Little Girl’s Plea to Divorced Parents Brings Mom to Tears
She’s only 6, but Canadian first grader Tiana shows wisdom beyond her years in a new video that’s gone viral on Facebook. After witnessing an argument between her divorced parents, Tiana delivers a gentle lecture to her mother, who goes by the Facebook user name Cherish Sherry, encouraging her to “be his friend.”
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And the footage, which, Sherry writes, “brought me [to tears] and [made me] feel guilty,” has captured millions of other hearts, as well. Since she posted the roughly 3-minute video on Wednesday, it’s been viewed more than 9.5 million times and is trending on Facebook.
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“Tiana said in front of both of us, ‘Why you guys don’t try to be nice to each other… Like a friends helping each other,” Sherry wrote in her post sharing the video September 16. “I was stunned…she is teaching me!! Woke me up!!!” (Sherry hasn’t yet responded to Yahoo Parenting’s request for comment).
Tiana and her mom (Photo: Facebook/Cherish Sherry)
Addressing her single mom directly in the video, the little girl explains her simple request: “I want you and my dad to be …friends.” Tiana explains that she doesn’t enjoy when her folks become “meanies” and that she herself isn’t ”trying to be mean. I just want all of us to be friends.” She then puts things in perspective, noting, “if I can be nice, I think all of us can be nice, too… I’m trying to do my best in my heart.”
She offers some encouragement, too. “Just try your best,” says the grade schooler. “For you and my dad, mom, I think you can do it. I think you can settle your mean heights down a little to short heights.”
Ultimately, Tiana concludes, before kissing her mother, “I want you, mom, my dad, everyone, to be friends. I want everyone to be smiling.” And Sherry has, in fact, been smiling since their heartfelt exchange. “I’m so glad,” she commented on Facebook, “that [Tiana] speaks…her mind.”
Her daughter’s message is, after all, an important one. “When parents fight, children feel threatened and unsafe,” licensed marriage and family therapist Paul Hokemeyer tells Yahoo Parenting. “Children who grow up in emotionally volatile homes internalize the message that not only is the world unsafe but also that they don’t have a safe and secure base to return to.” The impact of experiencing such anger “teaches them that emotions need to be suppressed, rather than processed in healthy and constructive ways,” Hokemeyer notes.
But Little Tiana, whom he calls an “incredibly bright child,” intuitively “recognizes that emotions are healthy and a reality of life but need to be expressed in an appropriate bandwidth,” he adds. “She also knows that human beings need to treat each other with dignity and respect.” Let that be a lesson for us all.
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