A series of videos have recently gone viral that showed parents practically beating up their toddlers’ stuffed animals to convince them to eat.
While those videos were initially seen as humorous, there has been mounting criticism at the way that the kids were practically scared into eating.
One such critic is 35-year-old Christopher Duett who decided to hit back by releasing his own “positive reinforcement” video to show parents how it should be done.
The clip features Duett attempting to feed his own 2-year-old son Warren. Instead of beating up Warren’s stuffed penguin, Duett pretend-feeds the penguin to show the boy how much the animal is enjoying the food. This eventually convinces Warren to take a bite himself after which Duett faces the camera to gives a thumbs up before ending the video.
Duett said that after watching the original viral videos, he felt a strong need to “show that there are other effective methods to having a child comply without the potential of causing any damage to their emotional development.”
Duett, who also has an 8-year-old son, said he hadn’t tried positive reinforcement before but wanted to prove that similar results could be had from a method other than trauma or fear.
“I just wanted parents who were influenced by the other video to consider the approach that I used,” he said.
Duett was referring to the video supposedly filmed by a toddler’s uncle. User @rudyhernandez_ captioned the video with: “When kids don’t wanna eat… this is what you gotta do,” accompanied by laughing emojis. The clip shows the uncle raining punches on a stuffed Mickey Mouse to scare the toddler into eating.
“I couldn’t understand why so many people could find such a tactic humorous or acceptable behavior for a parent to engage in towards a young child,” Duett said.
At first, people found the Mickey Mouse beating funny and it got 16 million views and was even retweeted 115,000 times in only a few days.
But the criticism steadily grew, with some calling the video “disgusting” and an example of childhood trauma. Some even went so far as to call it “actual child abuse.” The debate is still hotly raging in the comments section.
Foremost in Duett’s mind about the video was the “potentially impactful” effect on the child’s emotional development which is why he decided to come out with his own.
“The initial videos are problematic because they create the illusion of effectiveness,” he said. “But what’s going on behind the scenes of that is that a child of that age is laying the foundation for learning empathy and emotional association and they are observing behaviors and will mimic them.”
This isn’t the first time that such “beat up” videos have appeared on social media.point 203 |
A mother shared a video on Facebook doing something similar after getting the idea from other parents.point 133 | She captioned the video with: “I had to try this…OMG IM DEAD.point 195 | ” The video has been shared more than a million times.point 245 | 1
Another video came out last year in YouTube titled, “How Mother give food to her child,” and dispensed similar parenting advice. Different users have been tagging their friends to try it out for themselves.
But Duett hopes that his video will convince parents that there are better ways to get their children to comply.
“Parents will undoubtedly watch those videos and try what they’ve seen to have their children comply, but … it’s potentially harmful to the child’s emotional development and creates an excuse for parents to engage in counterproductive parenting techniques,” he said.
While the debate rages on about the “beat up” method, there are people who are thanking Duett.
One user commented: “Being nice and giving your child positive reinforcement works better than scaring the shit out of them?! How sad that you had to make a video to prove that point in this time.”
“I’m far from a psychology expert but a little bit of reading and common sense can easily help any parent understand why it’s wrong,” said Duett.
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