Claire Baldock couldn’t believe her eyes when she checked Instagram after posting an innocent video of her daughter.
‘You’re a monster,’ one of the comments underneath read. ‘What a horrible parent,’ proclaimed another. ‘Christ. What a woman. Poor kid,’ someone else had written.
Responses like these were seemingly endless, with total strangers piling on Claire because of the 40-second clip.
The video, intended as a light-hearted post for fellow parents to relate to, showed three-year-old Olive discovering several of her old scribbles had gone in the bin. The tot can be seen fishing out the ‘artwork’, telling her mum: ‘That’s not rubbish’.
Claire, 37, captioned the post writing: ‘Lesson learned: always use the outdoor bin to dispose of Olive’s “artwork”.’
Thousands of fellow parents liked the post, but more than 1,000 also flocked to the comments to criticise. The hate was so strong that the mum from Buckinghamshire ended up blocking people and turning the comments off completely.
‘When it comes to motherhood, people seem to think it’s a free-for-all to pass opinion on your parenting with no context or knowledge of the reality,’ Claire, a travel blogger who runs women-only tours with her twin sister, told Metro.co.uk.
‘It makes me so angry as they have no idea what’s going on in a person’s life, and if you were to say that to someone who is struggling mentally, it could be crippling for them.’
Claire, who struggled with postnatal depression after Olive’s birth, says the messages she received about the video would have had a ‘massive psychological effect’ on her if she’d been sent them during her darkest time.
‘You’re a new mum, you’re questioning everything and doubting yourself and your ability to be a parent, and to get that kind of comment could send you spiralling for weeks or even months. It’s something you’d replay in your mind over and over again,’ she explained.
‘I’m fortunate that I’ve had plenty of therapy [since Olive was born] and I’m obviously much better. I know that I’m a good mum, but I still have to work really hard to manage my thoughts when it comes to things like this.
‘Even though you know you’re not a bad parent in your heart of hearts, if you see comments like that on a bad day, when you’re tired, it will really get to you and I worry for other mums who are sent abuse online.’
Despite the backlash she’s received on this and several other posts, Claire doesn’t think mums should have to stop sharing content about their children online.
‘Women should be able to put things up that they enjoy if they want to,’ she said. ‘The issue is with the people who don’t seem able to control themselves when typing a message.
‘I’ve never typed anything awful in a comment, if I don’t agree with something I just move on.’
The parent is also very aware that this likely wouldn’t have happened if a man had posted the same video.
‘People probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it. We experience the same thing with our travel content as my sister and I travel and run tours. We’ve had nasty comments in the past about being away from our children for a few days and if it was the other way around, and the dad was on a trip, people wouldn’t say anything.’
And in case anyone was wondering, Claire doesn’t bin all of Olive’s masterpieces — not by a long shot.
Her daughter’s drawings and paintings are featured prominently all over the house, with special pieces in pride of place on the fridge.
‘That child is living the life of luxury,’ states Claire.
The pictures thrown away in the video were actually from an old bag of artwork Claire discovered while redecorating Olive’s bedroom. The contents had gone mouldy, hence why they had to go.
‘I just popped them in the bin and didn’t think anything of it but she came in and found them. Approximately three seconds after telling me they didn’t belong in the bin, she’d forgotten all about them.’
She added: ‘I think it’s a situation any parent with a toddler who’s creative will be able to understand. Honestly, my only mistake was that she found them in the bin.’
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