American mummy blogger Katie Bower, who has more than 52,000 followers on Instagram, posted a birthday message to her son, Weston, for his sixth birthday this week.

But it wasn’t the happy snap one might imagine.

Bower and her husband, Jeremy, have five children – four boys and a baby girl – and Bower is prolific in her social media usage of them. But she took the occasion to comment on something she’s been noticing on her Instagram.

The post of Weston, which has since been deleted, begins sweetly enough, with Bower saying she was “thankful” for her “cuddly and easy” little son.

“He is one of the most helpful and sweet-hearted little boys,” she wrote. Which is why, she then went on to explain, she doesn’t understand why her previous posts of Weston “never got as many likes or comments” as photos of her other children.

“Instagram never liked my Munchkin and it killed me inside,” Bower writes in the post.

“His photos never got as many likes. Never got comments. From a statistical point of view, he wasn’t as popular with everyone out there.”

Bower then blames herself for the ‘failure’, claiming her “insufficiency” to post regular photos of Weston was the reason for the low numbers. And then she issued a ‘call to arms’.

“So can we do this right,” she encourages her followers.

“Because I truly KNOW my Munch deserves alllllll the likes.”

Finally, Bower concludes the post by explaining her motivation for it: “I revealed this feeling because I know one day he will see the numbers and have to learn that his value is not in online approval.”

Which, to be honest, is a little confusing – because why then has she noticed the numbers at all.

It was that line which proved to be the nail in Bower’s coffin; her equating success to Instagram likes has seen the post now go viral, mostly due to the enormous backlash.

“one day he will see these numbers”

I am mystified and horrified at the level of self-involvement.

— SharkHand (@SharkHand) November 19, 2018

before she can teach her son ‘his value is not in online approval,’ she needs to learn that lesson herself.

— Lauren Kleiman (@laurkleiman) November 19, 2018

Full-time mommy bloggers scare me. These women use their kids’ faces to promote content and products that they will make money off of. It is the 2018 version of turning your kids into child stars and profiting off of them, and who knows what kind of long-term impact it’ll have?!

— nora horvath (@iamnorahorvath) November 19, 2018

Damn. That mommy blogger might have cured me off insta forever …..by liking pple’s kids selectively si am also part of the problem pic.twitter.com/l9WTAgnavF

— Lady Grace (@gracerrati) November 19, 2018

Today, Bower posted a tearful Instagram Story, reassuring her followers that she had learnt from the negative experience via “personal growth”, and she understands now it doesn’t matter if some posts get fewer likes.

The mum of four added she accepts many people don’t understand her concerns because blogging is “a weird job”. She also denied that she was purely seeking validation for herself – or for her son.

“But kids are smart, y’all,” Bower said in the Story.

“Kids know there’s likes on photos and it’s very human nature to compare. So for me, my personal growth journey is teaching my kids it doesn’t matter.”

This isn’t the first time Bower has faced backlash. In September, she was met with outrage when she wrote a post in which she revealed she didn’t realise people had died in the September 11 terror attacks.

“I was a stupid airhead at the time that didn’t realise that people were actually in the buildings and it didn’t hit me until a year later that so many people died,” she admitted.