Mom's Joke About Wanting To Crash Her Car To Startle Her Screaming Kids Leaves Some Moms Irate — 'You Need Help'
Experts say blowing off steam about parenting might even make you a better parent. But some moms found it downright disturbing.
TikTok Parenting and being a stay-at-home mom is certainly not for the faint of heart, and anyone who's spent any time with kids knows how quickly and easily they can mount your last nerve and stomp all over it like a herd of stampeding buffalo.
Of course, we all know nowadays that holding those frustrations in isn't healthy, but one mom's way of releasing the pressure on TikTok has some people alarmed, and even outright angry.
A TikTok mom sparked outrage with a dark humor joke about thinking of harming her kids.
TikToker @sammie_head has become famous on the app for her darkly comedic takes on motherhood and marriage that leave many parents feeling seeing and heard. Her videos are often based on the kind of things most of us would never actually say out loud, but have all felt at one time or another—the kind of "we were all thinking it" notions that can be controversial.
Her bone-dry sense of humor frequently leaves people missing the joke entirely. Such was the case with her recent admission of an intrusive thought about her kids.
The mom joked on TikTok about wanting to cause a car accident to stop her kids from screaming in the backseat.
The video tackles a situation that anyone who's ever taken a car ride with kids has likely experienced. You're just trying to get where you're going, but the kids in the backseat are screaming and crying and fighting and complaining and it reaches such a fever pitch it's all you can do not to stop the car, put it in park, and walk off into the nearest wooded area never to be heard from again.
Sammie's video jokingly proposed a different solution. Filmed while she was stopped at a red light and cleverly underscored with Justine Skye's "Collide," the onscreen text of the video reads, "Any other moms ever think about just letting off the brakes and tapping into the car in front of you at a red light because your kids won't shut up screaming and crying and you know a big scene like that would shut them up? Yeah me neither."
Sammie continued the joke in her caption, which reads, "I have never ever ever ever ever thought about this," letting us know she definitely has thought about this extensively.
Who among us hasn't had these kinds of thoughts? One of the most iconic scenes in all of cinema involves Kathy Bates doing far worse damage over just a stolen parking space!
Granted, Kathy didn't have kids in the car but still—we've all thought about it at one time or another. But Sammie's video didn't elicit quite the same response in some of the people who viewed it.
Some people were alarmed and outraged by the TikToker expressing her intrusive thoughts about parenting.
Most people who saw the video not only understood it was a joke but totally identified with Sammie's feelings—and even admitted to doing similar, less dramatic versions of the very thing Sammie thought about.
"Never thought about but I've been known to do brake checks!" one mom wrote. "I always tell the kids 'Do I need to do a brake check?' They get real silent quick!"
"Sad but true," another mom wrote. "Motherhood is so hard." Others wrote about their own alternate solutions to their kids having meltdowns in the backseat. "I was a nanny and I would just roll down the windows and turn my music wayyyy up," one person wrote. "They hated it so much it became a preventative measure lol."
But a few people were disturbed by Sammie's joke."No, I have never thought that," one woman said. "That is disturbing and you should seek some mental help."
Another mom was downright infuriated. "Looking at your videos and you NEED HELP," she wrote, "both physically and emotional help. And stop posting garbage that will hurt your kids."
Another parent countered that "this whole account is a joke," adding that intrusive thoughts about parenting "are extremely normal," and it turns out the experts agree.
Psychologists say intrusive thoughts about parenting are extremely common and usually harmless.
Intrusive thoughts about parenting, and especially thoughts about actually harming your kids, are a normal part of the frustrations and challenges that come with parenting, and they're especially common for new parents with new babies. A 2006 study at the Mayo Clinic found that a staggering 91% of moms and 88% of dads reported having had thoughts about harming their babies.
Psychologists say this is simply a normal response fueled by the anxiety that comes with parenting, and that unless the thoughts are actually negatively impacting a parent's ability to care for their children, they're nothing to think twice about.
"Thoughts are just thoughts," Dr. Stefan Hoffman, a clinical psychologist and anxiety researcher at Boston University, told The New York Times in 2020. "A mother may think about pushing the stroller down the stairs, but that doesn’t mean she’ll act on it."
Not only that, the thoughts may even have a purpose. Psychologist Dr. Nicole Fairbrother, a researcher at the University of British Columbia, told The New York Times that, at times, parents' intrusive thoughts about harming their kids often result in adaptive responses that make parents focus on their child's safety.
And as always, talking about intrusive thoughts about parenting instead of bottling them up helps parents cope. But it also has an unexpected benefit—it makes them better parents. A 2017 study published by the National Institute of Health found that being open about the challenges of parenthood and receiving support from loved ones in return not only helped moms emotionally but also made them more competent parents.
It turns out Sammie's darkly comedic jokes just might be doing parents even more good than just giving them a simple laugh—so long as she doesn't actually go full Kathy Bates, of course.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.