with his adoption and used him as blog content, which is pretty shocking. Yes the irony is not lost on me here. I blog about Alice, and once did a fundraiser for a special needs car seat for Alice, does that make me just as bad? Genuine question, does it?
I'm sure she thought the added addition of a nice ethnic special needs child would look awesome on the family CV and thats pretty much where her thinking ended.
Why are we attacking her and not the husband?
Two people made this decision. How do we know it wasn't driven by him? Her You Tube channel states (cue standard vomitous quote ) that she "married her best friend". Did said Bestie, have no input? Maybe he couldn't cope. Maybe she had more left in her to try but he was done. Maybe she felt (as have I) that she was days away from choosing between her child and her husband, because the family could no longer survive if all its members were under the one roof.
You wanna know how many men run for the fucking hills when they have a biological child like this? Lets just says its about as many as those who stay. This was an adopted child with a whole different ethnicity. Like it or not, that can make it even harder to bond for some people. Not all but some.
I'm not defending her, I'm saying that we have no idea what goes on behind closed doors but as sure as the sun will rise and set, its the woman who will get vilified.
Who the fuck thought this was a good placement for a child like this?
Again I don't know the facts. Was this a legit adoption where he was "placed" with them and they were fully vetted or was he purchased from an orphanage? I just don't know, but if he was placed, then who ever thought this would work is just as much to blame. One look at the image they try to portray, the amount of kids in the house and the families almost non existent grip on the realities of hardcore, extreme parenting are not so much red flags as exploding Super Novas.
Maybe she just didnt bond with him?
Im not going to elaborate on this one much but its the BIG elephant in the room. You cannot make yourself love someone. Its harsh but its true. It happens the world over with adoptions, in fact it happens with biological kids. No maternal love and high needs autism. Maybe thats what we need to be discussing but no one will because its too taboo.
How can she just return a child that didn't fit her lifestyle?
Easy, people do it all the time. Except some parents and carers return them in coffins. How many times have we all screamed about how these pond life parents who kill their kids, should of just given them up or let someone care for them who would of loved them? Just because they are rich and well educated doesn't mean they weren't harming him, or even feeling that that is the road they were heading down. My god I love my daughter more than anything I can fathom but I have hand on heart thought about killing us both. Multiple times. Why? Because I simply could not give her up but I also could not cope any longer. The only solution I could see was to drive us both off the road. That way I wouldn't be seen as some shite mother who smothered her daughter in her sleep but Id be viewed as some desperate woman who was failed by the system. But the upshot would be, both me and Alice would be out of our abject misery and my husband and son could get on with their lives.
Insane I know, but I didn't think straight for years with Alice at her worst. And I only had one other child.
In the years that followed me lurching from happy Mum one minute to planning a murder suicide the next, we entered a new phase. Alice wasn't so out of control now, she bit and scratched me less, she slept for 4 hours rather than 2 and she now only screamed 18 hours a day rather than 20. I no longer needed to kill us both but things were still so fucking awful that neither me or her Dad could carry on. We half seriously, half jokingly discussed selling our house and buying two small apartments in the same complex. This wasn't a one off conversation. We would split care. George could live with either parent and wander between the two residences at will. I would have Alice in the week so Greg could work and support us but he'd be free and could lead a near normal life. Every other weekend Greg would have Alice so I had some sort of "real life" and a full weekend off every two weeks would be just enough for me not to fall back into my murder suicide plan. Thats how serious it was for us. For 5 years we lived like that.
Just this week in Australia we have had a 4 year old girl with Downs Syndrome found starved to death and decomposing in her cot. He Dad gave so few fucks about her that he didn't even call anyone. She literally was left to rot. Her name was Willow.
Three days ago two autistic teen brothers have been found in absolute squalor on inflatable piss stained mattresses, in shit filled nappies. If only those fuckers had given them up.
Last week in America, a woman drowned her 9 year old autistic son. it took two attempts mind you. The first time she shoved him in a lake he survived.
Again Im not defending her or justifying her actions but this is such a complex subject.
I'll wrap this up now but I could write several more hundred words on the subject.
In summary it just looks a like an epic fuck up from start to finish that any idiot could of seen coming a mile off. Naive, yes. Stupid, yes. Shortsighted, yes. Social media twats, yes. Everything that is wrong with fucking bullshit bloggers about fake lives, yes. People quitting because life isnt perfect, yes. Special needs fashion accessory for the rich, yes.
But if what has come out of it is a that couple stay married and 4 kids get to stay in their fake palace of perfection with both parents and a little autistic boy gets to go to someone equipt to deal with his needs and no ulterior motive than, it didn't worked out as bad as it did for Willow.
Morally though I think her and her dip shit husband are turds, but they have highlighted perfectly why I need to continue to tell the world what disability is like for some of us. And no its not all gratitude and blessing and embracing difference. Its fucking brutal.
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