24-YEAR-OLD Tasia Taylor is the mother of two teenagers. Tasia and her husband Drew, 26, decided to open their home to foster children and Rory, 14 was placed with them. Tasia said: “We just thought with our age, we didn't know that they would even let us take a teenager.” They then adopted Rory, her brother Isaiah, 12 and Tamiray, 16 who is Tasia’s cousin, then Tasia gave birth to Ashtyn Rose two months ago. Within two years, they went from zero to four children. The couple are both teachers and feel this has helped equip them in becoming adoptive parents but they have still been subjected to judgement. Tasia said: “People say we're too young to have adopted teenagers.” But the couple explained that they are very mature for their age and are doing their best. Their families were ‘terrified’ at the prospect of them adopting at first but became so supportive. The family are entertained by the fact that people think they are all siblings or a friendship group rather than parents and children. The couple would like to have more children and foster again too. Drew said: “We're always going to be the family for them.”
With thanks to Canton Adams - Captures By Canton Photography for their photography work featured in this episode.
With thanks to Canton Adams - Captures By Canton Photography for their photography work featured in this episode.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00I'm 24 and I'm the mom of two teenagers.
00:03We went from having zero to four children in the span of two years.
00:07People say we're too young to have adopted teenagers.
00:09We didn't know that they would even let us take a teenager.
00:12The worst comments that we've gotten have been people assuming that Drew is gross
00:17and that he's doing things with our kids.
00:19It just makes me sick. It's just completely preposterous.
00:26I'm Tasia Taylor and this is my husband, Drew.
00:28I'm 24 years old and he is 26 years old.
00:32We met, so we were working together at Western Sizzlin'.
00:36I'm 17 and the rest is history.
00:40We got engaged and got married in like four months.
00:44We were 22 and 20.
00:46We are both teachers.
00:48She teaches kindergarten and I teach high school.
00:51What do you call your parents?
00:53I call them mom and dad most of the time.
00:55Me too.
00:56Me too.
00:57Unless she's mad.
00:58I'm not mad.
01:01We have four children. The oldest is Tameray. She's 16.
01:04We have Rory. She's 14.
01:06We have Isaiah. He's 12.
01:08And then we have Ashton Rose and she's two months.
01:13I like building things with my dad sometimes.
01:16So whenever he has furniture he has to build, I build it with him.
01:19I think we've always wanted to do foster care.
01:22We kind of envisioned it to be younger kids, zero to six.
01:25Because we didn't know that they would even let us take a teenager.
01:28But then...
01:29Rory was one of my students. She was our first foster placement.
01:32And we didn't think that we were going to adopt her, but then we did.
01:35And then we got the call about Isaiah, who is Rory's brother.
01:38And we took him in as well.
01:40So Tameray is my cousin.
01:43My grandmother is raising her and now she's very ill. She has cancer.
01:47We were just going to pursue legal guardianship.
01:50But after we adopted the two kids, it was really important to Tameray that she was adopted.
01:55We actually just adopted her a few weeks ago.
01:58So we made things official.
02:00And the baby was just a surprise, I guess.
02:03So it went from zero to four in less than two years?
02:06Yeah, less than two years.
02:07We were a little bit overwhelmed, but it was just such an awesome...
02:10...period of joy.
02:11So you have a game on the 6th?
02:138 o'clock at Lamar.
02:15Oh my goodness.
02:17At 8 o'clock at Lamar?
02:19Well, that's Thursday.
02:25Oh no. She's like, there's nothing on the schedule about me.
02:28Every day is Rosie's.
02:29This week, every day is Rory's day.
02:31I have three sophomores.
02:33Can I take the rosary now?
02:34Yeah.
02:36Whenever I came here, that was my first time ever being a big sister.
02:41So I had to get used to it.
02:44Rory, what are you looking forward to teaching and maybe asking when she's older?
02:49How to do her hair and paint her nails.
02:52I don't know, it would be good and nice to people.
02:55I cried so much that first day of just holding this little bundle of innocence...
03:00...and kicking myself for not being there sooner for the other ones.
03:05How high does it need to be?
03:07Probably, I don't know, put your phone on it so we can see what it looks like.
03:12Did you have to ask your mom before getting TikTok'd?
03:14I said no for a really long time.
03:16Yeah.
03:17And Amory was allowed to have it first because she was turned 16.
03:20And then we realized that Rory was a little bit more responsible than Amory.
03:25So we let Rory have it too.
03:26So I already kind of had a presence on social media.
03:31I was just kind of posting about my life.
03:35And at the time, the kids had not been adopted or anything.
03:39I was kind of just sharing information about the foster care itself and advocating in that way.
03:44I guess it was never really like an intentional...
03:46...until I started realizing the impact that these stories had on people.
03:51How would both of you describe your mom?
03:53She's kind and loving and caring.
03:55She's always there for us.
03:57She's been alright. She knows what we go through a lot.
04:00She knows literally everything.
04:04Is your mom younger than all of your friends' moms?
04:07Yes.
04:08Yeah, I think.
04:10Rory's 14, Amory's 16.
04:12In just a couple of years, they're going to be adults and they're going to be starting their families.
04:15And so I'm going to be like a really young grandma.
04:18I could be a grandma before I'm 30.
04:21It's nothing bad.
04:23You have a fun mom.
04:25Thankfully, me and Drew were kind of equipped as teachers.
04:27We had been through trauma-informed care.
04:29All these different trainings to work with kids who had been through hard things.
04:33And I think that was definitely an asset of ours.
04:36But it was still hard.
04:38Definitely scary at first.
04:39I mean, when you go from having no kids to kids that have been through a lot of things,
04:43you're not starting with them as a baby and molding them.
04:46You're going to have to pick them up in the beginning.
04:51But the harder thing was figuring out how to navigate hard conversations.
04:56You're on my back.
04:58I'm pretty sure I had to do the top week one of parenting and that's not normal.
05:02People don't usually have to have the birds and the bees talk, right?
05:05It's usually a build-up to that.
05:09I guess in the beginning of 23, I shared a video kind of just addressing some hate that we had gotten.
05:15In real life, we didn't get a whole lot of judgment.
05:17But definitely online, people didn't seem to understand why we would do this.
05:22You know, the most common criticism is we were too young to do this.
05:26They need to be with someone with more life experience or more knowledge.
05:30WTF bro had her first child at 7 years old.
05:33This is the comment I get more than anything else on my channel.
05:37And it makes me so crazy because my name literally says adoptive mom.
05:41I did not have a baby at 7 years old.
05:44This one says 22 is way too young to foster and adopt teens.
05:48It's not really about the age.
05:50I think that we are really mature for our age.
05:52The worst comments that we've gotten have been people assuming that Drew is gross
05:57and that he's like doing things with our kids.
05:59And that makes me so deeply upset to even hear that.
06:03It also makes me wonder like where their heart is that that's where their mind went.
06:08It just makes me sick to see that kind of thing.
06:10That's something I can't even really just, I can't really even entertain those comments.
06:14We are their parents. We have them because we want to protect them.
06:17Why would we put them in a situation like that?
06:19And our kids will go to bat on those comments too. That makes them so mad.
06:23It's kind of one of those things where like we're doing the best we can and we're learning
06:26and we've done a lot of research and I mean I think we did a pretty good job.
06:29I think so.
06:30What did your other family friends think when you told them you were adopting?
06:35I think at first before they were able to meet him they were like whoa.
06:39Terrified.
06:40Terrified.
06:42There's her boyfriend.
06:44His mom is like one of the most caring women of all time.
06:47But I think her concerns were with how young Drew was.
06:51Also with how old the kids were.
06:53And also it can be a lot sometimes.
06:55Well I think it's fair to worry about your children.
06:58I want to make sure they're not getting in over their heads.
07:00Yeah.
07:01My family, they've been really really supportive.
07:03Because I had talked about it before so it wasn't any big surprise.
07:06Who's the most competitive?
07:08I don't know that it's me.
07:09In real life I think maybe a lot of people don't even realize that we're their parents.
07:13Anything that's just confusion like wait how's that, how is she their mom?
07:17Yeah they're usually more entertained.
07:19Like more interested.
07:20Yeah.
07:21Or we've gotten friend group.
07:22Pick up the card first.
07:25Do you have a goal here?
07:27I'm confused on what I'm doing.
07:31Well I hope in the future that we can also be this for many more kids.
07:35People keep asking if we're done and I'm like I'm only 24.
07:38Like I don't think we're done.
07:39Yeah.
07:40I definitely don't think we're done.
07:41No.
07:42No.
07:43Well we for sure will foster again and we would like to have a couple more biological.
07:49I guess if we had to describe our family in one word it would be loyalty.
07:53It's important to them to know that we're here for the long run.
07:56We're not going anywhere.
07:57We're always going to be the family for them.