Helicopter parenting sets children up for failure, and many argue is just another form of child abuse as it can lead to difficult-to-reverse long-term psychological effects such as severe anxiety and depression.
Yet, there are still people who treat their children as if they’re made out of porcelain and expect others to treat them the same. This is something that TikToker Matthew Bunker (@bunkerlicious) expressed his displeasure with in a now-viral clip.
Bunker, who works in a “high-end showroom,” delineated his experience in dealing with a family of four—two parents and two kids. Bunker said things seemed to be going fine until one of the kids, who was playing on some swivel chairs that were in the showroom, fell off and bumped their leg.
The child wasn’t even crying or hurt, but Bunker said that the father’s overly dramatic reaction to seeing the fall immediately sent him into a blaming mood. The father engaged in some mental gymnastics, Bunker said, where he put the onus of the child’s “boo boo” on the employee not providing the children with wooden blocks to play with.
@bunkerlicious Not my circus, not my monkeys. #rant #storytime #notmyproblem #childfree #petpeeve #fyp ♬ original sound – Matthew Bunker
Bunker then rants against the customer to his TikTok audience, saying in the clip, “Excuse me, sir, first of all, this is a high-end showroom not a fucking Chuck E. Cheese, OK? And entertaining your sticky little hobgoblin is not part of my job description.”
“I do not remember signing up for the Babysitter’s Club and second of all, no one asked you to reproduce…If you choose to parent a child, you have to actually parent that child,” Bunker continued. “If you see your kids spinning on a piece of furniture and you think that it’s dangerous, it is your responsibility to tell them to stop. If you see them spinning and you don’t give a fuck, it is your fault if they get hurt.”
Bunker vents that for the father to try to place the blame on him was “bullshit.”
“Take the money that you were gonna spend here and get the kid a fucking iPad, it may rot his brain but it’ll keep him out of the emergency room and your entitlement out of my fucking aura,” he concluded.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Bunker via Instagram direct message for further comment.
A number of parents claiming to have overly energetic kids commented that they agreed wholeheartedly with Bunker’s post.
“As a mom to Donnie Thornberry, I totally agree with you!!” one TikToker said. Another wrote, “As a parent, I agree with everything you said.”
Another viewer said while they remembered what it was like being a kid, they also understood when they should and shouldn’t play, writing, “Agree 100%… we stood by our parents while they conducted business. We knew where and when to play.”
According to other users in the comments section, the phenomenon of entitled parents doesn’t seem to be going away.
As one user wrote, “My aunt told me I was selfish because I wanted MY birthday party to be a child-free event.”
