An operating room nurse turned influencer has sparked a fierce debate over whether she and her husband did the right thing by threatening to discipline the son of a stranger who spat at them on a flight.
Shayla Monnier and her husband Andrew boarded the crowded connection from Atlanta to Denver and found themselves sitting behind a couple and their young daughter, who they assumed was between three and five years old.
The girl repeatedly turned around to blow raspberries at the couple, showering them with saliva and resisting her parents’ attempts to control her.
Monnier said her husband “lost his cool” and told the parents he would check on their son if they didn’t, but she was shocked by the blowback after posting her experience online.
‘Is everyone really nice to parents these days?’ Because that’s not what I mean. Not if you’re spitting in my face,” she said.
Shayler Monnier told her TikTok followers how her husband threatened to discipline the son of a stranger who repeatedly spit at them on a crowded flight.
Thousands of people responded as the couple’s response to their dilemma divided the internet.
Monnier, from Windsor in California, said the boy had been asleep in the seat between his parents for most of the flight before waking up and becoming interested in passengers behind him.
The girl decided to blow on a raspberry, sending “saliva flying all over my face and my husband’s arm,” she said in her viral TikTok.
“I was a little surprised and the parents told him not to do it and then it became common,” he added.
And she fought them and turned around in the seat and spit at us again.
‘This time I raised my hand, just to block the spit and her parents grabbed her and made her sit down, well she struggled, trying to turn around and spit at us some more, and she did.
‘He turned around for the third time, now when I say spit I mean (blow raspberry) but the spit was going everywhere.
“After the third time, my husband very sternly told the parents: ‘If you don’t control your child, I will do it for you’ and ‘why don’t you put a mask on him? You both wear masks, why doesn’t she do you have a mask?
“Then the mother yelled at him and said, ‘If you had kids maybe you would understand,’ to which my husband responded, ‘We have five kids and six grandkids and I promise you none of them would do something like that.'” ‘.’
The 44-year-old’s TikTok page lit up with thousands of comments praising, criticizing and suggesting what she could have done differently.
“First thing I thought when you said you got spit on your hand… get up and wipe your hand on your parents arm,” Karen Lewis wrote.
Monnier, pictured with her husband Andrew, insisted her five children would never have behaved that way and blamed “gentle parenting” for her ordeal.
Some were fully supportive, but others suggested that Monnier may not have known all the facts.
“I’m 63 and I can feel my dad’s palm on my butt,” wrote another. “I can tell you he would have only done this once in my life.”
“I have no idea why there can’t be adults-only flights,” sighed a third.
“Well aren’t you high and mighty haha?” a fourth commented. ‘Your kind do everything perfectly, right?
‘Blowing raspberries is not spitting, you are definitely angry about nothing. I bet you are someone who is always angry.
“I guess you don’t understand how out of control he was,” Monnier said in a follow-up video.
‘I have children and my children would never have done that.
‘Yes, I considered the fact that the child may have special needs, okay, sometimes that’s obvious, sometimes it’s not, it wasn’t obvious to me.
‘If that’s the case and you’re the father, then you need to have some kind of plan, right?’
“So I don’t know what that is, whether you sit in the last row of the plane so your child can’t get close to the people behind them, whether you bring a car seat and strap them in, or whether it’s you.” . He talks to your doctor to help him take some medication so he can sleep on the plane.
“Whatever the answer is, it’s never that they are allowed to just spit in someone else’s face.”
Monnier said there was nowhere else to sit on the full flight and no one would have wanted to change seats after seeing the boy’s behavior.
But he said the situation was resolved when a flight attendant saw the disturbance, approached and ordered the parents to put a mask on their daughter.
Monnier returned with a follow-up video to respond to the torrent of comments.
She and her husband were offered flight credits and the child immediately went back to sleep for the remainder of the flight.
“It’s a very complicated situation,” Learnthinks wrote. ‘Even if someone’s child misbehaves, if you correct them, parents sometimes overreact! and get mad at you! Some parents just let them misbehave and then pick a fight.
“They showered you with the saliva of a gentle upbringing,” SRA added.
“I have no idea why there can’t be adults-only flights,” sighed a third.