Last week there was a thread that discussed “shaming”…well, this mom does it right!
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When Kyesha Smith Wood heard how her teens behaved in a movie theater, she was appalled. So the Alabama mom took to Facebook to apologize for their behavior in a post that has been seen by thousands, including those in the theater that night.
Her teenage daughter and step-daughter had ruined a screening of “Cinderella” for a family going through a rough time, Wood’s son informed her.
The girls had been talking during the screening even after another patron asked them to be quiet, according to Wood’s account. Because the girls continued to be disruptive, the patron spoke to them after the movie and explained why their behavior upset her.
“After the movie she approached my girls and told them that her husband had been laid off and this was the last movie she would be able to take her daughter to for a while and my girls ruined that for her.”
Wood wanted to make it up to her daughters’ fellow movie-goers by having the girls write apologies and pay for the family’s next trip to the movies out of their allowance, she said.
To do that, she needed to find the family,which she called a long shot. Little did she know that the local sheriff’s office would share her post.
While I applaud the mom for being concerned about her kids’ behavior, I’m very uncomfortable with publicly humiliating one’s children, and have to wonder how much of this was the mom hoping for her 5 minutes of fame. They girls were annoying, not evil. This could have been handled with some anonymity. (I also don’t understand why the family didn’t complain to the theater manager and get the kids quieted or request a refund.) Must every minor event become an internet sensation?
I don’t think she expected it to go viral…nationally. How could she have found out who the 'victims" were unless she went to a source like social media? She was likely hoping that those in the B’ham area would share and the “victims” would then come forward.
I don’t think the level of “embarrassment” is too much for the DDs. We don’t even know the girls’ names.
in the end, there are probably a number of parents who’ve shown the story to their kids and said, “I’d do this, too, if you behaved rudely and ruined another person’s ‘night out’.”
As to why the victim didn’t notify the theater, who knows? That isn’t really relevant to what this mom did. There are likely a few reasons the victim didn’t get up during the movie and complain…likely she couldn’t leave her young one in the seat, and she likely didn’t want to pull her out and miss even more of the show.
To be honest, I would never have had the chutzpah to do something like this. I would be too afraid that the public embarrassment would badly outweigh the “crime” of talking through a movie.
But I’ve got to love her determination to teach her kids to think of others.
I think the mom was trying to do the right thing. She didn’t do it to get her 5 min of fame. I also do not believe the woman at movie theater was being dramatic in telling the girls her husband had just lost his job. It was probably the last straw for her. Have you ever been so upset that you blurted it out to a complete stranger?
If it was my daughter in the movie theater, I probably would have want to do something to make it up to the woman.