Important - Please read

Dear friends,
We have some news we need to share with all of you – as it is a major change in our family.
As you know, we adopted Mark & Miranda in late 2003. Then, in early 2008, we brought home Matthew, Maria and Max from an orphanage named Fundaninos. We went into the adoption of these 3 older children with eyes wide open but with hopeful hearts. Unfortunately, we did experience many problems with our oldest son, Max (who came home at 12 ½ and is now 14) since day #1... and despite our every effort here at home and with many professionals, we were unable to help him for him to be healthy enough to live in a family.
This is so hard.... Max is no longer living with us.
As you can imagine, he led a very hard life in Guatemala and came to us almost at age 13, with many issues. As it turns out he had more psychological and emotional issues than we anticipated. In early September, he became a safety risk to our other children. After much additional evaluation, it has been determined that he cannot return to our home to protect the rest of our family. He is now getting the intensive help he needs and we are working with professionals to find the best solutions for him until he is an adult. We are in shock, devastated, and are trying to figure everything out, and get everyone the help they need to move forward. It is hard to Mark, Miranda, Matthew and Maria to have their big brother ‘disappear’ from our family. We are keeping the specific details private and we hope you understand... but please pray for us, for Max, and for everyone this is affecting. Please honor our privacy and do not ask us or our children for additional details. We simply ask that you try to understand our situation and support us in this difficult time.
It has been a terribly difficult time for our family but without him here, the other kids, and for that matter, Mike and I as well, are doing so much better. To say the least, Max was extremely disruptive in so many ways. We are trying to move forward as a family of 6 instead of a family of 7. We also know that Max is still going to be much better off here in the USA than he would have been living in Guatemala ... Counseling, an education, medical and better nutrition... But it is still sad that it didn't work for him to live with a family. We will most likely remain his legal parents, but we will not have custody of him in order for him to get the help he needs. There are still many unknowns. We hope and pray that in the future, he will be healthy enough to maintain a relationship with our family and especially with Maria and Matthew, his biological siblings... only God knows our future and we will leave it in His hands.
Thank you for your understanding,
The Hanavan Family
Michelle, Mike, Maria, Matthew, Miranda & Mark