I have a confession to make. I’m 48 years old, my youngest child is in high school and I can’t stop watching “Bluey.” For the uninitiated, “Bluey” is a kids’ cartoon from Australia aimed at 5 to 7-year-olds. It’s been nearly a decade since my household has seen that demographic, so when people kept telling me I should watch “Bluey,” my reaction was basically, “Yeah, I’ve already done my kiddie show time, thankyouverymuch.”
Then my almost-15-year-old started watching it just to see what the fuss was about. And as I started tuning in, I saw why people love it so much. I figured it was going to be a wholesome show with some good lessons for kids, and it is. But it’s also laugh-out-loud hilarious.
As I got sucked deeper and deeper down the “Bluey” hole, I also saw why so many adults say the show is healing their inner child. It doesn’t just have good lessons for kids; some episodes are a masterclass in creative, engaged, positive parenting. Now I’m hooked, along with the rest of my family of 40-somethings and young adults. We even have favorite episodes that we rewatch, for goodness sake.
So what is it that makes “Bluey” such a beloved show for all ages?
The kid actors are fantastic. Seriously, so darn funny.
The children who play 6-year-old Bluey, her 4-year-old sister, Bingo, and their various cousins and friends are outstanding. Their voices are cute, but they’re also top notch comedians.
One of my personal favorite bits on the show is when the kids pretend to be grannies. Here’s a clip with Bluey, Bingo and their cousin, Muffin, pretending to be grannies at their neighbor’s yard sale.
It gets even funnier when the “grouchy granny” encounters an actual, real-life grouchy granny who wants to buy the granny mobile and haggles with her. (We’ve watched this episode four times. It only gets funnier.)
The parents teach lessons through imaginative play
The clip below shows how Bandit (Bluey and Bingo’s dad) creatively uses a unicorn puppet to drive home the importance of good manners and personal care habits when Bluey won’t stop chewing with her mouth open.
Using characters that struggle with whatever a kid needs to learn is a great way to help drive home a lesson. And doing it with silliness and creativity makes the learning process both enjoyable and effective.
Also, the parents’ love for each other shines through in the show in adorable ways.
The parents share their own learnings along the way
Bluey episodes are short—the full episode below is less than 7 minutes—and it’s amazing how much they can squeeze into them. Here, Bluey’s mom teaches Bluey not to compare herself to others by sharing her own comparison story from when Bluey was a baby, which also includes a lesson for the parents who may be watching as well. It also tugs right at the heartstrings at the end.
I’m just consistently amazed at how well the show executes on every level.
My colleague (and Licensed Clinical Social Worker) Jacalyn Wetzel says she recommends “Bluey” to clients who are having a hard time with parenting.
“When parents of young children mention that they’re struggling with being able to emotionally regulate through their child’s tantrums, outside of talking to them about ways children express unmet needs, I often recommend the cartoon ‘Bluey,’” she says. “Bluey behaves very much like a typical preschooler, which sometimes means she accidentally pushes buttons or does something wrong. The way her parents interact with her in those moments are great examples of acknowledging a child’s emotions and responding with kindness, understanding and age appropriate terms.”
The show includes real-life parenting moments that can be hard to navigate, so she encourages parents to watch how the parents interact with Bluey and Bingo. “Parenting doesn’t come with a handbook but ‘Bluey’ is helping those that maybe didn’t have the best example of it growing up, and that’s special,” she says.
It’s just a near-perfect show in almost every way. There’s even some silly potty humor if that’s your jam. (See what I mean? A little something for everyone.)
You can watch full seasons of “Bluey” on Disney + and find clips and some full episodes the “Bluey” YouTube channel.
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.
“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.
For more fun parenting videos, follow @likedbyliz on TikTok.
Stepmoms get a bad cultural reputation that most of them don’t deserve. The wicked stepmother is such a durable myth that it takes something pretty extraordinary to cut through it. This cut through.
At her dad’s wedding, a 15-year-old named Alex stood up to give a toast and proceeded to say something that made the bride cry before she’d barely gotten started. The clip was shared on TikTok by wedding videographer Sky Cinema Films (@skycinemafilms) and has since been watched more than 42 million times across a three-part series.
Alex started by saying the first word that came to mind when she thought of Beth was “affectionate.” Then: “She doesn’t have one mean bone in her body.” For Beth, hearing her stepdaughter-to-be say that out loud, in front of everyone, was already too much. You could see it on her face.
Alex went on to describe watching her parents’ divorce and what it felt like to suddenly have the concept of a “stepmom” become real. It was unsettling at first, she said. Then Beth showed up, and that changed. Beth became a partner in crime, a safe space, someone she could tell anything. They’d go shopping together. They’d commiserate about their glasses. The little things, stacked up, had turned into something that mattered.
Then came the line that the internet has not been able to shake: “Usually, divorce is hard. But this made it worth it.”
A woman hugs the bride at her wedding. Photos: Canva
She closed by saying something that holds up outside of weddings too. “Family isn’t always defined by last names or blood; it’s defined by love and commitment. I know Beth isn’t my mom, but I know she will always be there whenever I need her.”
Children of divorce carry a particular kind of weight, like the loyalty conflicts, the shifting households, the feeling of being torn in two directions at once. What Alex was describing, without quite naming it, was what it felt like to have that weight lifted by someone who didn’t have to do it. Beth chose this. She chose to show up, consistently, for a kid who wasn’t hers by birth, until the kid couldn’t imagine the family without her.
That’s what the 42 million views are really about.
You can follow Sky Cinema Films at @skycinemafilms on TikTok.
