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Kid's outpouring of emotion meeting his baby brother for the first time has us wrecked

Love at its purest.

Photo by Hu Chen on Unsplash

Meeting a new sibling can go either way, but this big brother's reaction was the sweetest.

We've all seen our fair share of older-sibling-meets-new-baby videos, which are generally pretty darn adorable. But once in a while, one comes along that socks us square in the heart and has us desperately reaching for a tissue.

Brace yourselves, friends, because this is one video that truly requires a tissue warning.

Shared by @brianaarielle89 on TikTok, the video shows a preschooler dressed up in a dinosaur costume entering a hospital room to meet his newborn sibling for the first time. He asks, "Mommy, where is Hudson?" and is guided over to the cot where his baby brother is bundled.

At first, he walks right past him. But then he turns, sees him and simply stares for a few seconds.

A man's voice asks, "What do you think?" and oh, the emotion in his little voice as he breaks into tears.

"Hudsooooon!" he wails. "Hiiii!" And then he cries out the sweetest BFF declaration you'll ever hear.

@brianaarielle89

#fyp #viral #heartwarming #siblings #brothers #babiesoftiktok

Oof, right? This is the purest love there is. What a little sweetheart and what a lucky little brother Hudson is.

I regret to inform you that there is a part two, which is also adorable.

@brianaarielle89

#fyp #babiesoftiktok #brothers #feelings #happycry

"I'm happy crying, okay?" Okay, kiddo. So is everyone else now.

Of course, not all young children are overcome with happiness when they get to meet their younger siblings. In fact, some kids can be downright hostile about it, asking the parents if they can send the baby back or acting out in anger and jealousy. Depending on their age, older siblings might demand more attention than usual or regress in certain developmental milestones, such as potty training.

For parents whose young children didn't gush with love when they met a new sibling, don't worry. Jealousy of babies is totally normal and doesn't mean your kids won't get along eventually. It just takes time to adjust to a new reality and a new dynamic in the household. Dr. Hindie M. Klein recommends tips like referring to the new baby as "our baby," letting the older sibling help in caring for the baby (in ways that are age-appropriate, of course) and providing some special parental one-on-one time with the older child to help kids more easily adjust to a new baby in the house.

Even baby Hudson and his big-hearted bro here will surely have sibling spats of their own over the years. Sibling love is complicated, but it's great to see it start off on such a beautiful note.


This article originally appeared on 9.21.22

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My white parents adopted African-American twins when I was young. This is our story.

I'm white. My adopted brothers are black. This is how their world differs from mine.

In 1969, my white parents adopted twin, 4-month-old African-American and Mexican-American baby boys.

I was born a year later, making us three children under 3 years old. And, boy, were we a handful.

This was just two years after the landmark United States Supreme Court decision invalidating laws prohibiting interracial marriage, and just five short years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, forbid racial discrimination in schools, and allowed people of color to drink from the same water fountains as white people.

Many people over the years have asked me what it was like growing up with my African-American brothers as my “real” brothers.

The boring truth is that this was my “normal.” My brothers and I bickered and fought like the close-in-age siblings we were.

Image courtesy of Elena Kennedy.

Our circle of friends included other families who were also interracial. I didn’t even notice at the time that I was the only white kid in my first grade class until years later when I saw my class picture, and there I was  — the only white kid, with a white teacher.

We lived in a pretty progressive town, Montclair, New Jersey. That year, the school system was creating “magnet schools” to help integrate the schools. So while I walked to our neighborhood school, my brothers were bused to the area of town that was primarily white to desegregate and improve integration.

I didn’t really like that my big brothers and I wouldn’t be at the same school. I think, to this day, there are acquaintances of ours that know us separately and don’t put it together that we’re brothers and sister even though we have the same last name.

Although we were being raised in the same family, their experiences were separate and different from mine.

Out in the world, they were being treated differently than I was.

When we went to the same middle school, I remember us walking home together and noticing that one of my brothers said someone was looking at us funny. Billy and Toby would always notice who was looking at us funny, and I never ever noticed.

One time, my brother Billy was chased in a store for taking a shirt off the rack and running back to us to say this was the shirt he wanted our mother to buy. The store clerk followed in hot pursuit, thinking a theft was in progress.

Later, when Billy could drive, I remember him getting stopped by police on the parkway driving home, and the police looked over to the passenger side where my white dad sat and asked if everything was all right. My dad replied: “Yes, my son is just driving us home. Was he speeding?” We knew this was an odd traffic stop because, no, he wasn’t speeding.

Last year, I asked my brother to do me a huge favor and drive my son from New Jersey where we were visiting family to our home in Dayton, Ohio, (where I live now) — a 10-hour drive.

In order to drive my son home, we agreed it would be best to write and sign a letter saying my brother had permission to drive my car and was taking my son home to Ohio and include a picture of my driver’s license in case there was any trouble.

It made all of us feel better to know he had that note. It also made us miserable to write it. And we held our breath the whole way they drove to Ohio and until Billy returned safely back to NYC.

Image courtesy of Elena Kennedy.

My brothers go into the world as African-American men, and the world treats them as African-American men  —  with implicit bias, prejudice, and fear. I go into the world a white woman and I am afforded the benefit of the doubt and second chances.

When I went away to college in Ohio, people were surprised to learn that I grew up with African-American brothers.

“What was it like?” The question stumped me. It was just my normal. I didn’t know anything different to compare it to. Yet, I do know that it’s not everyone’s normal, and in some circumstances, people don’t interact with people of color in their daily lives.

Under different circumstances, I might have been a white person who didn’t regularly interact with people of color. I could have had an understanding of race taken from books, biased news reports, from TV or movies. Instead, I have agonized over my brothers “driving while black,” and I worry for their lives when they come to visit me.

I want to make the world safer and more fair for my family and yours.

Maybe now you’ll speak up when you witness something that seems unjust.

Maybe now you will see an uncomfortable interaction involving a person of color and you’ll think, "What if that were my brother or sister?"

What can you do? You can talk to your friends and neighbors about how you feel about injustices in the world. You can join a racial justice group in your town, your school, or your place of worship.

I am sharing this because I hope my story starts just one constructive conversation today that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

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These 12 graphics teach us the importance of prioritizing our friends and family.

This post was originally published on Wait But Why.

In a previous post, we laid out the human lifespan visually.

By years:

By months:

And by weeks:

While working on that post, I also made a days chart, but it seemed a bit much, so I left it out. But fuck it.

The days chart blows my mind as much as the weeks chart. Each of those dots is only a single Tuesday or Friday or Sunday, but even a lucky person who lives to 90 will have no problem fitting every day in their life on one sheet of paper.

But since doing the Life in Weeks post, I’ve been thinking about something else.

Instead of measuring your life in units of time, you can measure it in activities or events. To use myself as an example:

I’m 34, so let’s be super optimistic and say I’ll be hanging around drawing stick figures till I’m 90. If so, I have a little under 60 winters left:

And maybe around 60 Super Bowls:

The ocean is freezing, and putting my body into it is a bad life experience, so I tend to limit myself to around one ocean swim a year. So as weird as it seems, I might only go in the ocean 60 more times:

Not counting Wait But Why research, I read about five books a year, so even though it feels like I’ll read an endless number of books in the future, I actually have to choose only 300 of all the books out there to read and accept that I’ll sign off for eternity without knowing what goes on in all the rest.

Growing up in Boston, I went to Red Sox games all the time, but if I never move back there, I’ll probably continue at my current rate of going to a Sox game about once every three years — meaning this little row of 20 represents my remaining Fenway visits:

There have been eight U.S. presidential elections during my lifetime and about 15 to go. I’ve seen five presidents in office, and if that rate continues, I’ll see about nine more.

I probably eat pizza about once a month, so I’ve got about 700 more chances to eat pizza. I have an even brighter future with dumplings. I have Chinese food about twice a month, and I tend to make sure six dumplings occurs each time, so I have a fuckton of dumplings to look forward to:

But these things aren’t what I’ve been thinking about. Most of the things I just mentioned happen with a similar frequency during each year of my life, which spreads them out somewhat evenly through time. If I’m around a third of my way through life, I’m also about a third of my way through experiencing the activity or event.

What I’ve been thinking about is a really important part of life that, unlike all of these examples, isn’t spread out evenly through time—something whose ratio of already done and still to come doesn’t at all align with how far I am through life: relationships.

I’ve been thinking about my parents, who are in their mid-60s. During my first 18 years, I spent some time with my parents during at least 90% of my days. But since heading off to college and then later moving out of Boston, I’ve probably seen them an average of only five times a year each, for an average of maybe two days each time. 10 days a year. About 3% of the days I spent with them each year of my childhood.

Being in their mid-60s, let’s continue to be super-optimistic and say I’m one of the incredibly lucky people to have both parents alive into my 60s. That would give us about 30 more years of coexistence. If the 10 days a year thing holds, that’s 300 days left to hang with Mom and Dad. Less time than I spent with them in any one of my 18 childhood years.

When you look at that reality, you realize that despite not being at the end of your life, you may very well be nearing the end of your time with some of the most important people in your life. If I lay out the total days I’ll ever spend with each of my parents — assuming I’m as lucky as can be — this becomes starkly clear:

It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end.

It’s a similar story with my two sisters. After living in a house with them for 10 and 13 years respectively, I now live across the country from both of them and spend maybe 15 days with each of them a year. Hopefully, that leaves us with about 15% of our total hangout time left.

The same often goes for old friends. In high school, I sat around playing hearts with the same four guys about five days a week. In four years, we probably racked up 700 group hangouts. Now, scattered around the country with totally different lives and schedules, the five of us are in the same room at the same time probably 10 days each decade. The group is in its final 7%.

So what do we do with this information? Setting aside my secret hope that technological advances will let me live to 700, I see three takeaways here:

1. Living in the same place as the people you love matters.

I probably have 10 times the time left with the people who live in my city as I do with the people who live somewhere else.

2. Priorities matter.

Your remaining face time with any person depends largely on where that person falls on your list of life priorities. Make sure this list is set by you — not by unconscious inertia.

3. Quality time matters.

If you’re in your last 10% of time with someone you love, keep that fact in the front of your mind when you’re with them and treat that time as what it actually is: precious.

Visit Wait But Why to read the post this post was based on: "Your Life in Weeks."

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Here’s how a teen went about making a new hand for his brother.

Best older brother ever.

Gabriel Filippini wanted to surprise his little brother, Lucas, with something extra special for his 6th birthday.

Photo by Gabriel Filippini, used with permission.

Lucas was born without a hand, so Gabriel thought he'd find a way to make him a prosthetic one.

Fortunately, his high school in Virginia just so happened to have recently purchased a 3D printer.


An Afinia printer in action, similar to the one Gabriel's school bought. Image via Afinia3DPrint/YouTube.

"Lucas can do everything he wants with one hand, but I wanted to see what he could do with two," Gabriel told Upworthy.

Gabriel spoke with his CTE (Career Technology Education) teacher, Kurt O'Connor, at Park View High School, about using the 3D printer for this rather complicated endeavor.

"I didn't think it was impossible, but I did see some challenges. Honestly the 3D printing world is rather knew to me, and I have spent the last year learning more about it," O'Connor admitted to Upworthy.

O'Connor was not about to put limitations on what his students could do, so together, he and Gabriel came up with a plan.

They decided to reach out to a company called e-Nable or Enabling the Future — a global organization made up of volunteers who help teach people how to create prosthetic hands using 3D printing.

Yup, that's a Wonder Woman prosthetic arm. This girl is badass. Photo from E-Nable/Facebook, used with permission.

Once e-Nable got them set up with DIY tutorials and design patterns for the prosthetic, O'Connor and Gabriel got to work.

The project was not without its challenges.

"One of the biggest challenges Mr. O'Conner and I had was the joints," Gabriel explained. "They had to be flexible in order for the fingers to bend. When we printed the joints for the first time, they were stiff."

To solve this problem, O'Connor reached out to Makersmith, a company that specializes in teaching kids how to build things, to help them print new joints that were more flexible.

The Raptor Design. Enable the Future.

The first hand they created ended up too big. Luckily, thanks to the 3D printing technology, they were able to scale down the design without too much fuss and print a new one that fit properly.

When Lucas's 6th birthday rolled around in June 2016, he was ecstatic to receive such a thoughtful gift from his older brother.

Lucas gripping a box with his new hand! Photo by Gabriel Filippini, used with permission.

While Gabriel couldn't be there to give Lucas the hand in person (he was out of state on a trip), he was able to FaceTime to see his brother with the new hand. Their mom told Gabriel how excited Lucas was, immediately wanting to pick things up with the new hand. According to his brother, he's most looking forward to learning how to tie his own shoes using two hands.

This amazing moment of giving the gift of double handedness was brought to you by a brother's love and the ability to think outside the box.

Both O'Connor and Gabriel would love to keep working on helping hand projects like this.

Photo by Enable the Future.

"I'd love to help more kids in need. Park View High School is actually considering registering with e-Nable to help other kids in our community and other communities," Gabriel said.

"After completing this project and seeing the impact we have had on this little boy's life, I am definitely going to bring this into the classroom," O'Connor said.

As a result of this project, the Loudoun County Public School has created an initiative called One to the World, which O'Connor says will "[challenge] teachers to develop and deliver real-world applications to students."

The simple message here is if you can dream it, you can do it. And if you can dream something that will improve someone else's life, even better.

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