Courtesy of Lauren Clark
NEED TO KNOW
Lauren Clark saw a trend on TikTok that she wanted to take part in
She tested out phrases that kids used to hear growing up, and wanted to see if her kids knew what the responses are
Her video of the responses went viral on Instagram and TikTok, amassing over 3 million combined views
Lauren Clark was scrolling social media when she saw a video of millennial parents using "toxic phrases" that their parents used to use on their own children.
The 35-year-old hairdresser, a Rhode Island resident, then asked her kids to gather around. She turned to her 8-year-old and her 10-year-old, saying, "Hey, guys, I really wanna say these sentences to you, and I wanna hear how you would finish them if they were sentences that mommy was saying."
In thevideofirst posted on Jan. 18, Clark says the beginnings of common phrases such as "I'll give you something to..." expecting them to say "cry about." However, her kids' responses were, "I'll give you something to snack on" and "I'll give you something to put away."
The next phrase, "I brought you into this world," also elicited heartwarming replies.
"You are my everything," one of her kids replied, as the other chimed in with their guess, "You're so special to me."
She continued to test out different phrases, tears in her eyes, captioning the clip, "Me realizing in real time that my children feel loved unconditionally."
While speaking to PEOPLE exclusively about the viral clip, Clark says, "Their answers were just everything that you see in the video, and that is my genuine response."
"I was overwhelmed with joy, and it was honestly very healing for me because those were never things that I heard growing up," she continues. "I obviously heard a lot of the original ones. So to have my kids have no idea what any of that even meant, and, even as I was saying it to them, I was trying to use that same tone, that aggressive tone, and they still just finished the sentences with complete love."
Later that night, she told her kids what the real endings to their phrases are and that some parents, including Clark's, have a different way of talking to their children.
"I said, 'My parents didn't state those statements in the same manner. I wanna share with you what we were told when we were kids. This is how some parents still parent their kids,' " she recalls. "I said that, and my children were completely shocked. You don't want your kids to be traumatized the same way that you were. When I said some of the initial endings to the sentences, they were like, 'Why are some parents so cruel? Why don't some parents like their children?' "
The creator of Vintage Peach Haircare shares that in the video and beyond, she was so "proud" because it "shows the difference when you parent and when you actually treat your children like human beings that they are, they don't end up with this negative mindset or negative outlook on the world."
Courtesy of Lauren Clark
When it comes to her social media accounts, Clark usually posts content about her business and rarely shares videos about her kids, especially anything with their faces, online. But after she recorded the trend, she felt she needed to share it with others.
"Initially, I wasn't gonna share it, but I had this intuition to share it with the rest of the world. The way this has taken off shows that millennial parents are healing as a collective. We are really out here trying to do right by our kids and show them unconditional love and show them that they're worthy and not be their first bully," Clark shares.
Almost immediately, people began sharing their stories with her about their own parenting experiences and how watching her video had healed them. While she got so many positive comments on her video, she also got a few negative responses, with some saying that's why children are "soft nowadays."
Courtesy of Lauren Clark
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Her response to that is: "True vulnerability is being yourself and not caring what other people think about that, being able to speak up for yourself and say, 'Hey, I went through these things.' They were awful, but it made me stronger."
"Turning your pain into purpose, that is the beauty of the human experience. That is normal. That's what we should be connecting about these experiences. Not using them against one another," the mom of two continues, noting that she's tuned out a lot of the negative comments.
"It goes to show that everyone has a different perspective and two people can watch the same thing, something that's so beautiful, such an incredible, beautiful moment, and someone will still try to find something negative out of it," Clack concludes.
Read the original article onPeople
