Family grows by three on Adoption Day
BASTROP — The strike of Bastrop Judge Benton Eskew’s gavel on Tuesday sealed what the Petty family has known in their hearts for a long time.
That afternoon, the Petty family grew by three. In the Bastrop County Courthouse, Dixie and Kent Petty officially adopted Jordan, 6, and his sister Skye, 12. The couple’s adopted son, Malcolm Morgan-Petty, adopted Jordan and Skye’s oldest brother, 16year-old Brian Haynes-Morgan-Petty III.
When Brian recited his new, long last name to the judge, his family and adoption caseworkers chuckled — but everyone also knew that his extensive surname reveals much about his, and his siblings’ story. It acknowledges the long journey the children have taken to get to a loving family.
Jordan, Skye and Brian were removed from their home in Bastrop in 2018 because their parents were involved in selling drugs and were incarcerated. While the kids were being fostered, they were separated. In that time, Brian was placed in three homes — one being a group home — across the state before being taken in by Malcolm Petty. Jordan and Skye had to move five times.
The three children, whose biological mother is Dixie Petty’s cousin, were among the dozen who were officially and gleefully grafted onto new family trees this month. Colorful balloons adorned the courtroom on the county’s Adoption Day, and kids’ giggles and babies’ coos filled the air.
After the Pettys’ hearing, the judge invited the kids behind the bench and handed them his gavel to close their own cases. Jordan climbed onto Eskew’s lap and joyously gave the gavel a swing.
“I like this day,” Jordan said as he walked out of the courtroom alongside his new dad.
In the last fiscal year, 4,586 children were adopted in Texas, of which 17 were from Bastrop County, according to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
There are currently 2,902 children waiting to be adopted.
Dixie and Kent Petty, who are 47 and 55 respectively and live in Lorena, took in Jordan and Skye about a year ago and said they had to work on reversing some of the emotional trauma the children picked up after being transferred from home to home for years.
Dixie said she had to affirm to the kids that they didn’t have to hide or steal food — that there wouldn’t be another day they would go without a meal.
Malcolm, 31, said he has had to teach Brian what it means to be under parental supervision and to have consequences for misbehaving. At one point, the teenager missed two months of school and picked up drinking.
After spending most of his teenage years without the guidance of an adult, Brian got used to making and following his own rules. Malcolm was the first person to tell him not to stay up so late on his phone and to do his homework when he’s supposed to.
Brian said it was frustrating at first, but then he realized that the new rules Malcolm was enforcing came from a place of love.
It was when Malcolm started reprimanding him, Brian said, he knew that he found “someone that actually cared.”
Malcolm said he knows more than most people do about the hardships of growing up without parents.
He was taken in by Dixie and Kent Petty when he was 16 years old. At 11, he and his three younger siblings ran away from his biological mother, who was doing drugs and was not providing food or electricity.
“After months of no electricity and burning pencils to see in the bathroom, I ran away,” Malcolm said.
He and his siblings moved in with his grandmother in her small home in McGregor, but since his grandma was in her late 60s, the kids were basically on their own.
Malcolm was friends with the couple’s son, Jake, who invited him for a sleepover one night during their sophomore year in high school. Soon after, “a weekend turned into a weekend plus Monday, and then a weekend plus Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and then eventually I told my grandma I was moving out.”
Though Malcolm Petty has called the Pettys his family since then, it wasn’t until last year that they made it official. His hearing was over Zoom because of the pandemic, but Dixie Petty said the day was emotional.
“It was just unbelievable, to make official what was already official in our hearts and mind,” Dixie said. “… he may not look like me on the outside, but I swear he’s my child on the inside.”
Brian said he was “happy because I’m finally somewhere that’s complete.”