Influencers Matt and Abby break silence over cruise ship claims

Influencer couple Matt and Abby Howard have broken their silence over a post she made on Instagram on a recent cruise. 
The couple responded to online criticism after sharing that they recently left their two sons in a cruise ship stateroom while they went to dinner in a restaurant on board, watching the boys via a baby monitor. 
In the video, Matt clarified that their boys, Griffin, two, and August, one, were not alone when they went to dinner and that they had “someone with our children at all times.”
“There is information circulating about us that is completely untrue,” Matt started the video. 
Watch the video above. 
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“We take our role as parents extremely seriously, and we love our children more than anything in the entire world, and we’re very protective of our kids.”
The backlash against the couple kicked off when Abby shared a photo of their baby monitors – which she deleted after a couple of hours – on her Instagram story.
“So we ended up taking them for 5 nights and it became apparent that they weren’t enjoying it and therefore we weren’t either. So THEN we switched our dinner time to AFTER their bedtime and FaceTimed the monitors while we ate,” read the text on the post. 
She noted the baby monitors don’t work well on board, which is why they had been FaceTiming them and added “that worked out muchhhh better for everyone.”
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Matt explained it was a seven-night cruise with their extended family and acknowledged Abby had posted that the couple were “at dinner, FaceTiming the baby monitors while our children were asleep in their staterooms.”
“And people started to speculate, and believe, that we had left our children alone in their staterooms,” he continued. 
“And that is just completely untrue. We had someone with our children at all times on this boat. Period.”
“I can see where my story did lead to misunderstanding, which is why I ended up deleting it several hours after posting it,” Abby added. 
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While she thanked people for raising concern for their sons’ wellbeing, she explained they use the monitors at home and while on holiday due to their boys’ sleeping arrangement. 
August and Griffin sleep in blackout tents, which have a slot for a white noise machine and a baby monitor. 
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“Even if we are sleeping in the exact same room as the boys, we always turn their monitor on,” she added.
“Even when we would tag-team and take turns at family dinner, we would turn on FaceTime so we could also have eyes on them as their parents, if we weren’t the ones attending them in that moment.”
Matt admitted if it wasn’t for having Abby’s family there with them on the cruise they wouldn’t have left the room, due to looking after their boys.
The response video from the TikTok famous couple, who also host The Unplanned podcast, came after plenty of backlash online.
After Abby’s post social media users were quick to slam the couple.
Several TikTokers and YouTube creators made videos detailing safety concerns about the situation, and Matt and Abby had limited comments on a lot of their posts due to the criticism.
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