After a video of her children’s behaviour at an Oklahoma restaurant went viral, a mother of two has publicly responded by labelling its original poster a “bully”.
The video, first posted to Facebook by two diners, depicts a young, unattended girl climbing barefoot across the booths in a restaurant. In the midst of the video, she clambers over a table with seated patrons, and is later accompanied atop the seats by her brother.
While the original video has since been removed, it garnered thousands of negative reactions, and is reportedly up to 20 minutes in length.
Mother of the children, Madison Vining, took to Facebook to defend her actions and condemn the poster, 9 NEws reports.
According to Vining, the staff of Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers noticed the two patrons filming, and asked them to leave the premises.
Vining admitted that her daughter's behaviour was "a little wild" but insisted that her parental distraction was caused as a result of an ongoing “sensitive conversation with a close friend”.
“At the end of the day… If we had spanked our daughter and yelled at her, perhaps they would have shamed us for that as well,” Vining wrote.
Vining is now threatening legal action against those filming, under the grounds of an invasion of privacy. She said the video had "heartbreaking" consequences for her family.
“Of course, we are embarrassed about our daughter’s behaviour and we take full responsibility… but the situation could have been handled privately before posting a viral video.”
Meanwhile, the restaurant has also been flooded with negative reviews for its decision to evict the two patrons who were filming the children instead of dealing with the incident.
“I would have appreciated management stepping in and explaining to parents that it is a health code violation to be in a restaurant without shoes and then walking on the tables, this is totally disgusting,” one user wrote.
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Top Comments
How sad that she thinks the only two options in this scenario are her children running wild or spanking. I wonder if the people who filmed had spoken with staff and nothing was done so they filmed the behaviour. Twenty minutes is a long time to be so absorbed in a conversation that you don't know what your kids are doing.
After seeing the behavior and looking at the booths in the diner, I was almost expecting Vincent, Jules and Marsellus Wallace to turn up to chill them out.