Mother shares video calling out stranger who said to spank child

‘Take your kids in public and let them be kids’

A mother has shared an emotional video on Facebook in which she criticised a stranger for suggesting she spank her child in a grocery store.

Everyone knows that when something mildly upsets a child, nothing can stop them from screaming at the top of their lungs no matter the time or place.

When Mary Katherine Backstrom ventured out to buy some food with her two young children in tow, she was faced with that exact predicament.

Backstrom could sense that her children, aged two and four, were becoming increasingly restless during the family excursion.

“You know you see the meltdown coming like a mile away,” she said in a video on Facebook.

“I am just strategising at this point - okay, let’s skip the frozen food aisles, we’re going straight for the bananas, then we’re going to aisle eight, we’re checking out and we’re getting out of here.”

After a kind supermarket employee handed her children balloons at checkout, chaos ensued.

Two-year-old Holland lost the grip on her balloon almost immediately while her brother Benjamin cried in empathy for his sister.

As Backstrom attempted to calm her children, a stranger in the vicinity made an unpleasant remark.

“The lady behind me in the parallel line checking out goes to the guy who’s checking her out: ‘I’ll tell you what I’d do with that behaviour - I’d take him outside and I’d…’” before making a smacking gesture with her hands.

33-year-old Backstrom, who blogs as Mom Babble and has more than 143,000 followers on Facebook, had the perfect response to the stranger’s brutal comment.

“When I am frustrated, when I’m upset, I know how to handle those emotions. My son cannot regulate himself yet, and he wasn’t even being a selfish kid, okay, he was empathising with his sister who lost her balloon - why would I want to beat that out of my child?” she said.

“Why would I want to take something that’s good about my son and punish him for it?

“Let’s have a little chat about something called toxic masculinity, okay, because what you are recommending I do to my son is take him outside and beat the emotion out of him.

“You want to know what’s wrong with half the men in this world who can’t express themselves, who feel ashamed to cry? That. That I’m going to beat you for crying in the grocery store, is what’s wrong.

“Well, you know what? Screw that lady.

“Take your kids in public and let them be kids, and don’t be ashamed that they’re being kids."

The video currently has nearly half a million views on Facebook, with many parents commenting that they've experienced similar situations of wrongly being made to feel ashamed by strangers.