Dad Criticized For Hilariously Failing The Ultimate Parenting Test
Not everyone thought his flub was funny.
Ground Picture | Shutterstock A dad named Alex is facing a wave of criticism for not being able to correctly identify his child during a prank that his wife played on him. In a TikTok video, a content creator and mom named Mariah Miller decided that it would be funny to swap her child with a friend's baby during a party at their house.Â
The two little girls look quite similar, and you can guess what happened. Unfortunately, many thought Miller's husband's inability to recognize his own daughter immediately wasn't really a funny joke at all.
A dad was criticized for not recognizing his daughter after his wife pulled a prank on him.
In Miller's video, she showed a photo of two little girls sitting side-by-side. One of them was her and her husband's daughter, while the other little girl was her friend's baby. The two women decided to play a prank on Alex by swapping the little girls to see if he would notice that he wasn't actually holding his daughter but another baby altogether.
To be fair, both little girls have dark hair and big, brown eyes, so the similarity was a bit uncanny. But of course, for a parent, they should be able to notice if they aren't actually holding their child, right? Well, for Alex, that didn't seem to be the case at all.
Mom handed the baby to her husband, and he took her without a second glance.
In the clip, Alex is handed baby Elsie, who isn't their daughter. He takes the baby without even looking and is holding her while looking over the food that's cooking on the grill. The handoff was so seamless and natural that nearly any parent would make the same mistake.
Think about it this way: if your wife, whom you trust, handed you a child, it would be natural to assume it's your child! Alex isn't a bad dad. He was in a safe environment at home, and he was a little distracted.
According to Well Beings Counselling, the signs of a toxic father are centered around abuse, manipulation, neglect, criticism, and emotional abandonment. Alex exhibited none of those signs. He begins playing around with Elsie, pretending to drop her before lifting her up again, all the while making cute noises at her. In the background, someone can be heard asking him how old his daughter is, to which Alex answers that she's 10 months.
At one point, Alex begins smoothing the baby's hair back, still not realizing who he's holding. Giving Elsie a kiss, he tells her to wave "hi" to the camera while his wife giggles. This isn't a bad dad. This is a silly joke. This is the internet making a mountain out of a molehill.
The dad eventually realized that he was not holding his daughter, but the backlash was swift.
It wasn't until Alex saw someone off-camera holding his daughter that he did a double-take. Everyone immediately burst into laughter as he looked at the baby in his arms and then back at his daughter, finally putting the pieces together.
Alex even joked that he was a "dirtbag father" for not recognizing the baby in his arms. Everyone around him, the other little kids included, was laughing as the reality of the prank set in. It's truly a funny moment, but in classic internet fashion, not every viewer found the prank to be as funny as Mariah and Alex intended.
Sergii Sobolevskyi | Shutterstock
People in the comments admitted that they would "go crazy" if their husbands failed to recognize their child and even pointed out that he shouldn't be allowed to do school pick-ups when their daughter gets older. In fairness, Alex did seem a little preoccupied when he was handed the baby since he was checking on the food cooking on the grill, and on top of that, the two girls were a bit hard to distinguish at first glance.
It also didn't take him that long to notice a difference, and once he did, he was able to laugh at himself. Sure, this could raise the argument that mothers are usually the default parent and probably would never fail this parenting test, but at the same time, this switch was supposed to be light-hearted fun.
Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor's degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.
