Mom Gets Harsh Response To Her 'Terrible' Teacher Appreciation Gift Of Homemade Bread
Apparently, it's not the thought that counts.
Tik Tok Teacher appreciation week is a very important time of the year in many hearts: it’s a great chance for parents and students alike to show their gratitude to the adults in their lives who are dedicated to protecting and educating the next generation of kids.
For some, this usually means setting aside the money to invest in gift cards, letters or notes, snacks, or any other kind of small gift to convey a token of appreciation.
Others, however, take their thinking outside of the box and craft new, unique gifts, such as one mom’s homemade bread.
A mom unexpectedly got backlash when she made bread for her son's teacher.
One TikTok user, who goes by the handle “@thebreadbaglady” posted a short tutorial video documenting her process for creating this year’s gifts for teacher appreciation.
For some parents, their kids have multiple teachers, all wonderful and deserving of appreciation. It can sound ideal to buy them all a nice gift card for their hard work, but when the numbers begin to add up, the idea can quickly cut a family’s budget, especially if they have multiple children.
For one mom, the cost of gifts is an issue so instead of investing in expensive gifts for her kids’ educators, she took a unique approach: baking them all fresh loaves of bread with homemade garlic dip.
This Tik Tok user has dedicated her platform to bread making, and posts tutorials on how to bake different kinds of bread, informative videos about the science and process of breadmaking, as well as showcasing the artistry of the food she makes. Bread is a big part of her life and business, so for teacher appreciation, it seemed like a good idea to tap into those skills she already has.
For her “easy, inexpensive, delicious” teacher’s appreciation bread, this woman showed the process of setting her bread out, baking it, and then packaging it up in cute wrapping to give to her kids’ teachers.
The recipe was incredibly simple, with only a few steps and ingredients that were all deliberately chosen to be money-conscious, so anyone, regardless of budget, could pick up the idea.
Although the entire cost was only about $4 according to her, the effort is still a labor of time and love. The bread itself took almost a full day for it to rise, 30 minutes to bake, and then it still had to cool completely before being packaged up and ready to be delivered. This mom’s gift idea might have been simple, but it wasn’t a last-minute, thrown-together gift, this was something heartfelt.
However, not everyone shared her enthusiasm for the idea.
One commenter, in particular, reacted with scorn, writing: “This is a terrible idea. Can you imagine giving someone BREAD as a token of appreciation? ‘Homemade’ and cute packaging or not. Heck no.”
The original poster reacted with her own video, explaining her frustration with the aggressive way the comment was phrased.
Obviously, she could imagine giving someone bread as a token of appreciation, since she made an entire video about doing so, and so could the thousands of others liking, commenting on, and saving her video for later.
The TikTok user noted that she didn’t have an issue with people disagreeing with her, but it was the tone that bothered her so much. “We can disagree with people and we can be kind,” she pointed out.
Many times on the internet, people seem to forget that the videos they are commenting on belong to real people with real feelings and lives so they don’t bother trying to engage in respectful conversation.
The bread-making mom pointed out that “these comments don’t come from people who have been encouraged and loved on and cared for, they come from people who’ve been talked to like this.”
She refused to continue the cycle of frustration and disdain that was brought to her, though, and she responded kindly to the message, saying: “I wish that I could give you a hug, and say you didn’t deserve to be talked to like that. Nobody should have talked to you like that. Nobody should have discouraged you like that.”
Her parting remarks are words of wisdom to all of us, regardless of our opinions and disagreements:
“Kindness always, always. If you have something positive to say: kindness. If you have something negative to say, do it in kindness.”
Hawthorn Martin is a news and entertainment writer living in Texas. They focus on social justice, pop culture, and human interest stories.