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People Tear This Dad Apart Online After He Seeks Support Because Wife Won’t Forgive His Prank
Many people—young and old—absolutely hate practical jokes and jumpscares; typically for a reason, be it simply not finding them amusing or having a personal experience that was disturbing at best.
This redditor’s son might grow up to be one of said people. When his 10-year-old sister suggested pranking him, the dad did not realize how big of a shock it would be for the child and how big of a fight with his wife it would put him in.
Seeking to learn more about how pranks can affect children, Bored Panda turned to the founder and director of the Child’s Play, Learning, and Development Lab, a professor in the School of Education at the University of Delaware, Dr. Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, who was kind enough to answer a few of our questions.
RELATED:
Many people hate practical jokes, usually not without a reason
Image credits: choreograph / envatoelements (not the actual photo)
This dad got into a huge fight with his wife after pranking his 9-year-old son
Image credits: nd3000 / envatoelements (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Small-Elephant9195
Parents should provide their children with support, not with a traumatizing event to recover from
Image credits: Vlada Karpovich / pexels (not the actual photo)
Discussing the occurrence with Bored Panda, Dr. Roberta Michnick Golinkoff emphasized that the child did not need to expend all his energy and emotion on recovering from the prank. “Parents are there to support their kids and not to increase their fears and trauma. I repeat: Parents are protectors not torturers. And anyone who says, ‘Oh, that kid will recover’ fails to see the depth of that child’s reaction and how he will be afraid for longer than he needs to be when he enters an empty or dark room,” the expert said.
Whether or not parents find pranking kids funny, the latter most likely don’t. “Not only are they not able to cognitively understand the humour, but they’re also the butt of a joke. And there’s a violation of trust,” developmental psychologist at York St John University and expert in how children develop humor, Paige Davis pointed out in a piece for BBC, discussing the mixed feelings pranks evoke in children.
Another expert, a child psychotherapist and spokesperson for the Association of Child Psychotherapists (ACP) in the UK, Rachel Melville-Thomas, added that pranking your offspring might not necessarily make them hyper-vigilant, but it can result in them thinking that the parent can do it again, because of the way our brains are wired.
Pranking children, especially seeking online fame, is needlessly cruel
Image credits: RDNE Stock project / pexels (not the actual photo)
Children losing trust in adults or being frightened they might scare them again are arguably two of the main reasons some individuals would never consider pranking kids. A survey on potential April Fool’s targets found that more than half of pranksters—56% to be exact—would never joke around at the expense of a young child. Unfortunately, some people would; and to make matters worse, they might do it “for the likes”.
“My sense is that parents prank on just what they know will trigger their children. If that sounds cruel and heartless, it is because it is,” Dr. Michnick Golinkoff said, adding that pranking kids has apparently become a new trend and it is awful.
“Before you prank a child, consider whether that is the best way to generate a few laughs,” the expert suggested. “Posting the child’s reaction on social media should be prohibited because I think in some cases, this is the parent’s motivation in hopes that it will go viral. Please, no. Please think about how you would have felt as a child to have the rug pulled out from under you.”
Dr. Michnick Golinkoff continued to point out that there’s nothing wrong with lightly teasing your child—only if not in a cruel way!— or using humor with them. But, according to her, people who care about kids should recognize that pranking does not come from a caring place; which is arguably why quite a few netizens in the comments criticized the OP for his behavior.
Quite a few netizens believed the dad was in the wrong here
Some people, however, shared a different opinion
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What do you think ?
Insomniac 1 year ago
I will never comprehend why terrorizing children is amusing to adults. Kids look to parents to feel safe, secure, loved. The world is harsh enough. Home should be a place of peace and sanctuary. The kid is only nine. His mental capacity is limited, and it could take him months or years before he feels really safe at home again. Childhood experiences, even sometimes minor ones, can stick with a kid. It happens often enough by accident. It's beyond me why the dad would deliberately inflict one on his child. How is that amusing? You scared a vulnerable human who depends on you for safety and security. People may say I'm overreacting, but read up on the neurobiology of childhood development and what traumatic experiences do to that. The dad is a big time AH.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 1 year ago
I can tell you from personal experience that negative/bad stuff that our parents do to us/say to us in single-digit childhood can stay with us - and hurt and harm us - for DECADES. I'm not going to get into all of the actual abuses my mom did to me when I was a child (one example to set the tone though: she pressed a real gun to my throat when I was 6 and said she would unalive me) but I am 42 now and I still have nightmares about a lot of the incidents, including the one I mentioned. I still remember them all clearly. I still think about them. They still affect me. I still have not forgiven my mother (who is now 80 years old) for any of the abuse. OP obliterated the trust his son had in him as a parent, a protector, and a safe adult. OP's son may literally NEVER trust OP again. You are 100% correct and not overreacting at all in what you said. Thank you for saying it <3
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Linda Lee 1 year ago
Where's the part where the dad apologized to his son? Oh, that's right, he didn't mean any harm so no reason to apologize for traumatizing his son. Because you only apologize if something bad happens ...on purpose?
Lyoness 1 year ago
I'm thinking the same thing. He's stuck on intention. But bluntly, it means zip. If you hit someone with your bike, you hurt them, whether you meant to or not. What matters is how the injured party feels, not whether or not the person who hurt them meant to do it. Same thing here, except that Dad DID mean to scare him (just not so much, in Dad's opinion). OP is completely invalidating his son's feelings with the "I didn't mean to!" defensiveness. He scared him. On purpose. The son was traumatised. Dad needs to apologise. That's it.
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Zoe Vokes 1 year ago
YTA simply because he didn’t mention how his son is feeling. Is the son over it? Is he still upset? OP is annoyed that his wife is upset with him, but maybe that’s because the son is still upset. Plus anybody who enjoys pranking people is automatically an AH
OneWithRatsAndKefir 1 year ago
The only ‘good’ kind of pranks are hiding little rubber duckies everywhere or switiching out a photograph in a frame for something silly and seeing how long it takes for somebody to notice! The ones that aren’t hard to clean up and that don’t make a person the butt of the joke.
Load More Replies...
Lyoness 1 year ago
It's interesting that at no point does OP say he apologised to his son for scaring him. As others have pointed out he definitely should be talking this out with the kid, but a very heartfelt "I'm so sorry I scared you." is in order. Intention means zip, it's the kid's feelings that matter. Think of it this way: If you run over someone's foot with your car, you hurt them, whether you meant to or not. It's the feelings of the injured party that matter, not whether or not the person who hurt them meant to do it. Same principle here, except in this case OP DID mean to scare the kid. I'd still be pissed if I was his wife too, and I'd stay that way until my partner made it right with our son.
Deborah B 1 year ago
Dude. Letting his sister jump out and say "boo" would have made him jump, and been funny to your daughter, and startled and irritated your son, and he would have been okay. But that's not what happened. You took her idea and ran with it. Masks, dimmed the lights, phone call set up. Instead of being the responsible parent and keeping chaos in check, thinking about consequenses, your son's reaction etc, you acted like a teenage prankster. You betrayed your son's trust, and scared him into crisis mode. Your wife is pissed off, because instead of having a co-parent who shares the responsibility of parenthood, she has an emotionally immature a*****e making things worse. You get to be the fun parent for your daughter, she gets to take on the emotional labour of reassuring your betrayed son who's having a panic attack. She's upset because you are abdicating all the mental and emotional labour and parenting to her, instead of a partner to share the load, she has another kid, who's a jackass.
Jennifer Clayton 1 year ago
I'm sure they yelled in the jump scare. If kids had pulled the pranks, high voices. A grown man yelling or growling is terror.
FreeTheUnicorn 1 year ago (edited)
Why would he be forgiven when he hasn't don't anything to earn forgiveness? Recognising you sxrewed up is a necessary first step, but an apology isn't action to address the concern. Saying sorry, even feeling sorry isn't enough, it's what changes after that counts. He hasn't mentioned how his interactions have been since with his son, or what he's don't to make up for being a d**k. He's keen to talk about cold shoulder, but doesn't even seem to notice he should be doing something other than say oops
Phillip Moderow 1 year ago
Funny Home Videos on TV showed a boy take his pet white mouse outside. He placed the cage on a stand, opened the cage, and was handling his mouse when BAM!!! A hawk swooped in and snatched it right out of his hand. The video camera, on a tripod, caught it all including the shock and horror on that poor boy's face. I'm not sure if the boy got over it, but I haven't because it traumatized me. That was the last TV I ever watched. The video camera on the tripod told me that it was a setup by the parents just to get on TV. They should go to prison for doing that. And the audience laughed. It really hurt.
FreeTheUnicorn 1 year ago
She's probably upset that you don't know your son well enough to know if he would find it funny or not.
Insomniac 1 year ago
I will never comprehend why terrorizing children is amusing to adults. Kids look to parents to feel safe, secure, loved. The world is harsh enough. Home should be a place of peace and sanctuary. The kid is only nine. His mental capacity is limited, and it could take him months or years before he feels really safe at home again. Childhood experiences, even sometimes minor ones, can stick with a kid. It happens often enough by accident. It's beyond me why the dad would deliberately inflict one on his child. How is that amusing? You scared a vulnerable human who depends on you for safety and security. People may say I'm overreacting, but read up on the neurobiology of childhood development and what traumatic experiences do to that. The dad is a big time AH.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 1 year ago
I can tell you from personal experience that negative/bad stuff that our parents do to us/say to us in single-digit childhood can stay with us - and hurt and harm us - for DECADES. I'm not going to get into all of the actual abuses my mom did to me when I was a child (one example to set the tone though: she pressed a real gun to my throat when I was 6 and said she would unalive me) but I am 42 now and I still have nightmares about a lot of the incidents, including the one I mentioned. I still remember them all clearly. I still think about them. They still affect me. I still have not forgiven my mother (who is now 80 years old) for any of the abuse. OP obliterated the trust his son had in him as a parent, a protector, and a safe adult. OP's son may literally NEVER trust OP again. You are 100% correct and not overreacting at all in what you said. Thank you for saying it <3
Load More Replies... Linda Lee 1 year ago
Where's the part where the dad apologized to his son? Oh, that's right, he didn't mean any harm so no reason to apologize for traumatizing his son. Because you only apologize if something bad happens ...on purpose?
Lyoness 1 year ago
I'm thinking the same thing. He's stuck on intention. But bluntly, it means zip. If you hit someone with your bike, you hurt them, whether you meant to or not. What matters is how the injured party feels, not whether or not the person who hurt them meant to do it. Same thing here, except that Dad DID mean to scare him (just not so much, in Dad's opinion). OP is completely invalidating his son's feelings with the "I didn't mean to!" defensiveness. He scared him. On purpose. The son was traumatised. Dad needs to apologise. That's it.
Load More Replies... Zoe Vokes 1 year ago
YTA simply because he didn’t mention how his son is feeling. Is the son over it? Is he still upset? OP is annoyed that his wife is upset with him, but maybe that’s because the son is still upset. Plus anybody who enjoys pranking people is automatically an AH
OneWithRatsAndKefir 1 year ago
The only ‘good’ kind of pranks are hiding little rubber duckies everywhere or switiching out a photograph in a frame for something silly and seeing how long it takes for somebody to notice! The ones that aren’t hard to clean up and that don’t make a person the butt of the joke.
Load More Replies... Lyoness 1 year ago
It's interesting that at no point does OP say he apologised to his son for scaring him. As others have pointed out he definitely should be talking this out with the kid, but a very heartfelt "I'm so sorry I scared you." is in order. Intention means zip, it's the kid's feelings that matter. Think of it this way: If you run over someone's foot with your car, you hurt them, whether you meant to or not. It's the feelings of the injured party that matter, not whether or not the person who hurt them meant to do it. Same principle here, except in this case OP DID mean to scare the kid. I'd still be pissed if I was his wife too, and I'd stay that way until my partner made it right with our son.
Deborah B 1 year ago
Dude. Letting his sister jump out and say "boo" would have made him jump, and been funny to your daughter, and startled and irritated your son, and he would have been okay. But that's not what happened. You took her idea and ran with it. Masks, dimmed the lights, phone call set up. Instead of being the responsible parent and keeping chaos in check, thinking about consequenses, your son's reaction etc, you acted like a teenage prankster. You betrayed your son's trust, and scared him into crisis mode. Your wife is pissed off, because instead of having a co-parent who shares the responsibility of parenthood, she has an emotionally immature a*****e making things worse. You get to be the fun parent for your daughter, she gets to take on the emotional labour of reassuring your betrayed son who's having a panic attack. She's upset because you are abdicating all the mental and emotional labour and parenting to her, instead of a partner to share the load, she has another kid, who's a jackass.
Jennifer Clayton 1 year ago
I'm sure they yelled in the jump scare. If kids had pulled the pranks, high voices. A grown man yelling or growling is terror.
FreeTheUnicorn 1 year ago (edited)
Why would he be forgiven when he hasn't don't anything to earn forgiveness? Recognising you sxrewed up is a necessary first step, but an apology isn't action to address the concern. Saying sorry, even feeling sorry isn't enough, it's what changes after that counts. He hasn't mentioned how his interactions have been since with his son, or what he's don't to make up for being a d**k. He's keen to talk about cold shoulder, but doesn't even seem to notice he should be doing something other than say oops
Phillip Moderow 1 year ago
Funny Home Videos on TV showed a boy take his pet white mouse outside. He placed the cage on a stand, opened the cage, and was handling his mouse when BAM!!! A hawk swooped in and snatched it right out of his hand. The video camera, on a tripod, caught it all including the shock and horror on that poor boy's face. I'm not sure if the boy got over it, but I haven't because it traumatized me. That was the last TV I ever watched. The video camera on the tripod told me that it was a setup by the parents just to get on TV. They should go to prison for doing that. And the audience laughed. It really hurt.
FreeTheUnicorn 1 year ago
She's probably upset that you don't know your son well enough to know if he would find it funny or not.
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