Young moms have enough on their hands, but imagine coming home one day to find a nasty, anonymous note stuffed into your mailbox from a neighbor complaining about your crying baby. But that’s exactly what happened to 26-year-old Trish LaForty last Thursday when, after a family day out at the beach, she came back to find the following handwritten message (pictured above).
“You may be able to ignore your baby crying but we are tired of listening to him crying non-stop all day.”
The note wasn’t signed and LaForty, who lives in the small town of Coolum Beach in Queensland, Australia, says she still has no idea who left the note there. But she says she was “shocked and emotional” after receiving the nasty missive.
And while she says that, in fact, her infant son Will does not cry any more than any average baby, “no mum wants to hear that message, regardless of how true it is,” she told an Australian television station .
But LaForty didn’t take the insult lying down. She posted the note on her Facebook page along with a response of her own — a response that received more than 500 Facebook “likes” along with a string of supportive comments, in the first day or so.
“To whoever wrote this note: thanks. Like being a parent isn’t tough enough… You didn’t even have the guts to come knock on our door. FYI Our baby doesn’t cry ‘all day’, he cries when he doesn’t want do go to sleep, when he’s getting his nappy changed and when I say ‘no’ because I refuse to let him be spoiled and run around like he owns the joint. If you’d like to chat more, feel free to pop in. You obviously know where we live.”
Buoyed by the favorable messages that “flooded” her inbox, she said, LaForty went out to find which one of her neighbors wrote the note. She says in the six months she has lived in the Coolum Beach housing complex, she has never encountered any conflicts with her neighbors.
And when she asked several directly about the note, they all appeared as shocked as she was — and they told her they never heard little Will crying during the day.
“I wanted to clear the air, but also to find out if anyone had experienced any similar notes,” she said. “Every baby has good days and bad days. Parents should be able to have the support from their community. I think it’s sad that there are still people out there who lack the true feel of what a community should be.”
Trish LaForty said she hopes that anyone bothered by her crying baby , including whoever wrote her the anonymous note, will simply speak to her face-to-face next time — and maybe even offer to lend a helping hand.
[Image: Facebook]