A couple who were blasted for saying they left their two toddlers alone in their cruise cabin while they dined at the ship’s restaurants have broken their silence on the controversy.
Abby and Matt Howard, who run a popular parenting podcast, sparked backlash after revealing they went to dinner while their sons, Griffin, two, and August, one, slept in their cabin on their seven-night cruise.
‘We ended up taking them for five nights and it became apparent that they weren’t enjoying it and therefore we weren’t either,’ Abby said in a now expired Instagram story.
‘So, then we switched our dinner time to after their bedtime and FaceTimed the monitors while we ate. And that worked out much better for everyone.’
In Abby’s original post, she said that the baby monitors the couple had brought with them didn’t work on board so they used FaceTime to watch the pair sleep.
TikTok famous couple Abby and Matt Howard have broken their silence after facing extreme backlash online for admitting to leaving their two twins in a cruise cabin alone while they enjoyed dinner
Social media users who follow the couple quickly blasted them over the move and made reference to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, who vanished from her family’s holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007.
One Reddit user posted: ‘It’s literally common sense that you do not leave a baby alone unsupervised.
‘If it was socially and morally acceptable to leave babies unsupervised by an adult, then baby sitting services would not be a thing.
‘Are they seriously that f****** dumb? Do they not watch the news, have they not seen what happened to Madeline McCann?
The couple have been together since high school and host ‘The Unplanned Podcast’ about relationships and family. They have more than 5.3million followers on TikTok more than seven million subscribers on YouTube.
On Monday night they released a TikTok claiming a family member was always with the children while they were at dinner.
‘We take our roles as parents extremely seriously and we love our children more than anything in the entire world, and we’re very protective of our kids,’ Matt started off.
The couple have been together since high school and have over seven million subscribers on YouTube
‘We had someone with our children at all times on this boat. Period,’ Matt said, adding that the speculation surrounding them is ‘completely untrue.’
His wife then chimed in and said: ‘I can see where my story did lead to misunderstanding which is why I ended up deleting it several hours after posting it because I could see that it was causing concern and misunderstanding.’
Abby then thanked everyone online for being ‘concerned about the safety and well- being’ of their children.
‘As their parents, that is our first and foremost main concern…. So, thank you.
‘But I do want to clarify that we have not, would not, will not ever leave our children unattended. We would would never, ever want to put them in harms way in anyway,’ she added.
They said they take their roles as parents ‘extremely seriously’ and that the speculation about them is ‘extremely untrue’
The mother said her family would ‘tag team’ to help the couple out with watching their children and added how ‘thankful’ they are to them for doing that.
TikTok’s have since appeared showing the now expired story with what Abby had said, seen here
Viewers quickly started to speculate about their statement as one said: ‘I hope this is the truth.’
‘Thanks for the clarification because it did come off like the boys were alone- context is everything,’ wrote another.
‘I’m actually baffled with how irresponsible these two are. If they’re comfortable enough to leave their babies unattended on a cruise ship, have they done this before at home?’
While another added: ‘For them to post about it like it’s some genius parenting hack is just wild.
‘They are irresponsible teenagers in adult bodies.’
In December of 2022, Abby told Raising Arizona Kids that the couple wanted the focus of their content to be on them handling parenting.
She said: ‘We never want to sacrifice our relationship or our family for [social media fame]. That was one of my biggest concerns going into this.
The couple have been together since high school and have over seven million followers on YouTube
‘Through constant conversation and always prioritizing us and our family is how we keep doing this.
‘We want the focus to be us and how we are handling parenting rather than just focusing all on Griffin.’
While Matt added: ‘If you would have told me this would be our life three years ago, I would have laughed.
‘We used to dream about one day working together and now we get to and it’s the best thing ever.’