A mum who spotted her son publicly shamed in a Facebook group of 65,000 people responded in the best way possible.
Stacey Robertson was alerted to a photo of her 14-year-old son Louie with a group of kids on the Facebook page Crimewatch Wirral, which a resident posted along with a message saying the group had been throwing food and rubbish on the floor before ‘giving a load of mouth’ to others and running off.
The post also called out their parents, saying: ‘if these animals are yours, have a word with them about respect and manners.’
And it seems Stacey did indeed have a word with Louie, as she replied to the post saying: ‘The one in pink is my son and believe me he was not brought up this way, I am mortified, he will not get away with this.’
The mum went on to explain what she had in mind for son:
He is off school tomorrow and will be doing a days litter picking and who ever he has been rude to I do apologize and promise you he will not get away with this i am actually so shocked he is behaving like this because he is no animal and had been brought up to respect the environment and everyone around him, I’m sorry he has acted like this and thank you to who ever posted this, otherwise I would not have know how he behaves whilst out with certain friends, ones he will no longer hang around that’s for sure! [sic]
True to her word, Stacey made her son go out the next day and pick up litter around the community, filling two black bin bags full of plastic and rubbish, the Liverpool ECHO reports.
Speaking to the ECHO, Louie wanted to make it clear the bad behaviour was taken out of context and that he’d been dared to drink the vinegar out of the bottom of a cone of chips.
Stacey added:
Him being a div he did, and his reaction was to throw the cone and the chips on the floor – he then told his friends he was going to the Post Office to buy a drink because all he could taste [was] vinegar, which is why he wasn’t in the second picture. [sic]
Either way, that’ll teach him not to be rude, or to drink vinegar. Kids these days…
Many people praised Stacey for her actions, saying ‘respect to you’, ‘well done’, ‘great parenting’ and ‘hats off to you’.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.