Mom blasted for making homework ‘optional’ for young sons
When it comes to virtual vitriol, this “lazy” mama’s hit the motherlode.
For deeming homework “optional,” green lighting unlimited screen time and encouraging her kids to fight their bullies, mom Danielle Gallacher is getting virtually whacked by social media’s yardstick.
“Things we do as parents that not everyone agrees with,” Gallacher, 32, an engaged mother of two, from Glasgow, wrote in the closed-caption of her controversial TikTok clip. “Homework is optional.”
“We don’t force them to do it,” she added. “Who needs the stress?”
The Scottish nonconformist’s laissez-faire stance on sons Caiden, 9, and Oliver’s, 5, school assignments is just one of her many permissive parenting strategies that’s now sending digital detractors into a mom-shaming spiral.
“The [optional] homework [rule] is a road to disaster,” carped a keyboard critic beneath Gallacher’s post, which has garnered over 1.7 million views.
“Should have to take an IQ test before being allowed to breed,” a mean-spirited commenter added.
“Basically the kids rule you, and do what they want,” another cynic chimed.
“Lazy parenting dressed up as ‘progressive parenting,’” wrote an equally unimpressed faultfinder. “You portray it as ‘cool’ or ‘hip’ to make urself feel better about doing a crap job. Not hard to see.”
But Gallacher is far the only outré mommy to catch a cyber black eye for her atypical tactics.
Mami Onami, a spiritual influencer and mother of two, too, has found herself on the receiving end the internet’s ire for “unschooling” — a pedagogical philosophy that encourages tots to learn through self-directed teaching rather than a curriculum — her brood.
Arizona mom, Cayley, was recently roasted at TikTok’s spit after admitting to letting her five-year-old son “opt out” of doing his homework.
“I just sent my son’s kindergarten teacher a cutesy little email saying I’m sorry, based on the stress, mental, physical anxiety it’s causing my kid, we are done,” said the brunette, whose little one felt overwhelmed by a 15-page packet filled with lessons. “No more homework.”
Gallacher, a civil servant, and fiancé Jordan O’Donnell, 32, agrees that the pressures of at-home learning are too much for tikes to bear.
“I feel kids nowadays have a lot of stress on them and there’s far too much expectation,” she told Kennedy News. “So we parent in the old-school way we were brought up, without any stress.”
Her cool-mom vibes aside, Gallacher denies being anti-academics.
“People have said I don’t value education. But I do,” she insisted.
“You need to have a balance between education and being a child,” the rebel continued, “parents and kids don’t have much time between getting home and bedtime.”
“I wanted [the] post to show there’s all different ways of parenting children and not one way is right or wrong.”
But Gallacher wasn’t always so easygoing when it came to ensuring her sons’ grips on their ABCs and 123s.
“We used to be quite different with homework and [made] Caiden do it before he did anything else,” she confessed. “But it just caused chaos and he didn’t want to do it — he wasn’t benefiting from it.”
Since making the switch from strict parenting to loosey-goosey five years ago, Gallacher claims her eldest boy’s managed his home, school and social schedules with ease.
‘He’s got a week to do his homework. So if he’s too tired to do it and wants to play with his friends that’s fine,” she said. “It’s a [9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.] school, so it’s basically a full-time job.”
“If he wants to do [his homework], then great,” added the mellow mother. “But if he doesn’t, then he’s got to go to school and probably get into trouble for not doing it.”
“So he learned.”
And Gallacher claims she’s more than willing to assist her babes with their coursework when necessary.
“My way isn’t lazy,” she asserted. “Just because it is optional that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t help him with something.”
“The majority of the time he doesn’t need any help,” the blonde explained. “If he’s making mistakes then that should be handed [in] to show a teacher he’s doing something wrong.”
For Gallacher, parenting isn’t all about making sure her children get the grade.
“There’s more to life than just doing well in school,” she said. “There’s social skills to have and there’s the world to see.“
“As long as my kids are well-mannered and they try their best then I don’t think we can ask for much more.”
Online, Gallacher was also blasted for granting her boys as much time on their iPads, phones and TVs as they pleased. She also caught flak for encouraging her rugrats to “hit back” at ruffians looking for a fight.
“I understand limiting screen time for some children, but I don’t think mine spend too much time with screens to do that,” she explained. “We don’t limit our screen time as adults — and we use our phones all day and then watch TV at night. So that’s a bit hypocritical.”
And if when it comes to the backlash she faced for promoting kiddie violence, the unapologetic mama isn’t turning the other cheek.
“[With] the amount of bullying in kids’ lives,” said an unflinching Gallacher, “I think it’s good for them to be able to stick up for themselves, too.”
