SINGAPORE: A TikTok video of a father pretending to leave his son behind at an interactive exhibit has gone viral, getting over 344,000 views in the few days since it was posted. However, not everyone appears to be on board with this family’s parenting style. Commenters expressed concern, saying the little boy could have gotten kidnapped or that it was “dangerous for a number of reasons.”
The 36-second video clip shows a boy walking by himself outside the Smart Nation Builder truck exhibit at the library. Since the exhibition has interactive games, it should not be too surprising that the boy, 10-year-old Daken Lee, was so engrossed with it that he let his parents leave without him.
@familee1985 Go and find a new family, my son. I will miss you. #family #parenting
While the clip is set to suspenseful music and shows that the boy “is starting to panic” and “is reaching for his phone,” it does not appear that the child feels any real sense of alarm, and a few short seconds into the video sees his parents and smilingly walks toward them.
The bio of the @familee1985 account on TikTok includes a part that says “family comedy,” which gives us a clue that not everything posted on it should be taken seriously, including the caption from the Oct 31 video below that reads, “Go and find a new family, my son. I will miss you. #family #parenting.”
But netizens may have taken exception to the narration on the video, which reads, “We abandoned our son and we don’t regret it. He got too engrossed with the games and did not want to leave. He needs to learn his lesson the hard way. He couldn’t find us at the waiting area.”
“No parent should do that,” one netizen said, while another wrote, “It’s NOT FUN AT ALL.”
However, some said: “I agree w this method of teaching. If never put them thru this, they’ll not feel the fear of lost & learnt. but in today’s ERA, there’s phone to call,” one woman wrote.
Others chimed in that their parents did this with them when they were young, and one top comment was, “At one point in a child’s life, I think all parents did this.” /TISG
Read related: Parenting Fail 2.0: Netizens tell Naomi Neo to stop exploiting her young son after she publishes another prank video