Mother with child berated over request to bus passenger using wheelchair

The wheelchair-bound passenger refused to move for the woman and her daughter. Photo / Getty Images

A mother who asked a man in a wheelchair to move so she could sit next to her little girl on a busy bus ride has been shamed online.

According to Fox News, the 32-year-old was left unsure of her own actions and took to the Reddit forum AITA (Am I The A**hole) to ask if she was in the wrong.

While she didn’t share her location, she penned that they boarded a packed bus and realised “there were no empty seats available, except for one near a person using a wheelchair” - a man she believed to be about 40.

“I asked the person if [he] could move [his] wheelchair to another spot so that my daughter and I could sit together, but the person declined,” she wrote, noting the man told her he needed the space for his “mobility device”.

But the mother said she was taken aback and frustrated by the man’s response and told him her daughter “ ...needed to sit next to me for safety reasons” – yet the person still “refused to move”.

“I ended up having to stand for the entire ride with my daughter in tow, which was uncomfortable and tiring for both of us,” she said.

However, when she later told a friend about the incident she was berated for her stance, her friend telling her she was being “insensitive and ableist”.

According to the woman’s friend, “the person in the wheelchair had a right to the space.” She believed it was “unfair” of her to ask him to move.

After the mother shared on Reddit she’d been left questioning whether or not she was in the wrong, the vast majority of the 2500 comments agree she should never have expected the wheelchair-bound man to move.

“Imagine being so entitled that you genuinely think standing up on your perfectly good, working legs is so awful and tiring that you ask someone who is physically unable to stand to get out of your way,” one person wrote.

“So the child sits and you stand. Simple,” another said.

“The 5-year-old could have just stood. Seriously, when did 5-year-olds become so fragile that they can’t stand for a bus trip. Parenting like this damages children. They are being taught that they are pathetic,” someone else wrote.

But another person came to the defence of the woman: “It’s about safety. Children can easily fall in buses because they can’t reach the places to hold onto, since those are made for adults,” they wrote.

Other commenters who claimed to be frequent bus users didn’t seem surprised by the mother’s actions as one noted: “mothers with kids are the most entitled bus users [that] exist”.

“Just because you have a child doesn’t automatically give you priority over others. If the bus is too crowded, take a cab. Otherwise, you’re going to have to deal with the downside of public transportation,” someone else wrote.

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