[Ammi]

...I had no idea this was apparently a ‘trend’ with parents who like to prank their children...if it’s true, it’s appalling....

“TikTok I need your help,” Velasquez said in a video shared on her social media accounts. “This trend where you are pretending to FaceTime someone who is either disabled or is a baby or just some crazy mugshot and you’re showing it to someone to get their reaction to saying, ‘Oh hey, talk to this person’ just to get a quick laugh, this is not funny. This is not a joke.”

She went on to explain that a mother had used her photo to prank a child into thinking that Velasquez would be his teacher for the upcoming school year. “He had a scared reaction on his face,” Velasquez said. “If you are an adult who has a young human in your life, please do not teach them that being scared of someone who does not look like them is okay. Please, everything that these kids need to know about having empathy and being kind to one another starts at home.”

The trend that became popular in late July shows parents recording a fake FaceTime with someone who they claim to be their child’s new teacher in an effort to capture the kid’s response. Velasquez tells Yahoo Life that since seeing it for the first time, she had a feeling she would become involved.

“I knew in my gut my photo was going to be used,” she says. “After dealing with things like this for a while now, I can sense when this might happen.”

...full article...

https://uk.style.yahoo.com/disabilit...211905157.html