Children are innocent; this precious trait can be abused.
I’ve always felt uncomfortable with people playing tricks or pranks on children. While some pranks may be harmless, others can cross the line into cruelty.
For instance, there’s a YouTuber called “mahdifun4233” who dresses as a bronze statue and sits motionless on public benches along busy pedestrian streets. He even has a fake bronze dog beside him. Most passersby believe he’s just another lifeless statue.
The fun starts when people, assuming he’s a lifeless statue, sit beside him for pictures—typical tourist behavior. That’s when Mahdi reaches out to scare them, often with hilarious reactions. I’ve enjoyed watching many of these moments myself.
The issue arises when he targets little children. One thing Mahdi does is pretend the children “pushed” him when they come up and touch him. He slowly leans over as if the statue is about to fall. The children, being innocent, believe they’ve caused it and instinctively try to prop him back up, thinking they’ve done something wrong or that they have “broken” the statue.
The children’s reactions are priceless. Here’s an example:
The first little girl in the pink shirt is a prime example of the distress many kids experience when they believe they’ve made the statue fall. She cries for help, and while the interaction is admittedly funny, it’s also troubling.
What’s more unsettling is the laughter from the adults in the background. These adults, for the most part, know what’s going on and find it hilarious to watch their children fooled by Mahdi. To his credit, he often reassures the kids and unsuspecting adults afterward, pointing to the camera to reveal the prank.
The second little girl on the scooter is more disturbing. She’s genuinely afraid, convinced she’s caused the statue to tip, and in her near hysteria, cries out to her parents for help.
I don’t want to make too much of this because I understand why adults find it funny. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve found it hilarious too. But something inside me feels uneasy, like it’s not entirely “right.”
Part of why we laugh is because of the innocence of children. They truly believe they’ve done something wrong to make the statue fall, and their frantic efforts to stop it add to the humor. Their panic, fear, and concern—completely unfounded in this case—are part of what makes the situation amusing. While adults as well as children are routinely spoofed by Mahdi and both can become startled by his sudden movements, adults quickly recover and understand they have been fooled. Children, though, are not so quick to see through the ruse.
What bothers me most is children are tricked into believing they’ve done something wrong, which causes them to become genuinely afraid—even terrified at times. This deception, which causes such distress in innocent, trusting children, is what troubles me.
When my daughters were small, I never scared them. I wouldn’t hide in their dark bedrooms to jump out and yell “Boo!” when they walked in. Many parents and siblings find this kind of behavior acceptable and funny, but it always bothered me, and I still find it unacceptable today.
I never told them scary bedtime stories or allowed them to watch horror movies. I didn’t want them to suffer from the same violent nightmares I had as a child, when my dad would take us to see bloody, horror-filled movies that haunted me for years. I wanted my kids to sleep peacefully, free from terrifying dreams caused by something they saw on TV, read in a book, or heard from someone else.
What bothers me most is children are tricked into believing they’ve done something wrong, which causes them to become genuinely afraid—even terrified at times.
You might wonder why I’m placing this under “Divorce and PAS.” It’s because alienating parents who brainwash their children to hate the other parent exploit their innocence in the same way Mahdi does, but on a far more dangerous and malevolent level.
It’s one thing to laugh at an adult getting pranked by a street performer like Mahdi, as long as it’s harmless. But it’s entirely different to frighten a child to the point of visible distress—even if that wasn’t the intent.
This is where I believe Mahdi goes too far. While I don’t think he acts maliciously or aims to scare children, the fear is clear in many of their reactions.
Adults find this kind of humor funny because we can quickly figure out that the statue is a living person when it starts to slowly fall after being touched. We have the maturity to see something is off and look for the obvious explanation.
Children, however, don’t have that level of understanding. They believe their touch is causing the statue to fall, and in their panic to “fix it” by grabbing Mahdi, they can’t stop him from falling. Their fear escalates, and they call out for help, while the adults—often including their own parents—laugh at their distress.
One of the most important roles as a parent is to protect our children. Just as we look both ways before crossing a busy street to avoid danger, we must also be mindful of emotional harm. Failing to do so can leave lasting scars.
Adults who fail to look both ways before crossing and get injured by a passing car aren’t always pitied by onlookers. We might say, “They should have known better. It’s their own fault.” Harsh, but there’s truth in that reaction.
However, we wouldn’t react the same way if a small child, say four or five years old, stepped into a busy street without looking and suffered the consequences. We know a child lacks the maturity and experience to safely navigate such situations. A tragic accident involving a child is never seen in the same light as one involving an irresponsible adult.
If someone were to harshly criticize a child for not looking both ways, others would quickly defend the child. “They’re just a kid!” we might say. “How could you blame them? They don’t know any better. Blame the parents, but don’t criticize the innocent child.”
One of the most important roles as a parent is to protect our children. Just as we look both ways before crossing a busy street to avoid danger, we must also be mindful of emotional harm. Failing to do so can leave lasting scars.
This perspective also applies to those who take advantage of a child’s immaturity. Just as we rebuke unfair criticism of a child for stepping into a street, we should rebuke those who exploit a child’s lack of understanding.
For instance, most states prohibit businesses from entering into legal contracts with minors. A ten-year-old can’t go to a dealership and buy a car because children don’t have the maturity to make such important decisions. The law recognizes that, so any contract signed by a child is void.
Now, consider a parent who pressures their child to make adult decisions during a divorce. If we recognize that children lack the cognitive development to handle certain responsibilities, what kind of parent would burden their young child with decisions they’re not equipped to make?
Parentification occurs when the alienating parent (or favored parent in a parental alienation scenario) treats their child as a confidant, best friend, or equal, sharing adult matters that are inappropriate for the child’s age and beyond their ability to fully understand.
For example, the alienating parent (AP) might tell the child that the other parent is a deadbeat dad who doesn’t pay enough—or any—child support. Even if the dad does pay, the AP might show the child the support check and complain it’s not nearly enough to cover the bills. The AP might also claim the father earns more than he reports and lied to the court to avoid paying his fair share.
Maybe the father is a deadbeat dad and refuses to pay child support; maybe he did lie to the court and was successful in getting the court to lower his monthly support payment. Maybe he could afford to pay much more than what he is ordered to pay. But dragging a child into this conflict and going into details about how much the child’s father should be paying is placing that child into a position he or she is not emotionally, mentally or psychologically mature enough to be able to process effectively. This is an adult matter that should only be dealt with by adults—never innocent, immature children.
The AP may rely on the child for emotional support, treating them as a confidant or therapist, exposing them to adult issues like feelings about the divorce, financial troubles, or hostility toward the other parent.
Another example of parentification is when the AP pressures the child to align with them and reject the other parent, forcing the child to maintain the alienating parent’s approval. The child becomes responsible for keeping the AP happy and avoiding their disapproval by showing loyalty.
The alienating parent might say, “If you love me, you’ll understand why we can’t see your dad,” coercing the child to reject the other parent to secure the AP’s affection.
In other cases of parentification, the AP may manipulate the child into feeling responsible for their happiness, creating an unhealthy sense of guilt if the child expresses a desire to see the other parent. For example, the AP might say, “If you go to your father’s, it’ll break my heart,” placing the burden of their happiness on the child.
These are all forms of parentification, and this is just a small list of examples. It’s strikingly similar to what Mahdi does to children when he scares them, though with different motives and outcomes. Both Mahdi and the alienating parent exploit the innocence and immaturity of children’s minds to elicit reactions. Mahdi does it for laughs and views on his YouTube channel, while the alienating parent—perhaps subconsciously, but not unintentionally—aims to create a divide between the child and the other parent.
What’s clear is that both exploit the vulnerability of children, leading to pain and distress. While most of the children scared by Mahdi probably won’t suffer long-term psychological harm (since their parents will likely explain the situation and the child will eventually understand what happened), children in high-conflict divorces where parental alienation occurs may never realize how they were so manipulatively used.
Parentification in the context of parental alienation can have long-lasting emotional and psychological effects, trapping children in adult roles and damaging their ability to form healthy relationships.
Tragically, with oftentimes dire results for the children, alienating parents who use parentification to separate a child from their once loved parent are guilty of taking advantage of the child’s immaturity and innocent, trusting nature. This is child abuse. Worse, it shows a certain malevolence on the parent of the AP who would stoop so low as to take advantage in this cruel way with their own child or children.
There is, in my opinion, a certain twistedness in the mind and character of an adult who would either prank a child (like what Mahdi does) or subject them to parentification. One of the most wonderful aspects of children is their innocence, their trusting and unsoiled natures; I might even label it as “holiness of nature.” Someone once said, “I looked for holiness and found it in the face of a sleeping child.” There is much truth in this statement.
Parentification in the context of parental alienation can have long-lasting emotional and psychological effects, trapping children in adult roles and damaging their ability to form healthy relationships.
But one of the the dark sides of humanity is the perverse, evil desire for some people to want to destroy this innocence; it is disturbing and shocking, but true. Some people have an obsession with destroying the innocence found in children; they purposely seek them out to destroy this precious attribute of childhood. A certain segment of these kind of people are often called “perverts” or “pedophiles,” those who sexually prey upon children who are far younger than they are, children who, still in their childhood innocence and vulnerability, are at risk of being exploited and used—groomed— by older, individuals who, for some reason, are sexually aroused by this stage of innocence in childhood.
Like most things, there are degrees or levels of depravity. In Mahdi’s case, here is a grown man who, for some odd reason, can’t ascertain that his exploitation of the innocence of children for clicks and views on his Youtube channel may border on child abuse, though I say this with some trepidation. Many people might accuse me of harsh judgment for leveling such an accusation against Mahdi because they, like him, see what he is doing to be nothing more than harmless “fun.”
But in my mind, by frightening children to the extreme degree which we observe in his videos, he has crossed a red line with me. I will place Mahdi on the lowest tier of the harm scale as far as degree or scale is concerned. If our scale is numbered from 1 to 10, 1 being “almost harmless” and 7 and above being “criminally harmful,” Mahdi would land on the low end.
Alienating parents, though, who manipulate their children into a parentification role, who are aware—for the most part—of what they are doing, I’m going to place on the 8 to 9.0 scale, leaving the “at and above 9.1” for those who commit physical and sexual violence against children. Mental abuse, as is the case of parentification, is just slightly beneath these creatures of evil and share much of their same DNA.
In conclusion, any parent who would pit their child against their other parent to cause a disruption in that chid’s relationship with that parent by using tactics like parentification are taking advantage of the innocence and immaturity of that child; this is child abuse on a profound scale, oftentimes causing lifelong, negative repercussions for that abused innocent.