Dad’s Controversial Effect on His Baby

Yahoo Parenting
Updated

Dad’s Controversial Effect on His Baby

No one likes a cry baby. Unless you’re Fabian Herrera, that is.

Herrera stars with his 6-month-old son, Aris, in a video that’s quickly going viral, with more than 12,500 views since it was posted on Monday. In it, Herrera fakes tears, which sets off Aris. As soon as he smiles, Aris does too.

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"All this media attention is distracting, overwhelming, and exciting," Herrera tells Yahoo Parenting. 

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Fabian Herrera makes his baby boy cry. (YouTube)

The 32-year-old dad from Texas realized the effect he had on his son while he was playing with his 3-year-old daughter, Lucia. As Lucia jumped on his stomach, he fake cried in an attempt to calm her down. Instead, Aris reacted.

"Lucia is in love with her baby brother and if you listen closely to the beginning of the video, that’s her pretending to cry trying to get the same reaction," Herrera tells Yahoo Parenting.

"Later that evening, we were FaceTiming with the grandparents in South Korea, and I decided to try it again. My mother-in-law laughed [and] sadly said, ‘You should try to make him smile too!’ That was when I knew for sure that his crying could be triggered by a fake cry," Herrera told SheKnows.com

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(Herrera knows how to make his baby boy happy, too. “Just making eye contact with him and talking to him makes him smile,” he tells Yahoo Parenting. “When he woke up this morning and my wife and I greeted him, he had a big smile on his face.”)

So was this dad being mean or silly? That’s the topic of debate across the web.

One YouTube commenter snarks: “Maybe it’s because he doesn’t like the sound of your wail and has no other way to communicate that other than crying.” On Reddit, somebody wrote, “He’s really just mimicking you, so you know how much of a whiny baby you are.”

Herrera takes the criticism in stride.

"I think the comments are funny and some are clever," he says. "My wife Yeon Mee Choi doesn’t like people talking about her baby, which I believe comes with the territory."

But the heartfelt comments, like these from YouTube, won in our book:

"Awwww so cute my daughter does same thing" and "WHAT A#CUTIE"

What do you think? Is this dad being sweet or sour?

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