Woman Can't Believe What She Finds Grandma Doing for Her Kids: 'Whipped'

A woman couldn't quite believe what she found her mom doing for her grandkids.

Emily, who lives in New England and asked that her full name be omitted from the story, was so stunned at what she witnessed she decided to capture it on camera with the resulting footage posted to her TikTok channel thebeautyinliving_.

There's an important distinction between the role of grandparent and parent in a child's life. Grandparents can be a source of wisdom and authority but also love, patience and stability. They aren't expected to parent children in the same way as they did their own but rather offer support and acceptance.

The positive impact of providing this outlet to a young child is well documented. A study, published in the scientific journal The Gerontologist back in 2016, found that children who enjoyed a greater emotional closeness to their grandparents were less likely to be depressed as adults.

Creating this closeness can be done in a number of ways but it's important for grandparents to differentiate themselves from their grandkids' parents. That can mean doing things differently to the way they did them when they were parents themselves, as Emily discovered.

Emily found her mom doing something unexpected. She never did it for her when she was a kid. TikTok/thebeautyinliving_

In the video posted to TikTok, she shared footage of her mom in the kitchen, separating the different colored pastas into bowls, as per the request of her grandkids. The caption sees Emily brand her mom as "whipped" while she notes that her mom "literally never would have done this" for her.

Her mom acknowledges this, telling her: "I'm doing something I never would have done for my own kids."

Emily told Newsweek how the video came about: "I was sitting in the living room and she came in and asked me if she should take out the white ones and I said yeah probably so I was sitting in there and I heard her sorting them and thought it was funny so just grabbed my phone."

Emily "cannot recall" her mom ever doing that for her but has no qualms about her taking a different approach with her grandkids. "She's great with them," Emily said. "It makes me happy."

Emily said she ended up sharing the video on social media because she "thought it was funny and that people would be able to relate." Those instincts proved spot on with the video amassing 1.5 million views along with hundreds of comments from fellow users who have witnessed similar.

"My mom lets her have ice cream before dinner. i would have gotten an insult," one user wrote. "Yup, all of a sudden my parents have McDonalds and store run money."

A third said: "My grandma always picked the Lima beans out of the mixed veggies because I didn't like them in my chicken pot pies. The effort is appreciated."

Emily has been heartened by the response, which has reaffirmed her view that it's important for grandmas to step up like this.

"Some people commenting on the video were saying stuff like 'yeah, that's the grandma's job' and I agree."