Adopting 2 children with a baby already at home then giving away 1 child only a few months later?

I don't think the family did enough research about adoption beforehand. The mother seems to have had a sunshine-and-rainbows view of adoption, imagining that she'd have a big happy multicultural family. The truth is though that many adopted children have emotional and behavioural problems, and can sometimes be violent/aggressive. Also, she realised very quickly that biology does matter, as she loved her own child more. "Forget love... I didn't even like him" - I think that sums up how naïve it is to think that you can unconditionally love a child who is not your own.

They should never have adopted, but once they had adopted and the child became violent, they had little choice but to give him away in order to protect the other children and to have a chance of a normal family life.

Here's yet another case of a violent adopted child who essentially ruined the adoptive parents' lives: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2132834/Wh...

Spanking is definitely not the solution. Physically punishing a child who already has behavioural issues will most likely just make those issues worse. Giving the child away to people who could better cope with the child's needs was the best option for all concerned.

I agree that the parents took on more than they could handle, but they had never had children (much less traumatized children) before, so their ignorance is understandable. And it doesn't sound like the mother gave up on the little boy quickly or easily. She just came to understand that she wasn't equipped to deal with a child who was endangering the other children in the household. I think she made the only decision she could responsibly make, at that point. This lady lives in the same state as Hana Williams, an international adoptee who was "disciplined" to death by her adoptive parents. The mom in this story probably knew about the Williams case, and she wanted to deal safely with her own situation before it got to such a desperate point.

The article says that the little boy is "thriving" in his new home. I hope he is, but I wish the reporter had done a little more diligence to verify that before publishing the story. This boy needed to be the youngest child in his home, but Haiti is a poor country, and they probably aren't equipped to do thorough assessments of their orphans' psychological needs before the orphans are adopted.

As for spanking, I didn't read the comments. There's a school of thought that says that spanking is the perfect, all-purpose, go-to discipline for all behavior problems, regardless of how insecure or traumatized the child is. That, I strongly disagree with.

I read the article yesterday, and honestly I think the little boy landed in a better situation, and that's what's really important here. It didn't sound to me as though they just blithely gave him away, but truly came to believe they were the wrong family for his needs, and then made sure he got a family that was right for him.

Rather than pridefully keeping him and bumping along not doing right by him, they made the hard decision to give him up to someone who could meet his needs.

I was raised with an also-adopted brother who turned out to have severe problems due to his mother's alcohol use while pregnant with him. My parents stood by him and did their best to care for him, but ultimately it was the prison system who got custody of him, and I spent much of my teen years being traumatized by his completely out-of-control behavior. He threatened our lives on a daily basis.

Maybe these parents could have saved being judged by people outside the situation if they had kept this little boy, but perhaps this little one would have ended up like my brother - in and out of prison for years, and traumatizing the other three children in the house while he did it.

I can't judge them.