The Harts had two adoptions of two sets of siblings. Possibly they wanted to keep their children within the same ethnicity or possibly the first set of children had a say in the second set of adoptions.
I am a white mom with black kids...here's how it happens. The agency asks, what color child are you comfortable with...some parents say white only and it is on all of your placement paperwork...and others say Latino...etc. We are also told that there are 30,000 children waiting for homes and the majority are black or Hispanic. Then you open your mind and your heart and you say, I can do this...I can adopt a child outside of my race. Trust me it is so not about you at that point at all...in fact, it will become even more so about the kids. You learn to do their hair and skin and you learn to navigate in a world full of racist people, both blacks and whites.
The adoption agency calls and says they have a child for you and you say yes or no...if you say no based on race...well....um, you shouldn't have been open to race.(and if you want a white kid only, foster care may not the adoption route one should take). My children are all brown, it's the way they wanted it to be...the first two have had a say on the color of the third...and the first had a say in the color of the second, so I'm a white mom with 2 soon to be three black kids.
Not once...was I in this to save a black kid! I wanted to be a mother, I figured why not adopt one of the 30,000 children without a home. After adopting a child from birth I ended up with a child who was bipolar, ADHD and psychotic who has three therapy appointments a week and another who still chews her clothes even at 12 because of sensory issues brought on by drug exposure in the womb. Most foster adoptive kids have issues and their issues can be really hard on a family.
I think part of the sheltering happening with this family was spurned by the negative outlook on who they were as a family. I have to say as a "hippie" mom myself with black kids, I'm feeling quite angered by the way this family is depicted. I don't think camping and going to festivals is wrong...neither is homeschooling or being lesbians in a transracial family.
Instead of shut people away, they should have reached out for help...perhaps it became too much for them, but abuse, showing off, saving and parading children usually is never an adoptive parent's goal. My gut sense says they shut themselves away because they didn't like the negative attention they got, needed help for the kid's issues but didn't reach out to get it, and then they couldn't control the behaviors anymore, didn't have the right resources to parent them or the skills to manage their issues so made bad parenting choices and would rather die with them...than lose them. Horrific of course, but going to festivals, camping, touching worms, and being a transracial family is not...driving off a cliff is.
But with the Harts it's not homeschooling being a problem per se, it's the possible connection between cps being called (after an incident which seems to have been verified through evidence of bruising).
It's not about taking the kids to hippy festivals -- which can have plenty of things for kids to do. It's not about camping--which can be a great experience for kids.
Maybe they did start out with adopting because they wanted to have a family and at the same time they'd be helping kids that needed a home. When that happens that's perfect. It's the key and the keyhole coming together.
I don't feel I need proof of death threats against them after the picture of Devonte and the police officer. I know there are people who act really crazy online and don't take a lot to proffer death threats to total strangers.
It's other things that are bothering me.
Kids going to political rallies all wearing signs? I can see it for a one-off, maybe a local thing relating to the potential closure of a local play park or school or something. I might agree if someone said that the issues these women were protesting about with the children were maybe not age-appropriate in every case, and maybe it wasn't all that frequent? There's definitely an argument for children being aware of the environment and learning about politics, and maybe these kids were particularly mature in these areas because they had parents who talked about these issues in a passionate way and the kids inherited the passion. Of course a parent who has six children who are black is going to feel extremely protective of their children, because that's what parents are like, and people like Jen and Sarah, politically active people are going to be extra interested when those issues are so close to home and personal to them.. But if it's valid to ask these questions and offer up these explanations, is it not also valid to consider that at least one of these parents might have also have had some less healthy reasoning going on in her head, at least alongside these thoughts and motives? Look at the respective stances of Devonte and his mom just before 'that picture' was taken and the report that Devonte was already crying?
Before the notice was posted, I was thinking it more likely that Jen was in the driver's seat. I get a sense of passive-aggressive abuse from her, not that she was making bad choices as she struggled with children who had ongoing issues that originated prior to their adoption. I will admit I sometimes feel a pang for family annihilators if I get a sense that they are in suicidal depression and not thinking clearly due to that. I am not getting that sense from Jen. I'm getting more of a sense that she's a controlling, narcissistic, child abuser behind closed doors and a good actress outdoors.
I think it's good that we put forward different options and different points of view and play Devil's Advocate. But what if these kids really have been experiencing ongoing abuse? Then driving off a cliff could be part of a pattern of someone who needs that control to the point of abusing their children and feels an intense fear that things might be falling apart.
I 100% accept what you are saying is true for you and for your family. So there are some similarities in transracial adoption and liking hippy festivals and camping? What if that's where the similarities end?
ETA. I will try to not post about this stuff any more in this way. I haven't intended to say anything offensive or generalistic, and I apologize if I've inadvertently done that. This is about three missing kids, three dead kids, possibly dead from homicide, at least one incident that sounds like child abuse, and the possibility that there was ongoing abuse or reoccurring abuse that got worse recently with fresh allegations made by two of the children.
