Photo: TikTok
Shouldn't we know how to be better parents than this?
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on Mar 02, 2022
With the development of the internet and social media platforms comes an age-old tale of people doing the absolute dumbest things in the world for views, likes, favorites, whatever internet points said social media offers which have no real value.
While a lot of these things can be done in good fun like staging harmless pranks, there are also people that do things that can harm themselves and others for this virtual reputation.
Recently, a TikTok mom has been slammed by a child therapist for making her son feel helpless.
Bramty Juliette was criticized for making her son cry in a TikTok 'prank.'
Bramty (@bramty on TikTok) is a mom of three with 3.5 million followers on TikTok and another 2.5 million on her family vlog channel on YouTube.
Her videos consist of pranks on the family, dancing in the living room, going to the gym — you know, whatever normal families with millions followers on TikTok do.
However, one of those videos recently received a lot of criticism from parents, fans, and people who had no idea who any of these people were.
Ryan Allen, a less famous but still popular TikToker (@preschooltherapy) with 869k followers was one of those people.
The child therapist called out Bramty for using her son's tears for views.
As an early childhood mental health therapist, Allen’s job is to give children a voice and point out when some jokes or pranks end up going too far and make kids upset or worse, traumatized.
You don’t need to be an expert to understand and know that your years as a child are the most formative years of your life and everything that you do and happens to you will influence your life for the rest of the years that come after — we learned this in high school.
That’s why when Allen saw the video of Bramty pranking her son by spraying water on his head, he openly and bluntly criticized her crudeness.
The video has since been taken down, but shows Bramty and her son sitting on front of the camera with the caption “Spraying my toddler’s hair until he says something.”
“This is an example of how we can have a good intention in being playful and fun with our kids,” says Allen in his TikTok, “and how it can turn problematic just like that, and for what? Social media views and likes.”
Allen plays the video while giving his input about the situation unfolding, where Bramty sprays her a son with a lot of water, and gives off multiple signs of discomfort and stress.
“That’s a lot of spray,” says her son, giving the first signal that he’s uncomfortable and you can see water dripping down his shirt in multiple places.
“He indirectly asked you to stop, we should be noting here that he doesn’t like it,” says Allen.
She apologizes for a moment, but continues on until he says, “you’re wetting me mommy.”
“Here, we can note the distress in their voice and we should consider that maybe we went too far and should pull back,” Allen continues with his analysis. “Benefit of the doubt? Maybe it wasn’t direct enough and you missed it.”
“Stop it,” says the son, for the third signal, with very clear distress in his voice.
“Okay, they clearly asked you to stop there,” says Allen. “This is the point where we need to respect their words and let the bit go.”
The fourth and fifth times he repeats the same “you’re getting me wet mommy,” before eventually giving up, silently crying to himself and then openly crying about the situation his mother has forced him into.
“Just in case you missed it, that was them crying to themselves, giving up, and learning that their voice means absolutely nothing,” finished Allen. “Parents, we have to stop doing this to our kids and all social media needs to have child exploitation rules that protect children.”
While many people supported Allen for sticking up for the child, some of Bramty’s followers rushed to the scene to try and defend their favorite content creator.
“Bramty is a great mother,” said one of the comments near the top. “Back up fool!!”
Allen saw this comment, and elaborated on the purpose of his video with another TikTok where he explains himself.
“You misunderstand me. I never said that she may not be a great mom, I never even said that what she was doing in that video was a form of abuse,” he said.
He went on to talk about how his whole purpose is to give children, like the one in the video, a voice.
He wants to bring awareness to some of the unhealthy behaviors parents unknowingly partake in that could lead to long-term problems while also bringing awareness that parents will sometimes do these things just to build their social media success.
Bramty’s attention was brought to Allen’s video where she quickly blocked him and then proceeded to Tweet, “It’s not that deep.”
A lot of people are trying to claim that everyone is being sensitive or dramatic, but when it comes to a child’s mental health and development, it shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.