Child therapist slams a mom for pranking her crying toddler to get ‘views’: ‘Its just heartbreaking’

A child therapist has rebuked a mother who posted on Tik Tok a video of a prank she played on her son, claiming she only did so to get more “views”.

On TikTok, Ryan Allen, who is an early childhood mental health therapist, often posts videos about parenting and ways to properly communicate with kids.

In a recent clip, Allen shared his response to a video posted by Bramty, a mom who frequently posts content with her three kids on TikTok. Throughout Bramty’s clip, she was playing a prank on her son, where she sprayed her toddler’s hair with water until he said something.

According to Allen, Bramty’s video showed how a “good intention of being playful and fun with our kids” can be quickly turned into a “problematic” situation.

“And for what?” he said. “For social media views and likes.”

When the toddler told Bramty how she was using “a lot of spray” on his hair, Allen claimed that the child was “indirectly asking” his mother to stop spraying and that viewers should be “noting here that he doesn’t like”.

When the child spoke up again, telling his mother that she was still getting him wet, Allen could tell once again that the child wasn’t enjoying getting sprayed.

“Here we can note the distress in their voice, and maybe we went too far, and we should pull back,” he explained. “Benefit of the doubt, maybe it wasn’t direct enough and you missed it.”

The child then asked Bramty to stop spraying him, which Allen saw as a major red flag.

“They clearly asked you to stop there,” he noted. “So this is the point where you need to respect their words and let the bit go.”

Bramty began to laugh at her child, as he was upset. Allen said that the mom was now teaching her child that “his voice doesn’t matter.” When Bramty did say sorry, Allen referred to these as “meaningless apologies,” since she continued spraying the bottle.

“That was them [the son] quietly crying to themselves, giving up, learning that their means absolutely nothing,” Allen explained.

“Parents, we have to stop doing this to our kids,” he added. “And social media, all social media, needs to have child exploitation rules that protect children.”

In the caption, Allen tagged Bramty and wrote: “can we teach kids that their voice is more important than views.”

Allen’s video has over 170,000 likes, so far, with viewers in the comments agreeing with him and claiming that Bramty was hurting her son by ignoring his feelings.

“Yess! The water isn’t hurting him,” a TikTok user wrote. “A loved one ignoring his boundaries is, though!”

“The part where he gives up…that breaks my heart,” another added.

Many viewers also thought that Bramty’s prank wasn’t necessarily worth doing in the first place, nor did it need to be posted on social media.

“What’s the point of her video?” a viewer asked. “All she’s doing is covering her child in water and making him cry? So these people just enjoy seeing kids cry?”

“I love how her caption says “until he says something” but she still doesn’t stop,” another added.

On the opposite side of the coin, a few viewers appeared to have disagreed with Allen, one of which said: “Whew, let me get off of sensitive tok.”

While Bramty didn’t reference Allen directly, she did respond to some of the reactions to her video on Twitter.

“There’s been some reaction to a TikTok I posted a few weeks ago,” she tweeted. “It’s really not that deep. ALL my kids are LOVED, HAPPY AND HEALTHY.”

Many people came to Bramty’s defence, one of which said: “Here comes the sensitive people who always have opinions on kids who aren’t theirs.. It was a joke and it was funny. She loves all her kids and is shown.”

However, some Twitter users still felt like Bramty went a step too far with her prank video.

“We’re not saying that they’re not happy, healthy, or loved,” a tweet reads. “Your son simply wanted you to quit recording. you really do sometimes go too far with some pranks and try to defend yourself on here cause you know you don’t want to be attacked on. It’s not hard to consider your actions.”

Speaking to The Independent, Allen said that if Bramty had stopped spraying her son sooner, it could have helped him.  

“Most importantly, it would have taught him that his mom respects his boundaries and voice which could only build on their relationship,” he explained. “Second, it builds a foundational knowledge and reinforces a value that boundaries are to be respected. Meaning when parents or other children set a boundary with him, he understands that he is supposed to respect them.”

He also noted that while he doesn’t consider Bramty a bad parent, he does think that there should be more rules and regulations for children on TikTok.

“The pressure for likes and follows is really powerful and I’d like to see social media programs to work to further put restrictions to protect children,” he added.

The Independent has reached out to Bramty for comment.