KILLEEN, Texas — A local mother went viral with a video of her disciplining her son in the Hobby Lobby bathroom in Killeen.
Nicki Harper Quinn had her son do push-ups in the Hobby Lobby bathroom on Saturday after her son wouldn’t listen to her instructions.
Quinn said her son was being disobedient because she didn’t hand him a tablet to play with in the store.
“My son was touching a whole bunch of different things and not listening and I was disciplining him by talking to him and explaining,” Quinn said. “I mean I had asked him repeatedly not to bother his brother, not touch things, put things back, stop doing all of these things. I just wanted my son to behave and not have electronics in his face for him to be quiet because he has to learn and in order to know how to properly act in society when you're in public.”
She took the moment of disobedience and turned it into a learning moment.
Quinn’s discipline went viral on Facebook after Molly Wooden shared a photo of Quinn and her kids. Wooden’s post on Facebook said:
“To the woman in the Hobby Lobby bathroom. If my hands weren’t full of children I would have applauded you. As your son gave you the back talk of the century, you stayed calm and collected while adding 10 more pushups to his already growing number.
We need more parents like you, who aren’t afraid to parent their own children because of what someone else might think. He said “Mama, this is the bathroom floor, grossssss”.
She said “maybe you shouldn’t have been acting obnoxious. (They have soap for a reason.) 10 more.”Random woman of Hobby Lobby, I love you.
Keep on raisin’ them boys right!”
Quinn said she was “shocked” to see that the photo had gone viral.
“I didn't find out about it until Monday evening when a friend sent a screenshot to me of the post when it only had about 8,000 likes and reactions,” Quinn said.
After she saw the photo on Facebook, she reached out to Wooden and thanked her for the post. The Facebook post and outpouring of support shown through it was reassuring for her.
“I contacted Molly and sent her a heartfelt message thanking her for putting a positive light on my parenting because there are a lot of times I cry because I don't know if I'm doing this thing we call motherhood right,” Quinn said.
Quinn, a military wife, said she must “be firm a lot more” when her husband is deployed.
“My son has ADHD as well as ODD, which is Oppositional Defiance Disorder,” she said. “That alone is difficult and my husband being deployed most of the time leaves me to be mom and dad, so I have to be firm a lot more than I would normally be because my husband is not around most of the time as he’s serving our country.”
The two mothers, Wooden and Quinn, are now “hoping to grab coffee” sometime.
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