Crazy Middles and 22 Kids

[Prettyinpink25]

I usually really like the crazy pieces but did you notice Arrianas behaviour during the trip? She was bossy, spoilt, ever dramatic. I think they give her anything she wants, she comes across as a spoilt bulli

Her behaviour has got worse and worse recently she really is difficult to watch these days and I find myself cringing at her attention seeking behaviour constantly, I was glad when Hannah and Hallie decided to share a room when they moved because I feel like Hannah is easily influenced and very much idolises Arianna and it’s not good!

 

[Louisej3]

elsewhere I saw it suggested that she might be pregnant and because of their religion, quick wedding

Won't be the first quick wedding this one won't be secret tho I'm guessing

 

[leabytottle]

I found the “name reveal” video really disturbing. At one point the middle son said he was scared about being filmed without a disguise and Crystal laughed. I also can’t believe they said their full birth names, prior to coming to the CP house. Surely, they shouldn’t be doing thst? I used to like the family, but something feels off now. One minute they were adopting a special needs child, then a baby, then savannah and Lucas, now these 3. I hate to be cynical, but it’s like they know they’ll make money with “new kid” reveals, so adopt more and more for views. They must make a fortune to have a huge house, designer gear, lots of cars and multiple holidays. The girls trip to LA must have cost a bit, now 25 to Disney??? Plus all the matching clothes, food, merch- they probably paid for it from the profits from exploiting their new kids...
Alex and Savannah are very young, haven’t been together, and prob desperate to have sex, so get married!
Someone mentioned whether any of the adopted siblings dated. My prediction- Bella and Lucas. Both a bit rebellious and quirky. They were teens when adopted, so not grown up as siblings. Last prediction- I think Hallie is gay. It wouldn’t surprise me if they sent her to some archaic and barbaric conversion therapy, but passed it off as normal therapy...n

 

[LLR]

OMG Savannah's face from 23:10 in on the latest CP video

I'm not exactly sure what you're on about, to me she just looks like she doesn't want to just watch Ariana open her presents and overreact to the camera. I'm not sure if she even knew she was in camera frame. Ariana comes across the least friendly of the girls but she was the first kid adopted so I guess she didn't sign up for all the kids that came after her. For the most part
Savannah seemed to be living her best life in that video though and we have to remember even though she does look older she is still a middle schooler. Be kind.

 

[GeorgiaP]

I saw it. I don’t like him. He should do a little more research

 

[KTC]

Now they’ve made a whole video about Nicole without Nicole even being in it! I don’t buy what they’re saying about all these ‘realisations’ etc, if you genuinely felt she was meant to be in your family to the point it brought you to tears, you’d do everything in your power to not to lose touch. And then to say you met this random child and felt that they were meant to be your grand child is equally ridiculous. Nicole seems beyond uncomfortable around all of them, it’s painful to watch. Her boyfriend already has 2 kids and she has 1, so the baby she is pregnant with will be their fourth. And of course Shelly and Jared favour Lacey’s boyfriend of course

I'm not going to bother watching the new video as I'm assuming it's just Jared and Shelley trying to convince themselves that Nicole feels like their own, especially as it's Jacobs sister. I don't think they'd want to put it out there that the same vibe just isn't there like it is with their other children. Also, lets be honest, if you're popping out kids that casually, 9 time out of 10 it boils down to lack of education which also means maybe not the best jobs/income. Nicole probably saw all the goodies Lacey got and thought she'd be gifted a car for her gender reveal too.

I remember in a sibling tag in lockdown where Shelly said Lacey cried about no longer being the eldest girl living at home and asked if she’d been replaced when Nicole started living with them

I blame Jared and Shelley for that tbh. They always have favourites and Lacey had already started to be pushed out for Cynthia, and then Nicole came along too.

 

[LLR]

Plenty of families online are christian, but the saturation of mormons online is too much for it to have just 'happened'. I know from watching Jordan and Mckay, that the missionaries are very much using social media to attract people to the religion, it's not beyond to think they're engineering entire channels.

Given that JustJordan33's channel is just her parents giving updates at the moment they must have permission from the church to do that (and I assume to show the pictures of the other missionaries she is serving with).

If the church are encouraging it then people are far less likely to question the damage it is going to do to their kids. People go to their priests and church elders for advice, because they believe they are godly and know what is right.

A lot of the Mormon parents seem quite naive, including Crystal from CP - the other CM/CP parents seem slightly more grounded although I think they are all very much drinking the koolaid as it were when it comes to their church. The financials of the LDS church seem very dodgy if you've ever seen stuff about that, beneath all the religion it is definitely a money making venture for those at the top.

I've watched a couple of Jewish channels and they seem much less kid focused. There's a difference between having a family YouTube channel where the kids are the main focus and just being a YouTuber with kids who occasionally appear because they are there but are not the main draw of the channel and obviously when you have kids and start a channel you have to decide which way you are going to lean.

 

[Alohomora]

Not too keen on that name choice

 

[paigelemonade]

I’m not convinced, it’s not like everyone suffers from it, she had no idea Lacey would suffer, I would think more like maybe her doctor could’ve mentioned it as it can happen.

Mmmm true. But I do get the sense that Lacey has been thrown into the whole pregnancy/baby world without much practical advice from Shelley and Jared. They’ll buy her things and design the baby’s nursery but I don’t get the vibe that they have any close relationships with their children. I doubt they even educated her on contraception but that’s just my opinion.

 

[paigelemonade]

Anyone watch the latest vlog with Nicole’s gender reveal? Something is definitely up, she’s acting like she’s in drug, I bet Shelley is becoming closer to Nicola for the chance to get the baby

I thought it was the other way around, and got the impression Nicole was using Shelley and Jared to get things and money for the baby! Nicole use to look like she detested staying with them in older vlogs, and left as soon as she could and we never really heard anything more until recently. I think she’s seen how much they’re helping Lacey and is just putting up with Shelley to get things for free. I read a comment that said in this video is the first time we’ve heard Nicole call Shelley ‘mom’, so like you say something definitely isn’t adding up.

 

[crow_doom]

Anyone else sick of crazy middles “sad face” thumbnails?
Also why do they let the kids get dogs like there is no tomorrow?? Who is paying for food, vet bills, insurance etc??? Drives me mad. What about when they all go off to college/grow up? We already see them moving out leaving their dogs behind.

 

[KTC]

Whereas Shelley and Jared said in a video that they left it to the last minute and any child who hasn’t behaved as well as they would like would get less presents than the others, as though being put into care and adopted into a new family with a blatant hierarchy wasn’t enough.

Agreed. I think it's disgraceful that they do that. They're basically blackmailing damaged children to conform or get less presents. All of those children have different traumas, some worse than others, then you have the biological stuff like hormones, that are harder on some also. Who denies their child of Christmas presents for their behaviour? You just deal with it when it happens. They're holding a grudge all the way up to Christmas and tarnishing that day for them. It's just another situation showing how detached they are from how a family behaves. I couldn't see CP doing that.

 

[LLR]

Halie was very open about her issue being anxiety and honestly I think her issues are much most likely due to her exposure to the foster system because whilst she has living a great life with wealthy loving parents who are together and lots of siblings she's been exposed to all the kids coming in and out of the house. A lot of the kids are dealing with their own trauma but Halie, who was originally the oldest child before Alex and Melinda were adopted, has always been looking out for her younger siblings.

She seems highly empathetic and I think the exposure to the foster system has probably shown her too much of the evils of the world too young. They talk about a foster sister who Halie was really attached to and then their adoption for this child fell through as they were sent back to their bio parent. They talk about a child arriving with nothing and wearing a shower cap as she had headlice and Halie immediately offering to share her things. Foster care is traumatic for everyone involved.

I think getting away from everyone else and their trauma probably gave her the headspace to work on her own.

 

[Meisify2]

She still has her for just now but pretty sure Crystals aunt is going to be taking her to live with her, when Ariana moves out for college

Oh yes I remember that now. Seems like Arianna is bored of the puppy already, when she first got her she was with her all the time, now we never seem her, the picnic would have been perfect to take the puppy out for some fresh air, they never walk the dogs it sad

 

[paigelemonade]

Has anyone else seen their two videos on the rule books they have for their adopted children? Deffo didn’t sit right with me, I think Shelly comes across as very fake nice and controlling

 

[paigelemonade]

I’ve been meaning to say for a while, how awful that Lacey admits being horrible to Lizzie- to the extent that Jared even said Lizzie wasn’t ‘at peace’ until Lacey had moved out.

Cynthia has now moved out too- meaning Jacob is now the oldest boy and Aubrey the oldest girl! So strange, the kids must feel so trapped to all want independence so badly at 18. I felt bad for Harlan during the videos where they taught moving out life skills…. quite ignorant of them not to consider the fact he’s moving out with his bio dad, so won’t need all the tips and tricks. He stayed silent for most of those videos.

I always thought Trey was about 3/4 years old, not 7! They baby him so much. I see Anaveah has been prepped on being their next show girl, with her vlogging lots on the Easter video

 

[KTC]

There is no way all of these kids are just willingly moving out at 18 (& younger) with no issues with Jared or Shelley. Most of them have jumped ship at the first chance to live with bio family over the middles, so not even their own place, just with a different family. Although if someone put a camera in my bedroom as a teenager I'd be moving out asap too

 

[lokencrepis]

I know what therapy she had because the programme she went to only offer one kind of therapy. Growing up together or not doesn’t change that they are SIBLINGS. What kind of creep talks about teenage siblings potentially dating?!?

That's great and all, but I know a family of 4 bio siblings and 2 adopted and one of the bio sons had a crush on his adopted sibling. This crap happens. The two girls were adopted at ages 12 and 14, then bio kids were all 17+.

 

[paigelemonade]

Their chore routine is stupid, it just encourages snitching on their siblings. Cynthia has said in a couple of videos how she doesn't mind it as she will just catch someone out for leaving something in that room & get rid of her chore straight away. Why don't they just assign more than one child to the hardest rooms like the kitchen and alternate chores each week? That way there isn't one person stuck with most chores as god forbid they might have left a cup on the table, and if everyone knows they will be getting that chore soon, they might think about what mess they leave it in for the others.

Also, part of the reason they can run chores like this is because they have cameras all around the house, even in the kids’ bedrooms, and explained once how all the kids have to get dressed and changed in the bathrooms because of this all seems a bit cult like imo

 

[LLR]

Honestly I agree that putting children on social media is exploitative but how inactive this thread is shows that they aren't really doing very much that is above the general level of putting kids on YouTube for everyone to see. They always say that they get consent from people to put the videos online for videos such as reuniting with family. I don't think they have bad intentions, both families are obviously passionate about foster care and adoption and you can tell when they speak. I think they are just a little misguided at times.

The idea of showing the children and 'teasing' the audience with shots of them BEFORE they are adopted is weird.

I've always assumed that they did this is make the new children feel more included and part of the family. I think they would probably feel left out if they excluded them from filming.

And they can make videos and memories, why does it need to be publicly posted to youtube? I have videos of my childhood, stored on disk and vhs, there is absolutely no need to have it publicly available. If theyre doing it for other adopted/adoptive parents....why does it have to be monetised if they're just giving advice to other people? Why does it all have to be branded?

Everything today is monetized, you can't get anything for free, everyone charges for things and honestly a monetized YouTube video is probably one of the most easily accessible places to put information. CM have stated they started posting videos on YouTube to be more easily shared with the children's bio families, which is in itself a problem. They've talked about refusing offers of reality TV shows because they thought it would be bad for the children's welfare. They children don't have much individual social media presence, only the teens have accounts and that's just part of being a normal teen.

Also, children cannot consent to having their image and story out there. So even if they are happy now, to tell all these deeply personal stories for millions to watch and judge, they physically and mentally cannot grasp the long term implications of this. University? Jobs? Future relationships?

CM have said the kids only share their stories if they want to and I've always felt a lot of the adoption stories feel quite bare-bones and PG with the exceptions of Melinda and Jamie's which both include sexual abuse and even then they do not go into much detail. Mostly the reason they post they seems to be along the lines of "we want other kids in foster care to know it gets better".

They started posting in 2015 which was a time when there were a lot of family vloggers most of whom are doing a lot more questionable things and before I think a lot of people were aware of how it could negatively impact the kids.

Honestly my main problems with CM/CP and why I'm on this thread in the first place are:

1. The ridiculous house CP bought which has walk in closets bigger than a lot of UK single bedrooms. Like more than twice as big as a few of my friends bedrooms growing up. Although I guess they wanted most of the kids to have their own rooms.

2. Lacey going from wanting to travel and do stuff to giving up on everything to have a baby.

3. The ridiculous rule book that the CM have and their nonsensical chore system.

4. The blatant favouritism that CM show to some of their kids to the point you could probably write an ordered list of how much they like their kids.

5. CM having cameras in their children's bedrooms in St. Johns (I know they want cameras on every exit and entrance but it's still weird)

6. Both CM/CP sharing their town and their kids school when living in St. Johns putting their kids safety at risk

7. CM/CP both showing their full front of their house making them easy to find again putting their kids at risk.

8. The awkward relationship the CM have with Nicole and everyone apparently telling them that she was trying to take advantage of them

+ Probably more I'm forgetting.