Mum's Life

Mum is under investigation for trying to SELL her son for monetary gain

Alex McDaniel, has been sharing her parenting gifs online since she became a mum. 

She shares the happy and the sad, the funny and irritating and the parts when your kids frustrate you and you want to strangle them. 

She has many followers who rely on her words for solace and comfort, however, she has been hit with a new low this week when CPS turned up on her doorstep. 

CPS, Child Protection Services, in the States, contacted the mum at work after a common parenting joke she made online was reported for human trafficking! 

Alex relayed a day with her son, where she tweeted: "Three-year-old for sale. $12 OBO." 

The tweet was accompanied with two laughing emojis and as most parents will know we tend to joke about these things at the end of the day, often when we're trying to find humour through parenting moments. 

Nonetheless, a person reported the mum for human trafficking offences to authorities, citing the tweet as evidence of her 'sale'. 

But, has the internet gone too far? Is this a case of a concerned bystander, or do we need to relax a little as it's surely common sense that a mum is not going to sell her three-year-old?

We all make jokes about how we're going to strangle our children to other parents, but NO ONE would actually do that – we love our children. 

Do these phrases need to stop though?

Thankfully, Alex's case was nipped in the bud quite early, with the mum having no problem with CPS, because they were just doing their job.

But while what started out as a joke and turned into an investigation is now a misunderstanding, the mum does admit it wasn't all plain sailing. 

"While it's laughable now, at the time it was anything but. CPS wanted to come into my home to inspect it and do further interviews with my son and me to determine if there was evidence of abuse."

"However, the fact that anyone who presumably follows me or keeps up with my parenting vignettes would report me to CPS is not only stunning – it's concerning."

"When I started tweeting his obnoxious/hilarious quotes, I did it for other parents who know how hard this job is. Really hard."

"The challenges of managing a child and a household and a career aren't always discussed because at some time we decided as a society that parents should be judged on their bad parenting rather than their good."

Alex claims that her family is the only thing in the world that she can protect and she is not prepared to put them in jeopardy by sharing a few humorous parenting tweets online.

We're glad Alex did not stay silent on this, and that she has come out on the brighter side of the issue, but we want to know your opinion…

Do you think the person who reported the mum was OTT or should we as parents stop using phrases such as about our kids? 

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