You wouldn’t expect people to get angry over a video of a mom playing in the snow with her giggly baby, but that’s exactly what’s happening to Julia Mancuso. The mom and retired Olympic skier recently shared a video of herself tossing her 17-month-old into a giant, fluffy snowbank, but worried followers are accusing her of putting her little boy in harm’s way.
“Sonny loves the snow,” Mancuso writes in her post. “Winter is coming! Who is excited?”
In the video, Macuso holds her son and tosses him backward into snow that’s almost as high as her shoulders. He’s smiling and laughing through the whole thing, and afterwards, he giggles and gets excited when she asks him if he wants to do it again.
Unfortunately, the responses to the video aren’t as cheerful. “I wouldn’t do that to my child,” one person writes. “Ugh, that’s crazy. What about his neck?”
“This is the saddest thing I have seen a mother do to her child in a long time,” another person writes. “Your baby trusts you and this is what you do?? Great Job Mom.”
Several people are also calling the video “child abuse,” and others are asking to see more of Sonny’s reaction so they can determine whether or not he actually had fun. Mancuso responded to the mom-shamers by posting a follow-up, behind-the-scenes video and explaining that the snow was soft, freshly fallen and free of any hidden objects that might hurt Sonny.
“Just wanted to share because I’ve gotten some messages that just really don’t understand this video,” she writes. “Sonny loved it. There was zero risk of something being buried in the snow since it happened over the course of a day on our patio — we literally watched the snow fall.”
In the second video, the mom does several practice moves with her son. She lifts him up and drops him in the snow with her arms still around him. Then she tries a small toss where he only lands a few inches from her hands. Sonny is clearly enjoying himself the entire time.
Mancuso also has tons of experience with snow. Remember, she’s an Olympic skier! She explains that the conditions were just right for safe playing, and she never would have tossed her son into the snow under dangerous circumstances. “You really don’t get these conditions often and can only enjoy the fluffy softness the very next day,” she writes. “So, yeah, I don’t think it’s a good idea to throw your kid into any snow bank, but when it snows like this! It’s game on.”
There are certainly risks when playing in the snow. The Cleveland Clinic stresses that young kids should always be bundled up appropriately, constantly supervised andplaying in clear areas, and parents should always be aware of the conditions outside. In this case, all of those guidelines were met.
Other posts on Mancuso’s Instagram page show Sonny snowboarding and riding a ski lift with his parents. It may not be the kind of lifestyle every parent is used to, but it’s safe to say Sonny and his family are planning to enjoy many more snow days in the future.
