'Avengers: Endgame‘s 7-Year-Old Lexi Rabe Pleads with Fans to Stop Bullying Her (Parents)

I have some mixed feelings about this Instagram video posted by Lexi Rabe, who played the daughter of Tony Stark in Avengers: Endgame (she’s also in Godzilla: King of the Monsters). In the video, Lexi Rabe asks that fans stop bullying her and her family, while her mother offers a lot more details about the bullying incidents in the accompanying text.

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I hate that we even have to post this. But yet again Lexi’s getting bullied. And this kind of thing makes it celebrities never want to leave the house never want to meet people. Please keep your opinions to yourself so Lexi can grow up in the free world. She’s a normal human being and she’s a child. We give her a talking and we give her timeouts but we don’t do that in public. Sometimes were rushing from place to place stressed like everyone else to get to set on time or work or whatever and we seem a little grumpy. I’m sorry if you see us this way but that’s life! If you ask us for an autograph we always almost say yes. If we happen to be having a bad day that might put us right on the right! We are not perfect! These perfect children are not being given the freedoms and the rights that they should. If your child is so scared to be themselves in public and mess up a little then you’re over parenting. We give our children plenty of rules and boundaries But then give them the freedoms to mess up and learn from their own mistakes. They would not be on set an on movies if they weren’t well behaved. Trust me they have no desire to hire kids like that! And there were plenty of children that productions can work with. So if you see us in public and think you have the right to judge. Wait. Number one until you have children of your own, and Number two realize that we’re not perfect and we’re not claiming to be! But just try to realize the different strokes for different folks what you do with your kids may work for you and what I do with my kids works well for me. My children love me and respect me even if they act out sometimes. Thank you! Jessica!

A post shared by Lexi Rabe (@lexi_rabe) on Jun 21, 2019 at 3:31pm PDT

OK, well, I’m sure you’re reading between the lines here. Basically, what happens is, Lexi is seven years old. Sometimes when she’s out in public, she acts like a seven-year-old little sh*t, and other “fans” judge her parents for it. I guess you can call that bullying, but I’d call it parent shaming. It’s real, and it sucks.

That said, as the father of seven-year-old twins (did I just pull a Matt Damon?), I know exactly of what Lexi Rabe’s mother speaks, and I suspect it’s far more intense given her daughter’s celebrity status. Seven-year-olds sometimes act like little monsters out in public — whether they’re celebrities or not — and parents are put in a weird predicament. If you scold your child in public, or grab her and carry her out, you make a big scene and everyone judges you for being an asshole parent. This actually happened to Charlize Theron a while back, and everyone called her “Monster Mom” for disciplining her tantrum-ing child in public.

On the other hand, if you don’t yell at your kid or immediately remove her, you’re an overly permissive parent who lets their children run roughshod all over you and your child is going to grow up to be an entitled Ivanka. This is true even if — out of public view behind the aisle at Target — you’re angrily whispering to your kid to “knock it the hell off or I swear to God I’ll throw every goddamn screen in the house in the trash and then I’ll go out and personally murder the entire Odd Squad.”

It’s a no-win situation. You just kind of have to take your lumps, go home embarrassed, and put your kid in timeout and give her a stern talking to and pray to God it won’t happen again (it will probably happen again). Personally, I would not then post a message from my daughter on Instagram asking all the other people to stop “bullying” me about my parenting choices because it feels weird to use my kid as a shield. Then again, my children are not celebrities (although they are very well liked at camp!), so the judgment is obviously more intense. So, mom will get no judgment from me for this. Although she will get a litte judgment for the IMDB biography of her daughter that she clearly wrote:

“Mom is an actor, writer, director and producer, training under James Franco among others. Mom still acts, teaches acting, writes and directs and helped direct acting on the movie Godzilla.”

OK, Mom.

via Uproxx