Shaylon is a 13-year-old boy who wants just one thing for Christmas: to be adopted. The teenager has been moved from foster home to foster home, and is hoping to find a family to call his own through adoption.
In an interview with WXII 12, he explained that he doesn’t want to keep being shuffled from place to place. “I really want to get adopted, because I don’t want to keep moving from home to home, it gets aggravating,” he said. And he isn’t asking for a lot. “Everything is nice, they clean up a lot and I help them and they go out and do stuff,” he said of what he would like to have in a family.
WXII 12 also gave some insight into what Shaylon likes to do, and who he is. “I like to paint, it kind of soothes me, its calming,” he said. “I’m funny, active and smart. I like changing different types of sports and I always liked baseball when I was a kid.”
While Shaylon’s background wasn’t shared, he made a heartbreaking plea: to be able to keep in touch with his younger sisters, whom he helped to raise.
READ: How pro-lifers can change negative cultural stigmas surrounding adoption
Families interested in adopting Shaylon can get more information from the Children’s Home Society of North Carolina, which released a flyer with more information, and written by Shaylon himself.
“I want a family who is funny and likes to do a lot of things like putt putt golf, fishing, going to the park or just riding around in the car,” he wrote. “I want nice parents who want to spend time as a family but who also give me my space. I don’t like it when people argue or when the house is dirty. I like attending church every week. I would prefer a black or white family. When I’m upset, I like to be alone until I calm down then talk about it. Staying in contact and being able to see my siblings is important. Adoption means someone who will take care of me and keep me safe.”
The older a child gets, the less likely he or she is, statistically, to be adopted. Most parents prefer to adopt infants, whom they view as a clean slate, leaving older children like Shaylon without stable homes. And the circumstances are dire: children who age out of foster care without being adopted are at extremely high risk for homelessness, unwanted pregnancy, substance abuse, unemployment, higher chances of criminal activity, and more.
Adopting a teenager like Shaylon doesn’t mean giving someone a roof over their head for a few years; it means giving someone the love and support of a family for the rest of their life, with parents who will guide and help them through the challenges they’ll face. For Shaylon, and other children like him, adoption can change the entire course of their lives.
For more information on adopting Shaylon, please call the Children’s Home Society of North Carolina at 336-335-9256.
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