Moms Come To The Defense Of A Woman Shamed For Giving Her Kid Donuts For Breakfast
No one's ever taken their kid to Dunkin on a Sunday morning?
In my house, Sunday mornings are for donuts. We wake up a little late, head to the Dunkin drive-thru in our PJs, and pick up some delicious pastries to nom on before we even get home.
I’ve never filmed myself doing this and then been at the mercy of thousands of TikTok users who will surely judge me. Still, one mom did film herself serving donuts for breakfast and was met with absolute visceral, including mom-shaming and fat-shaming comments.
After the video went viral (12.5 million views and counting!), several TikTok moms came to the defense of the now-called “donut mom,” lambasting trolls for sending hate to this woman without knowing a damn thing about her life.
“Donut mom” is actually a woman named Alexandra Sabol who shares on TikTok about her life as a mom, including several videos where she plates her kid’s meals.
Sabol went viral a handful of times but not because of her fashion or her aesthetically pleasing home. Quite the opposite actually! She was totally and completely reamed, on her own TikTok page, for not having the best pots and pans and for, of course, serving her kid donuts for breakfast.
One mom commented, “Strawberries and Blueberries, oatmeal with agave and chia seeds! Scrambled eggs with Avacado toast anything but powdered donuts Mom! We have to do better.”
“Sugar with a side of sugar! 🤪,” another wrote.
“It would be cheaper and healthier to do eggs and fruit. Maybe some cheerios,” one user commented.
“Such an exciting and fun mother,” another wrote sarcastically.
The comment section goes on and on with people going after Sabol for her choice of meal for her one-year-old. After getting traction, several other moms chimed in, defending Sabol from the hate.
I guess none of these people have ever given their kids an ounce of sugar or coasted through the McDonald’s drive-thru before. Wow, can’t imagine being that perfect of a parent! Kudos!
One popular TikTok mom, Bailey, pointed out some striking double standards when it comes to the hate on Sabol’s video showing just how far we still have to go as a society.
“I see creators on this app every single day who have a million or so followers and fit the traditional standard of beauty. They will make their kids junk. They will go spend $500+ dollars at the grocery store on mostly junk and no one says anything probably because they're popular and they're skinny,” Bailey said.
“You have this woman that is not a widely known creator, is not a hundred pounds, and she's getting shamed on a large scale getting shamed. I am just so terribly sorry for her.”
Bailey continues, noting that moms are pretty much set up for failure no matter which way they choose to parent their kids. She cooks most of her family’s meals at home and tries to buy organic products. She also breastfed her kids for years.,
“I'm that mom and yet, sometimes you know what [my daughter] eats? Cake pops, donuts, french fries, cookies because she deserves to live a little bit because sometimes while it's not the best, sometimes, moms, we're not at our best. Sometimes, we lack a little bit,” she said.
That being said, Bailey knows that feeding kids processed foods constantly is not the best. However, she knows well enough to add a little context to what is shown on social media. A 30-second clip is not someone’s entire life.
“Should bare minimum parenting be something that we are condoning or promoting? Absolutely not. Should feeding them junk every day be the standard? Absolutely not, but I have enough empathy and common sense to understand that the vast majority of moms are not doing that,” she said.
“If these people took 10 seconds to scroll through this woman's profile you would see she actually feeds her kid protein, fruits, and vegetables at almost every single meal. You saw a clip of her life and thought you knew enough to judge her.”
Another TikToker and pediatric occupational therapist, Kim the OT, shared her thoughts on the viral video, sharing that there is usually some other reason why parents opt for certain meals, including donuts and apple sauce.
“As a pediatric occupational therapist that works with picky eaters the first thing I noticed is that these foods require less advanced oral motor skills,” she explained.
“The applesauce is a puree and the powdered donuts are more of a soft food. What this tells me is that possibly her daughter might not have the oral motor skills to eat foods that are of more challenging textures and mixed texture foods like scrambled eggs with bacon mixed in or peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
“This mother has mentioned in other videos that she's had a lot of challenges getting her daughter to eat meat and that her daughter basically eats chicken nuggets. This sets my brain thinking that there is a textural issue going on.”
See how easy it is to watch a video, gather some context clues, and not post something hateful on their page? No one truly knows this child’s eating habits or history. No one knows how much of this “bad” breakfast Sabol’s daughter even ate. A fed kid is a happy kid!
