I was mum-shamed & bombarded with hate after I let my five-year-old go to the park alone – I’d do it again, here’s why

ONE minute Charlotte Blandford Tagg was just a normal mum sharing videos of her children on TikTok. The next, she was being bombarded with hateful comments from trolls who threatened to report her to social services. Charlotte Blandford Tagg was blasted with hateful comments on TikTok after revealing she lets her son, five, go to the park alone Credit: Supplied And it was all because the 29-year-old stay-at-home mum posted about letting her five-year-old son go to the park alone. Now, some 1.2 million views later, Charlotte insists she never neglects her children and that she is “not the Bonnie Blue of the motherland”. But she is unrepentant about her decision to let her little one play unsupervised and says she WOULD let her son out of the house again without an adult. Speaking in her first interview, Charlotte, from Cambridgeshire, says: “The reaction is so bad that I do regret putting it on the internet. “But do I regret letting him out to play on his own? No.” The backlash has been so severe that Charlotte has since lost her job as a content creator for a small art magazine. But she is adamant she has done nothing wrong. “I made the decision, stood here, looking seven metres to the park on a really quiet, still day,” she says. “Did I think that that decision would cause a reaction with anybody in the real world? No. I don’t think my neighbours would have looked at me and been like, ‘What are you doing?’ “I can’t express enough how safe it felt in that moment. “However, I’ve lived here for seven years now. I know the neighbours, the kids. It’s not a road that people pass by. “I was watching, I took my eyes off for a second, he came back. I just wish I’d included more context, because it’s not ideal.” In the clip, Charlotte told followers she was checking on him “every 30 seconds” and that her son was clearly visible from her window. She said it was the first time she had let him out on his own and that she was also keeping an eye on her younger son, four, who was inside the house. The Sun has seen the distance from her house to the play area in question and can confirm it is across a road, but within clear sight of Charlotte’s home. In the post, Charlotte sounds hesitant about her decision to let her son play unaccompanied and asks: “Is that crazy? I wouldn’t let my four-year-old go, because he is so not responsible.” Charlotte has admitted her TikTok video didn’t include enough context The backlash has been so severe that Charlotte has since lost her job Credit: Supplied Charlotte is unrepentant about her decision to let her little one play unsupervised Credit: Supplied Trolls threatened to report her to social services and the police Credit: Supplied But she adds that it isn’t “a big deal” and that the lad returned after less than three minutes of being there alone because he was “probably bored”. She says: “I just hope he doesn’t now think he can just go without telling me. “I’ll have to be on guard today and, if he does do it, it’ll be a learning thing.” Within moments of posting the clip, the angry comments started flooding in. Some of the comments were sinister; one cruel troll told her “you should kill yourself, then your kids can go to a better home”. Furious mums even threatened to report her to social services and the police, although the authorities have not yet made contact. While there is no fixed legal age in the UK at which a child can go out alone, parents can face legal consequences if leaving a child unsupervised places them in danger. NSPCC guidance states that children under 12 are rarely mature enough to be left alone for long periods, while general welfare guidelines strongly advise against leaving children under 11 unsupervised. But Charlotte, who is single, now insists that viewers didn’t get the full picture and claims her son was in fact far safer than he appeared in the footage. She explains: “I missed out on things. I started recording, even though he was still in the house. He was putting his shoes on – that takes a while to do. “So I should have just said when I was clearing up all the slime that I was going to let him out in a minute. “And I probably should have recorded myself watching him out the window the whole time. Furious mums even threatened to report Charlotte to social services and the police Credit: Supplied Charlotte admits that while she did start to ‘rage-bait’ online, she never expected the backlash to be quite so ferocious Credit: Supplied “Looking back, I did record the time all wrong. People probably saw me in the first five seconds looking super relaxed and really cool about it. “And to be honest with you, if I’d seen that video a few years ago, I’d have been like, ‘What the f*** are you doing?’” While Charlotte, who was in the RAF for seven years working in logistics before giving it up to start a family, admits that she did start to ‘rage-bait’ online, she never expected the backlash to be quite so ferocious. She first started posting back in 2022 while eight months pregnant with her second child. Her husband had just left her for another woman. Like millions of others, she turned online for support, using social media as a place to share her thoughts. However, the more she started sharing her opinions, the bigger the reaction she received. One video she posted garnered attention when she remarked she loved taking her dog for a walk before her kids woke up. Viewers were outraged, assuming the children had been left on their own. But Charlotte had failed to mention her aunt was actually at home with them. Things took a darker turn three weeks ago, after she posted about letting Fedrick out on his own. “After I started getting like the mumshaming comments, I just thought, ‘F*** it, I’m going to rage-bait you. “I almost get a dopamine rush when people assume so confidently that I’m a terrible mum. “So I just rage-bait because I get paid for it. “It is an easier way to make money on the internet and therefore feed the kids and have a life.” Charlotte has deleted a number of videos she posted amid fears for her safety Credit: Supplied Charlotte insists that viewers didn’t get the full picture and claims her son was in fact far safer than he appeared in the footage Credit: Supplied But the latest video didn’t end up being quite the money-spinner Charlotte had hoped for as she was forced to turn comments off, which affects pay. She says she made no more than £1,000 from it. She also deleted a number of videos she posted afterwards amid fears for her safety, after followers pointed out she had identified where she lived. And despite claiming not to care what others think of her posts, she says: “I don’t like people to think I’m a really blasé mother. “Ultimately, my image, my career and what I want to do with life, being a bad mother is not part of that. “I’m not Bonnie Blue of the motherland. “I don’t want to be this really controversial, s**t mum, because who wants to get social services threatened on them?” In the days that followed her controversial post, Charlotte was hauled into meetings by the art magazine she was working for to discuss her online behaviour. She claims bosses compared her to an OnlyFans model and asked, “What will your children think of you?” She says: “I was crying, because it just felt like the negative comments I had received had come to life.” Despite promising to moderate her online behaviour, Charlotte claims she was let go with immediate effect. As to whether she will continue making controversial videos, she says she has not yet decided how to move forward, but she has vowed to prioritise her children. “I think the things that matter is how you are in your home. And when people walk through your door, when your kids grow up, they’ve got great memories,” she says. “They might say, ‘My mum was a bit crazy, but she had good intentions and she was kind. And we had a great time growing up.’ “Those are the things that I think are important.”