Hanging a child’s drawing on the fridge is a common part of many family sitcoms. But any parent will tell you that real life rarely works out that neatly. This YouTube video shows what happens when a parent isn’t immediately in love with a child’s drawing.
Her own worst critic
The video opens as we see a young girl looking shy and embarrassed towards the camera. An off-screen figure, the girl’s mother, says that she’d been posing for ten minutes and wants to see the product.
After a moment of hesitation, the girl takes her sketchbook and turns it around to reveal a drawing of a face that looks similar to a pear with some facial features on it. The camera holds on the girl and the picture as the woman asks, “Is that me.”
The girl sets the sketchbook down on the couch and gets up to walk away. Her mother reaches out to stop her. The mother struggles to keep herself from laughing as she manages to say, “No…no it’s nice!” The daughter then flops back onto the couch wiping at her eyes as her mother declares, “I’ve never looked better.”
Her mother then picks up the notebook and turns to her daughter’s drawing. She then compliments her daughter by saying:
“Ooooh, where were you when it was time for senior photos.”
Little white lies
The little girl then looks to her mother and asks the important question: “Why was daddy laughing?” Parents all over the world can sympathize with the mother, as she tries to come up with a handy explanation that will spare her daughter’s feelings without being obvious about the little white lie.
So what does she come up with?
“Daddy don’t know what he’s doing anyway. That’s how you say that’s a great drawing in French.”
You can see a small hint of a smile on the daughter’s face before the camera pans over to show the father on his hands and knees doubled over in laughter. You can just imagine how hard he’s struggling after hearing his daughter’s reaction, but the drawing just pushed him over the top and he couldn’t control himself.
The video cuts to a brief still of a man laughing before we see a phone screen menu.
Is this bad parenting?
You might have noticed that the video’s top bar calls this “Bad Parenting Moments”. The poster likely sees this as being mean to the little girl by not celebrating and cherishing their art.
But responses to this video were quick to disagree.
Many of the comments focused on how adorable the entire situation is, with many pointing out how funny it was to see both parents struggling with the humorous situation. One commenter even said that this was an example of good parenting.
But how can that be?
An article in Kids Health points out that encouraging children to develop their senses of humor can help them not take themselves too seriously. So, by laughing at a funny drawing, it helps her daughter grow and develop by teaching her that sometimes things don’t work out.
Would you laugh at your child’s drawing if it wasn’t the best? What do you think of the parents in this video?
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