Everyone has their own sense of humor and comfort level, and the people around them should honor those boundaries. This includes the jokes we tell our loved ones, as well as pranks we might involve them in.
This is especially true for parents and how they joke with their kids, as some often take their jokes too far.
While traveling to Buson, South Korea, while on a family vacation, a mother pranked her son into thinking that they would have to jump onto a moving high-speed train—or basically die trying.
TikToker @jsymone7 had already told her son that they would have to jump on the train when she started recording, to which her concerned son asked:
"Do you think I'd make it?"
She proceeded to give him a 45—on a scale of one to 100—on how likely he'd be to make it onto the train. To punctuate these odds, a train passed on the opposite side of the tracks, revealing how fast the trains were moving.
When her son realized how impossible it would be to board this train in a foreign country, he began to cry.
Instead of comforting him, the camera continued recording, and his younger brother attempted to tell him everything would be alright.
Only once it was announced that the train was about to arrive for boarding did the mother tell her son that it was a prank, to which he tearfully smirked and tried to smack the recording phone away from his face.
You can watch the prank video on X here:
Fellow TikTokers were divided over the video and whether or not performing such a prank was acceptable.
While some thought the video was hilarious and completely understood why the couple wanted to prank their son, others thought that a moment like this could be potentially traumatizing for a child, especially regarding tough subjects like danger and death.
Some were furious about the son's emotional needs not being met, either, as his mother elected to continue recording rather than comfort him while he was crying, which might be another message he would take from this experience.
After receiving serious backlash for the video, TikToker @jsymone7 removed it from her account, but not before another TikToker could save it and repost it to Twitter.
Some appreciated the prank and the son's various stages of grief.
But others were concerned about parents pranking their children, not to mention recording them crying.
@itslolalistens/Twitter; @IkikiLakev/Twitter
While the prank was likely meant in good fun and might even be a funny memory to look back on from their family vacation, how far a parent will take a prank with their child is always questionable.
And it's pretty clear why this video received some pushback.