Mother defends viral Facebook post 'shaming' son for bullying

A mother whose Facebook post 'shaming' her son for bullying was shared thousands if times has defended herself against critics saying she wanted to show her son that his "actions had consequences".

Terri Evans from the UK was "absolutely disgusted" to learn that her 12-year-old son had "purposefully tread" on a new student's shoes causing her heel to break.

Terri took to Facebook and, in a post that was shared more than11,000 times, she made it clear that this would not be tolerated:

"If you so much as breath in her or anyone’s direction in a bullying manner I will personally hand you over to their parents for every demeaning chore they see fit for as long as they do… kiss goodbye to your birthday money as you will be buying the girl a new pair of shoes and a bunch of flowers! ‪#‎iwillnothaveabullyinmyhouse"

While her son was initially tagged in the post, Terri removed it when the post started going viral.

Commenters were divided - some praised Terri for her no-nonsense stance while others were worried that the post went too far.

"Why extend the humiliation? Your poor son. This will haunt him forever. A mistake at 12, online now for all to see."

"I understand that you wanted to embarrass your son a little for his actions but tbh outing him on FB is a bully move. He clearly got his behaviour from you. Shame that you aren't realising that."

Terri has now made the post private but has shared the following to her Facebook page, saying while she stands by her actions, she regrets that it was shared so widely.

And here's the original post, in full:

‘Absolutely disgusted that my 12 year old son saw fit to purposefully tread on a new girls foot at school and twist his foot with such force it broke her brand new shoes (causing the heel) to snap.

‘I’ll tell you something... if you so much as breath in her or anyone’s direction in a bullying manner I will personally hand you over to their parents for every demeaning chore they see fit for as long as they do… kiss goodbye to your birthday money as you will be buying the girl a new pair of shoes and a bunch of flowers! ‪#‎iwillnothaveabullyinmyhouse

‬

‘Update. To answer a few questions, yes my son can see it, he was tagged in it before it went viral(which I didn’t realise was going to happen) so his friends could see that his actions have consequences, he is not big, clever, hard or funny, he’s a 12 year old boy answerable to his mam.

‘I don’t much care who doesn’t agree with my parenting style, my son humiliated and embarrassed a girl, regardless of his reasoning (which was he didn’t expect to break the shoe he just thought she may step out of it or stumble) that little girl still cried, for anyone’s knowledge that girl may have left her old school because she was being bullied… then imagine how much worse my son’s ridiculous act would have made her feel.

‘So my so called embarrassing him online is a to be quite frankly nothing in comparison to the humiliation that little girl had to face walking round with a broken shoe and red eyes from crying when she is new.

‘Ps… of course I sat and spoke to him about his behaviour, I didn’t just tag him in a post and he read it! I am wholly confident this was a single occurrence which won’t be repeated.’

H/T: Metro