Dad Scares Baby Into Opening His Mouth After He Refused To Eat — Viewers Accuse Him Of Traumatizing The Infant
This wasn't the right approach.
YouTube A video showing a father attempting to feed his baby son has been circulating the internet and sparking outrage for his traumatizing strategy to get him to eat the food.
While feeding the baby spoonfuls of food from the bowl in front of him, the baby started shaking his head, refusing to eat any more of the food from the father.
The father scares the baby into eating by pretending to feed a Mickey Mouse doll and hitting it.
When the baby refuses the food, he grabs hold of a nearby Mickey Mouse doll, mimics the son’s head shaking, and starts to hit the doll in full force when the mouse refuses to eat the food.
The point of it was to show the baby what might happen if he continued to refuse the food, forcing him to continue eating, but laughter in the background of the video makes it seem like it was meant to be a joke.
After the father finishes beating the Mickey Mouse doll, he then tries to feed the baby again, who accepts the food willingly and looks away to the person recording and the doll on the table.
When the video was reposted onto Reddit under the “r/ParentsAreF--kingDumb” subreddit, everyone was up in arms with the father for his awful method of trying to get his baby to eat.
People believe that the father traumatized the baby by hitting the doll.
“Pretty sure that he will be worried about being beaten if he doesn't eat for the rest of his life,” one user wrote in response to the video.
“Welp that kid is gonna grow up being way too aggressive,” wrote another.
Many people argued that the idea of “ruling with fear” is a harmful one and that there were many other ways for the father to try and get his baby to eat.
“What about tickling? Getting the baby to laugh or something to eat?” asked another user.
“[I don’t know] I don’t have a baby so I’m just assuming but there’s gotta be a better way than telling it ‘hey if you don’t eat it this is what’s gonna happen to you.’”
A mother of four explained the things that worked for her and what she learned from her kids.
“You decide what the kid eats, the kid decides how much it eats,” she wrote.
Several of the comments under this post echoed the same sentiment — that babies and small children know when they’ve had enough to eat and know when they’re hungry.
If the baby is refusing the food, he likely has a good reason for it.
She also says not to pay attention when they say “No I don’t want to eat,” she’ll just say “ok.”
The worst thing you could do is give a reaction that turns into a learned behavior.
She also doesn’t like to have phones at the table — which means no recording of traumatized babies.
Those were the things that worked for her, but she admits that she often sees other people struggle with it as well, ending by saying “it’s tough being a parent.”
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Keep up with his rants about current events on his Twitter.