Small Business Solutions

For most people, dinner on a cruise ship is a time to relax.But when influencer couple Abby and Matt Howard decided to kick back with a dinner deux, they ended up kicking up a storm.Related video above: Preparing to drop your child off at day care for first time? Here’s some expert adviceThe Arizona couple, who have 5.3 million followers on TikTok, as well as 1.3 million and 677,000 Instagram followers individually, have had to furiously deny that they left their children alone on a cruise ship while enjoying their couples dinner.Abby Howard posted over the weekend on Instagram that on a seven-day cruise, the couple had taken their kids ages 1 and 2 to dinner for the first five nights, but it became apparent that they werent enjoying it and therefore we werent either.So then we switched our dinner time to after their bedtime and FaceTimed the monitors while we ate, she wrote. Many followers interpreted her post as saying that they left the kids unattended in the cabin in order to go to dinner. When Abby Howard deleted the post after a few hours, the suspicion only increased.The couple have now posted a new video in which they deny the children were left alone. They say they were traveling with Abby Howards extended family, including her grandmother.We had someone with our children at all times on this boat, said Matt Howard, calling peoples suspicions completely untrue.We love our children more than anything in the entire world, he said.Abby Howard admitted in the video that she could see why the phrasing of her initial post caused people to believe the kids had been left alone. She said she deleted it because of the confusion.Abby Howard said their two children sleep in blackout tents even at home. Each tent has a space to fit a monitor, which the couple use even when in the room with them.Matt Howard previously shared an Instagram video of his cabin, in which he said the couple was sleeping in separate rooms, each with one child.Were always concerned about them, said Abby Howard in the video addressing the controversy, adding that they tag team at family dinners so that one parent is physically with the children while the other checks the monitors.The couple thanked their family for helping watch the children during the cruise and also thanked the public.Thank you so much to those of you that were concerned about the safety and well-being of our children, said Abby Howard.We have not, would not, will not ever leave our children unattended; we would never ever want to put them in harms way in any way. Its not known which cruise line the couple were traveling with, although Matt Thiemann, a cruise specialist travel agent and CEO of Everbliss Vacations, said he believes they were on Royal Caribbeans Navigator of the Seas, which has a maximum capacity of 4,000 travelers, based on their posts.Cruise ship child careMany cruise lines offer child care options.Royal Caribbean offers group child care programs as well as group-sitting for 3- to 11-year-olds from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. MSC Cruises has a kids club for tots until 9 p.m., with parents able to drop off their kids until 7 p.m., while Holland America Line states in its conditions that children must not be left alone anywhere on the ship.Leaving a child in a locked room may seem relatively safe, but Thiemann advises against it.It is generally not safe for a child under 8 to be left alone at home, and a cruise ship cabin is no different, he said. Parents might think it is a safe, locked space, and while there are very strict procedures for accessing a cabin, there are cabin stewards, maintenance personnel and crew who can access the cabin. If it has a balcony, there is greater risk of an accident or even becoming locked out on the balcony.Toddlers can be inquisitive, fall out of bed onto the hard floor or choke on something. There are just too many unexpected things that could happen when children are left alone in a cruise cabin or hotel room.