Single Mom Under Fire For ‘Whiny’ Facebook Post After Toddler Meltdown

Single mom Aly Brothers is drawing both praise and criticism for her August 21 Facebook post detailing her two toddlers’ public meltdown.

The image that Brothers posted to her personal page showed a mom on edge. No makeup, tears in her eyes, ready to explode.

Along with the picture was a long description telling exactly why she was in such a state of distress.

The single mom had just finished catching glares from a bunch of store customers and a cashier after her two boys lost control and started crying, screaming and throwing things.

“This is motherhood,” she said. “Motherhood is HARD. Single-motherhood is HARD. These tears started as the cashier of Giant Eagle handed me my receipt and continued for the entire drive home.”

Mom-of-two shares powerful post hitting back at those who glared at her because her little boys were crying in the… https://t.co/i5z89GXhV8

— John Muriango (@juanmuriango) September 1, 2016

Brothers admitted that her two “angel faced toddlers were not so angelic today,” sharing how her youngest “cried almost the entire time we were in the store,” adding that he didn’t want to sit in the cart, didn’t want to be buckled in, and that he wanted to hold all the groceries on his lap.

When she wouldn’t let him, he “threw his shoe… threw my wallet… threw the three groceries that did fit on his lap… and he cried.”

The single mom then said that people started staring and at that point her three-year-old son “wanted to be superman and stand on the cart.”

Brothers continued.

“That was fine. I told him to hold on and stand straight. He did not. He fell off, he leaned backwards and knocked things off their displays. He leaned back and bumped a stranger. Then I made him get down and he walked too far ahead of me and opened all the freezer section doors telling me all the things he wanted to get.”

Up to that point, Brothers said she was doing okay, but after receiving a series of glares for the boys’ behavior as if to say “can’t you control your own children,” she said, an older man chimed in to someone standing nearby, “She’s pretty young for two kids.”

At this point, the single mom admitted, “I lost it.” When the cashier handed her the receipt she broke down.

“They don’t know me. They don’t know me as a mother. They don’t know my children. They don’t know I was married before I started a family. They don’t know I left that marriage because of abuse knowing I would have it just as hard as a single mother. It’s hard people. The glares and whispers and judgments are hard. Sometimes I can control my children and sometimes I can’t. Sometimes they listen and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes I can handle it and sometimes I break down.”

The rest of Brothers’ post can be read here and if you follow subsequent posts since Yahoo! picked up the post for their main page, you can see this single mom admit that she has received both support and backlash from her story.

While most of the more venomous comments were removed from her Facebook page, the Yahoo! syndication brought the vitriol with commenters claiming the single mom shouldn’t have been taking her kids to the store for chocolate milk — a reward — when they were acting up.

Others trashed Brothers for not giving the boys immediate consequences like taking them home and leaving everything behind.

Still, others argued that a “butt whooping” was in order given the level that she said their behavior escalated to.

Some of the meaner comments focused on how Brothers “irresponsibly” had two children and “hoped for the best” instead of planning for her children before she brought them into the world.

‘This is motherhood’: Single mom shares honest take after kids’ grocery store breakdown: Aly Brothers’ Facebo… https://t.co/YA1BcCTDql

— david (@Dadap48) September 2, 2016

Thus far, the Yahoo! debate is at close to 1,000 comments while the single mom’s Facebook post has hit 5,000 with more than 17,000 shares.

But what do you think, readers?

Does Brothers have a point, or is she looking for too much sympathy as a single mom? Sound off in the comments section below.

[Image via Aly Brothers/Facebook]