Self-described “degenerate mom” Emme Nye took a bold stance on TkTok recently that a lot of parents disagreed with. She admits she’s “that annoying mom” who has no problem with her daughter climbing up the slide.
“I’m so passionate about it, I will get in verbal disagreements at the park with parents about why,” Nye, 29, shared in a TikTok video.
Nye’s stance violates most park rules, plus it can be seen as rude. When a child is climbing up the slide, the kids at the top have to wait until they get off to slide down. Further, the kid climbing up the slide can get hurt if a kid coming down doesn’t see them.
Many commenters thought Nye’s confidence in bucking up the rules of playground decency comes off as entitled.
“’I am encouraging them not to follow the rules.’ Literally, all I hear,” Livforthehair wrote in the comments. “Teacher who has seen kids thrown from high on the slide while climbing up from being hit by a kid coming down that knocked them off. Ambulance call,” Kryssalon added.
After Nye’s video went viral, she made a follow-up where she calmly described the benefits of climbing up the slide. Nye lives in Idaho and has a background in early education.
In the follow-up, she shared 3 reasons why she thinks that it’s great for kids to climb up the slide, even if other children are using it as well.
“It’s just a lot more engaging for their little bodies and muscles to climb up the slide versus like walking up a flight of stairs with a handlebar — which often most slides are on a play set,” Nye said. “And they’re essentially crawling up the slide, right? And anytime that you’re crawling, you’re having that cross-brain connection, which is so good for their little developing minds.”
She also touted the socio-emotional benefits of climbing up the slide.
Depending on the kid, the slide and the skill set, they’re often not going to make it their first attempt,” Nye continued. “They’re sliding back down. They don’t feel discouraged, and they’re going to try and try again until they finally get to the top. The confidence that they build from trying again and again and finally succeeding again is so good for the little developing minds.”
Finally, she believes that when one kid climbs up the slide, it provides a lot of opportunities for social development.
“It forces communication and problem-solving skills to look out for one another in these kinds of unwritten rules of society,” Nye said. “There’s just a lot more to offer.”
Nye’s posts made a great point about how important it is for us to occasionally reconsider conventional wisdom and see that sometimes, there are more benefits to breaking the rules than following them. “There’s just a lot more to offer developmentally than climbing up a staircase, waiting in line, and going down a slide,” she concluded her video. “It’s just better for them.”
A single door can open up a world of endless possibilities. For homeowners, the front door of their house is a gateway to financial stability, job security, and better health. Yet for many, that door remains closed. Due to the rising costs of housing, 1 in 3 people around the world wake up without the security of safe, affordable housing.
Since 1976, Habitat for Humanity has made it their mission to unlock and open the door to opportunity for families everywhere, and their efforts have paid off in a big way. Through their work over the past 50 years, more than 65 million people have gained access to new or improved housing, and the movement continues to gain momentum. Since 2011 alone, Habitat for Humanity has expanded access to affordable housing by a hundredfold.
A world where everyone has access to a decent home is becoming a reality, but there’s still much to do. As they celebrate 50 years of building, Habitat for Humanity is inviting people of all backgrounds and talents to be part of what comes next through Let’s Open the Door, a global campaign that builds on this momentum and encourages people everywhere to help expand access to safe, affordable housing for those who need it most. Here’s how the foundation to a better world starts with housing, and how everyone can pitch in to make it happen.
Volunteers raise a wall for the framework of a new home during the first day of building at Habitat for Humanity’s 2025 Carter Work Project.
Globally, almost 3 billion people, including 1 in 6 U.S. families, struggle with high costs and other challenges related to housing. A crisis in itself, this also creates larger problems that affect families and communities in unexpected ways. People who lack affordable, stable housing are also more likely to experience financial hardship in other areas of their lives, since a larger share of their income often goes toward rent, utilities, and frequent moves. They are also more likely to experience health problems due to chronic stress or environmental factors, such as mold. Housing insecurity also goes hand-in-hand with unstable employment, since people may need to move further from their jobs or switch jobs altogether to offset the cost of housing.
Affordable homeownership creates a stable foundation for families to thrive, reducing stress and increasing the likelihood for good health and stable employment. Habitat for Humanity builds and repairs homes with individual families, but it also strengthens entire communities as well. The MicroBuild® Initiative, for example, strengthens communities by increasing access to loans for low-income families seeking to build or repair their homes. Habitat ReStore locations provide affordable appliances and building materials to local communities, in addition to creating job and volunteer opportunities that support neighborhood growth.
Marsha and her son pose for a photo while building their future home with Southern Crescent Habitat for Humanity in Georgia.
Everyone can play a part in the fight for housing equity and the pursuit of a better world. Over the past 50 years, Habitat for Humanity has become a leader in global housing thanks to an engaged network of volunteers—but you don’t need to be skilled with a hammer to make a meaningful impact. Building an equitable future means calling on a wide range of people and talents.
Here’s how you can get involved in the global housing movement:
Speaking up on social media about the growing housing crisis
Volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity build in your local community
Travel and build with Habitat in the U.S. or in one of 60+ countries where we work around the globe
Join the Let’s Open the Door movement and, when you donate, you can create your own personalized door
Every action, big and small, drives a global movement toward a better future. A safe home unlocks opportunity for families and communities alike, but it’s volunteers and other supporters, working together with a shared vision, who can open the door for everyone.
After a stressful day, it can be soothing for a loved one to stroke your hair as you relax. It’s a sweet gesture that can make the one on the receiving end feel cared for, which is exactly what this dad was attempting to do. But as he finished comforting his wife, he got the shock of a lifetime when another man walked in—her husband.
Tyson Popplestone is a father of three, but he says he’s lucky to have escaped the birth of his last child. The dad recently took to social media to do the popular “put a finger down” challenge about the birth of his youngest. No one could’ve predicted the wild ride the tired dad was going to take everyone on.
The video starts normally enough, with Popplestone explaining that his wife had just given birth to their third child. Giving birth requires a lot of energy, so she asks him to go home and cook up her favorite meal. Everything seems normal up until this point in the challenge. He goes home, cooks the meal, packs it up, and heads back to provide his wife sustenance and support.
Popplestone returns to find his wife asleep in the bed. Instead of waking her, he sets the food down, sits next to her, picks up the fussy baby, and begins stroking his wife’s hair. Clearly, the woman is exhausted because she doesn’t stir, but this is to be expected after such a big event. Plus, the room is completely dark. Perfect conditions for napping.
“You know she’s not going to get much sleep in the next few weeks, so you just let her sleep,” Popplestone says. “But then, your brand-new baby starts to cry, so you pick it up, and then you go over and just sit down next to your wife and stroke her hair for 40 minutes. And then, after 40 minutes, a strange man walks into the room and says, ‘What the hell is going on here?’”
The strange man flips on the light to find Popplestone holding his child and stroking his wife’s hair. When Popplestone realized that he was indeed stroking the hair of someone else’s wife while holding someone else’s baby, all he could do was apologize. He handed the strange baby to the strange man while trying to explain that the hospital must have forgotten to inform him of the room change.
“Tell the part where you explained this to your wife as she has to eat her favorite meal cold. I would be EMOTIONAL haha,” this person laughs.
“This video is impressive because it’s been a pretty long time since I’ve felt such strong secondhand stress from a reel,” another person says.
“I hope that stranger mama, whose hair you stroked, gets to see this and finally believes the wacky “story” her husband has been telling everyone for years and is finally believed! Too good,” someone else adds.
“How would you feel if your 13-year-old daughter came home with a paper saying she couldn’t enter a classroom without a boy escort and would be required to pick up after them every day?”
A seventh-grade class at a middle school was assigned a simulation of ancient Greek society. Students got Greek names, learned to wear Greek clothes, built temples, represented city-states, staged short dramas, and participated in Olympic events. By most measures, an unusually creative history project.
It also required the girls to demonstrate their “secondary position.” They couldn’t enter the classroom without a male escort. They were expected to clean up after the boys each day.
Nico, who goes by @nicorette on TikTok, found out about it when her 13-year-old daughter came home from school and told her it had made her uncomfortable. Nico posted about it, and the video spread.
“How would you feel if your 13-year-old daughter came home with a paper that said they wouldn’t be able to enter a classroom without a boy escort and would be required to pick up after them every day?” she asked. She was clear that she liked a lot of what the project was trying to do, like the Greek names, the costumes, and the intellectual discussions so that just made the subservience requirement harder to explain away. “So why was this even necessary?” she asked.
Middle school students working quietly. Photo credit: Canva
The comments split in predictable directions but a few stood out. One viewer defended the assignment, arguing it could help female students understand how far women’s rights have come and how quickly they can erode. A commenter who identified as a teacher pushed back harder: “I wrote my master’s thesis about classroom simulations. They only work if the power dynamics stay equal among students.” Another drew a sharper comparison: requiring girls to perform submission to boys isn’t meaningfully different from asking Black students to perform submission to white ones.
That last analogy tends to clarify things pretty quickly. The goal of a history simulation is to understand the past, not to rehearse it on the bodies of kids who are still figuring out who they are.
Nico said the school office was closed by the time her daughter got home. She was planning to raise it with administrators the next day.
You can follow Nico at @nicorette on TikTok for more parenting content.
“I was trying to figure out why you were making that face!” This mom trusted her sister to film her labor, but her sister had some “distorted” plans of her own.
Sibling relationships are built on a delicate balance of deep love and the constant urge to mess with one another. Usually, these pranks happen at the dinner table or during holiday gatherings, but for one TikTok creator named Ana, the shenanigans followed her all the way into the delivery room.
Ana, known online as @anaa_dreams, recently shared a video that has left over 15 million viewers in stitches. She had entrusted her sister with the incredibly important task of filming her labor and the first moments of her newborn’s life. It was supposed to be a sentimental keepsake of the most important day of her life. However, as the footage reveals, her sister had a very different “vision” for the project.
It wasn’t until days after the delivery that Ana finally watched the footage, only to realize her sister had used various facial-distortion filters throughout the entire process. Instead of a glowing mom-to-be, the video shows Ana and her partner with unusually wide eyes, flared nostrils, and cartoonish, devilish grins. The emotional high of the couple awaiting their baby was transformed into something that looked more like a cameo from a fantasy film than a hospital room.
The most audacious part of the prank? The sister didn’t stop once the baby arrived. Even the deeply moving moment of the parents holding their newborn for the first time was subjected to the filters, turning a “core memory” into a complete laugh riot.
While some commenters were initially concerned that the sister might have “ruined” the only footage of the birth, Ana was quick to share a follow-up video to set the record straight. It turns out her sister is a “pro-level” prankster who made sure to capture plenty of normal, heartwarming pictures and videos alongside the filtered ones. From the dad getting emotional to Ana doing her makeup before the big moment, the “real” memories were safe.
The follow-up video answered the question everyone was asking: yes, there are normal photos too. The sister had captured the whole thing properly — the emotional moments, the dad’s face when he first held his daughter, Ana doing her makeup before delivery. She’d just also been running a chaos operation on the side the entire time.
The wife reassured her husband that they could have a blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby and that, quite often, a baby’s hair and eye color can change over time.
But the husband “freaked out at this and refused to listen,” the wife wrote in a viral post on Reddit’s AITA page. Instead, he “demanded a paternity test and threatened to divorce me if I didn’t comply, so I did.”
The husband and his family created problems when there wasn’t one
The man was so confident that after the baby was born, he moved into his mother’s house while he awaited the results of the DNA test. The wife stayed home with the baby and was helped through the first few weeks by her sister.
To make things worse, the wife’s mother-in-law began to make threats. “My mother-in-law called and informed me that if the paternity test revealed that the child wasn’t his, she would do anything within her power to make sure that I was ‘taken to the cleaners’ during the divorce,” the mom shared on Reddit.
Finally, three weeks after the child was born, the DNA test results arrived and the husband came home to read them with his wife. “I was on the couch in the living room, so he sat next to me and we started to read the results,” she wrote. “They showed that he was the father and my husband had this shocked, kinda mortified look on his face with his eyes wide as he stared at it.”
The wife said, “I told you so,” and laughed in his face. In the post, the wife also notes she has “zero history” of cheating.
Can two brown-eyed parents have a blue-eyed baby?
Although it is rare for two people with brown eyes and brown hair to have a blue-eyed, blonde-haired baby, it is entirely possible. According to genetics researchers, when both parents have brown eyes, the chance of having a blue-eyed baby is roughly 6%, though this can increase if blue eyes run in either family. And, as the wife noted earlier, a baby’s eye color can change over its first year of life.
If the father had done a quick Google search on the topic, he would have quickly realized that there was a very strong case that he was the father and the drama could have stopped before any damage was done to the marriage.
The support from Reddit users was huge
The positive part of this story is that the wife’s post on Reddit earned her a ton of support from people who thought her husband’s antics were utterly inappropriate. The support probably also helped to put her husband’s wild behavior into perspective while she determined their future. The wife felt bad about laughing at her husband, but most people thought it was appropriate, given her husband’s initial response.
“Not only doesn’t he have a basic grasp of genetics, he threw a tantrum and left you immediately after having the baby to struggle alone for almost a month,” CrystalQueen3000 commented. “He’s lucky all you did was laugh in his face.”
A lot of commenters thought that the woman should leave her husband for accusing her of cheating and leaving her alone with the child.
“Honestly, if my husband left me for weeks after giving birth due to a faint assumption like this, I would be done. I can’t be together with someone who abandoned me when I needed them desperately,” another commenter wrote.
This article originally appeared two years ago. It has been updated.
Recently, a TikTok featuring one very determined boy went viral. His parents struck the deal of a lifetime: he could stay up past his bedtime. The only caveat? He had to keep running. The moment he stopped, it was straight to bed. The video shows the little boy sprinting in circles around the room, clinging to those extra minutes of freedom while his parents cheer him on. Three minutes later, he’s wiped. The caption reads, “A win is a win.”
If you’ve ever watched your own kid get this exact second wind, you can probably feel that kid’s energy through the screen. Memories flood in: tiny feet pounding down the hallway, wild giggles, and a voice yelling, “Watch this!” as your toddler launches themselves onto a pile of pillows.
Then, a little voice in your head chimes in: “Fantastic. There goes bedtime.“
But who said that burst of energy before bed is the enemy of sleep? What if it were a crucial part of your child’s nighttime routine? Child‑development and sleep experts agree: under the right conditions, a little active play before bedtime can help some toddlers wind down and sleep more soundly. Let’s unpack what’s going on with those bedtime zoomies—and how to work with them instead of fighting them.
Why toddlers get “jacked up on life” at bedtime
Toddlers collect stress during the day: following rules at daycare; sharing toys they really, really don’t want to; sitting still at dinner; holding in big feelings because you’re not “supposed to” melt down in the grocery store (even though no one wants to buy you that gummy candy you’ve been asking nicely for). By the time evening comes around, all of that unprocessed emotional energy that has been slowly building up is still there in their little bodies.
When your toddler is pulling, pushing, jumping, and climbing, their brain releases feel-good endorphins that help them de-stress. Plus, playful contact with parents—wrestling, piggyback rides, being scooped up and spun—boosts oxytocin, the “cuddle hormone” that makes us feel safe and connected. Silly, physical play is essential for toddlers as it helps them move tension through the body and ultimately release it. That’s what’s happening in the viral video as this kid runs laps around the room. “Heavy work” helps many sensory-seeking children feel more regulated and ready for rest.
Think of it as a reset button for an overloaded little nervous system.
The power of active play before bedtime
When you time it right and keep things intentional, a short burst of active play before bed can lead to real, tangible changes. Many “out of nowhere” meltdowns at bedtime aren’t really about their pajamas being itchy or needing “one more story.” They’re the culmination of everything your child has been holding in all day.
That’s why a few minutes of big, silly movement is so essential: it gives that tension a place to go. Laughing, rolling, jumping, and even running laps around their small bedroom is your child’s body saying, “I’m letting go of the day” before heading to bed. They’re practicing turning down the excitement.
Not all play is chaos. Games with start and stop points built in (“run to the wall… now, FREEZE!”), games that take turns, and those that toggle between fast and slow tempos help toddlers learn that their energy comes with emergency brakes.
That’s emotional regulation in disguise. You’re teaching their brain, “We can go big… and then we can come back down.” That same skill shows up later when it’s time to be still, close their eyes, and drift off.
It deepens your connection
Most toddlers just want their parents to be there at bedtime, present and solely focused on them. When you put your phone down and spend even five minutes playing—being the horse and letting them climb on top of you, assuming the role of ‘tickle monster’ or the bridge they crawl under—you add to their sense of connection right before the hardest separation of the day: saying goodnight.
Feeling seen and secure can make bedtime seem less like a painful goodbye and more like a soft landing. Large sleep studies on young children have found that simple, consistent bedtime routines—brushing teeth, reading stories, cuddling, a light jog—are linked with longer, less disruptive sleep and fewer behavioral struggles over time.
It helps their bodies feel ready to rest
In the same way that adults sleep more deeply after a long walk or a workout, toddlers’ bodies respond to movement. A little physical effort equals a calm mind, which sends the clear signal: “Oh, right. We already did our big moves. Now, we can rest.”
Physical activity can lead to faster bedtimes. Canva
For some families, that combination (physical activity and emotional regulation) can lead to faster bedtimes, fewer “one more” negotiations, and restorative sleep. Instead of an emotional 40-minute standoff about “I’m not ready for bed” nonsense (even when their eyes are literally halfway closed), their bedtime routine transforms into an easy cycle: five minutes of running around, a deep breath, one fairytale, and lights off.
How to add energy that doesn’t wreck bedtime
An important note: this is not about letting your child go wild until they crash. It’s a little intentional play that turns into a clear, gentle slide into calm. The viral TikTok provides a wonderful example of that system at play: parents say yes to movement, but it’s contained within the parameters of “bedtime.”
Aim to begin active play about 40–60 minutes before bedtime. Keep the high-energy section brief, ideally about 5 to 15 minutes. Consider running, jumping, and horse play as openers to your bedtime routine, not the grand finale.
2. Choose “heavy work” activities
Many toddlers, especially the endlessly wiggly ones, crave what therapists call “heavy work”: pushing, pulling, climbing, and crashing that give deep input to their muscles and joints. For many sensory‑seeking kids, that kind of play is especially soothing.
No one is asking you to suit up and become a wrestling maniac every night like it’s the WWE. But even when you’re exhausted or “touched out,” you can still provide an anchor.
Set up the pillow pile. Hold the blanket they are pulling. Referee a sibling “pillow tower demolition.” Cheer them on from the floor as they run their own version of that TikTok sprint.
Oh, and never forget that safety is non-negotiable. Before engaging in active play, scan the room for sharp corners or tripping hazards. Skip roughhousing if your child already looks overtired or seems unsteady.
When active play may not be the right fit
For some kids, bedtime rough-and-tumble is simply not the answer. That’s okay. If your toddler is sensitive to noise, sudden movement, and general chaos, high-energy play in the evening might leave their pint-sized nervous system feeling frenetic rather than soothed. Children who are “sensory avoidant” often wind down better with gentler, predictable routines before sleep.
Their giggles tip into frantic, wild running they cannot seem to stop.
They are more tearful, not less, once the game ends.
It consistently pushes bedtime later and later, even with a calm routine afterward.
In cases like these, consider leaning into cozy sensory activities, like deep pressure hugs, slow rocking, or quiet stretches, and keep high-energy play earlier in the day.
Sure, bedtime can be stressful, but it can also provide a daily opportunity to reconnect with your child.
A few moments of wild laughter. A blanket ride down the hallway. One last big jump into your arms. These are the moments their bodies will remember when the lights go out. It all provides a sense of “I moved, I let it out, I am safe. They are here.”
For some toddlers, this is exactly the safety that lets their brain finally say, “Okay, I can sleep now.”
If you have a high-energy child, you might try five minutes of play tonight. See what happens. Under the right conditions, those bedtime zoomies might be the precursor of a sweet night’s sleep for both of you.
It’s hard to explain the relentless intensity of having young children if you haven’t done it. It’s wonderful, beautiful, magical and all of that, it truly is, but it’s a lot. Like, a lot. It’s a bit like running an ultramarathon through the most beautiful landscape you can imagine. There’s no question that it’s amazing, but it’s really, really hard. And sometimes there are storms or big hills or obstacles or twisted ankles or some other thing that makes it even more challenging for a while.
Unfortunately, a lot of moms feel like they’re running that marathon alone. Some actually are. Some have partners who don’t pull their weight. But even with an equal partner, the early years tend to be mom-heavy, and it takes a toll. In fact, that toll is so great that it’s not unusual for moms to fantasize about being hospitalized, not with anything serious, just something that requires a short stay simply to get a genuine break.
In a follow-up tweet, she added, “And other moms are like ‘yeah totally’ while childfree Gen Z girls’ mouths hang open in horror.”
Mothers share their own experiences
Other moms corroborated, not only with the fantasy but the reality of getting a hospital break:
“And can confirm: I have the fondest memories of my appendicitis that almost burst 3 weeks after my third was born bc I emergency had to go get it taken out and I mean I let my neighbor take my toddlers and I let my husband give the baby formula, and I slept until I was actually rested. Under the knife, but still. It was really nice,” wrote one mom.
“I got mastitis when my first was 4 months old. I had to have surgery, but my hospital room had a nice view, my mom came to see me, the baby was with me but other people mostly took care of her, bliss,” shared another.
An exhausted mom holds her newborn baby. Photo credit: Canva
Some people tried to blame lackadaisical husbands and fathers for moms feeling overwhelmed, but as Emily pointed out, it’s not always enough to have a supportive spouse. That’s why she pointed to “lack of community care” in her original post.
They say it takes a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to raise a mother. Without the proverbial village, we end up bearing too much of the weight of childrearing ourselves. We’re not just running the ultramarathon. We’re also carrying the water, bandaging the blisters, moving fallen trees out of the way, washing the sweat out of our clothes and we’re doing it all without any rest.
Strange as it may seem, the reason hospitalization is attractive is that it’s forced. If you’re in the hospital, you have to be there, so there’s no guilt about choosing to leave. It involves no decision-making. Someone else is calling all the shots. You literally have no responsibilities in the hospital except resting. No one needs anything from you. And unlike when you’re on vacation, most people who are caring for your kids when you’re in the hospital aren’t going to constantly contact you to ask you questions. They’ll leave you to let you rest.
When a real hospital stay becomes a vacation
Paula Fitzgibbons shares that she had three kids under the age of 3 in 11 months (two by adoption and one by birth). Her husband, despite being very involved and supportive, had a 1.5 hour commute for work, so the lion’s share of childcare, or “delightful utter chaos” as she refers to it, fell on her shoulders. At one point, she ended up in the ER with atrial fibrillation, and due to family medical history was kept in the hospital for a few days for tests and monitoring.
“When people came to visit me or called to see how I was, I responded that I was enjoying my time at ‘the spa,’ and though I missed my family, I was soaking it all in,” she tells Upworthy. “My husband understood. Other mothers understood. The medical staff did not know what to make of my cheerful demeanor, but there I was, lying in bed reading and sleeping for four straight days with zero guilt. What a gift for a new mom.”
A mom relaxing in a chair Image via Canva
When you have young children, your concept of what’s relaxing shifts. I recall almost falling asleep during one of my first dental cleanings after having kids. That chair was so comfy and no one needed anything from me. I didn’t even care what they were doing to my teeth. It felt like heaven to lie down and rest without any demands being made of me other than “Open a little wider, please.”
Obviously, being hospitalized isn’t ideal for a whole host of reasons, but the desire is real. There aren’t a lot of simple solutions to the issue of moms needing a real break, not just an hour or two, but a few days. However, maybe if society were structured in such a way that we had smaller, more frequent respites and spread the work of parenting across the community, we wouldn’t feel as much of a desire to be hospitalized simply to be able to rejuvenate.
This article originally appeared three years ago. It has been updated.
The best feeling as a parent is when your child does something that exemplifies good character, especially when they do it without being asked and without expecting any recognition or reward for it. Seeing your kid practicing patience, kindness, and helpfulness, even when they think no one is looking—that’s when you know that all your hard parenting work is paying off.
fSo when you’re a mom with six kids and the baby monitor in your 18-month-old’s nursery shows your 10-year-old stepping up to help his little brother—in the middle of the night, no less, your heart might melt a little. And when he tells you the thoughtful reason why he didn’t just come and get you when he heard his brother fussing, your heart just might explode.
A viral video captured this scenario at Gloria McIntosh’s house in Ohio in 2020, and it could not be sweeter.
McIntosh told TODAY Parents that she always told her kids that the true test of a person’s character is what they do when no one is around, a lesson that her son, Mason, clearly took to heart when he got up at 3 a.m. to comfort his 18-month-old brother, Greyson.
“The baby woke up in the middle of the night,” McIntosh wrote. “I heard him fussing so I just checked the camera to see if he would just fall back asleep and saw his brother showing the best example of love and patience. He stayed with him for almost 30 minutes trying to get him back to sleep. I eventually came in and got the baby, and asked my son why he didn’t just come and get me.”
Why Mason didn’t wake his mom up
The reason was as thoughtful as can be.
“He said he wanted me to get some rest, because I did a lot that day. While parenting is not his responsibility, just the fact that he understood that he is his brother’s keeper, and considered my long day as a mom, is much appreciated. ❤️”
When he climbed into the crib with him? Gracious. That’s when you know your kids are going to be all right.
McIntosh said Mason is a natural caregiver. “I’m sure Mason was tired and cranky. He was woken up at 3 a.m.,” she said. “But how you saw him treat his brother is how he is. He steps up.”
Some kids are just awesome, but there’s a lot to be said for setting an example and nurturing kids in an environment where they feel inspired to be helpful as well. Clearly McIntosh has done something right for her son to step up in that way. Watch the way she soothes her 4-year-old when he had a bad dream in the middle of the night, and it’s easy to see where Mason gets it.
Every parent knows the struggle of looking through their phone’s photo library only to realize they are missing from almost every single frame. We are the ones behind the lens, capturing the first steps, the messy faces, and the playground triumphs, but we rarely have proof that we were actually there. As PEOPLE reported, one mother in England recently received a beautiful remedy to this “invisible parent” problem from a complete stranger.
Elizabeth Green (@likedbyliz), a nurse and mother of two, was enjoying a rare day off at the park with her children, Will and Nora. While she was focused on playing with them on the slide, she noticed another woman nearby who seemed to be giving her children instructions to “get back up there.” Before Green could wonder what was happening, the woman approached her and asked to airdrop a few files.
When Green opened her phone, she was stunned. The stranger had captured several high-quality, candid photos of Green immersed in play with her toddlers. These weren’t the posed, “everyone look at the camera and smile” shots that parents usually fight for. They were authentic glimpses of motherhood in motion.
The gesture struck a deep chord with Green, who shared the photos on TikTok to thank the “random mom” for her kindness. The video has since resonated with millions of parents who feel the same longing to be documented in their daily lives. Green noted that while her husband makes a real effort to take photos of her with the kids, there is something uniquely special about a third-party perspective catching a moment you didn’t even know was happening.
Kids playing at an outdoor playground. Photo credit: Canva
Psychologists often talk about the power of “core memories,” those significant experiences that help shape a child’s sense of security and love. According to a study published in PMC, the quality of time parents spend with their children is a primary driver of long-term well-being. By capturing these images, the stranger didn’t just give Green a few photos, she gave her a permanent record of the “quiet” love that builds those memories.
The comment section of Green’s video quickly became a digital support group for parents. One user shared a story of an older man who nervously approached her at a library to share a photo he took of her with her baby, while a single mother commented that she would “sob” if someone did the same for her.
It is a simple act of service that costs nothing but a few seconds of time, yet it provides a lifetime of value. In a world where we are often told to mind our own business, this “random mom” proved that sometimes, the best thing you can do is notice someone else’s joy and make sure they have a way to remember it.
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