A video of a woman jokingly “reporting abuse” by her talented daughter has gone viral on TikTok, amassing over 22.7 million views and sparking laughter online.
“I need to know who I can contact to report this abuse,” says the mom, who is filming herself inside a store. She proceeds to show a sketchpad belonging to her daughter, an evidently skilled artist. The mom, who goes by @mbnks205 online, says that her daughter expresses herself through drawing. “When she’s mad at me, she draws pictures of me,” she adds, then flicks to an unflattering caricatures of herself.
As the video unfolds, the woman flips through the sketchbook, showcasing a series of drawings. When she reaches the third one, she points out the unmistakable details: a woman with a large, round body wearing a vest top—just like the one she was wearing that day—and a jar of ice nearby.
“I’m always eating ice,” the mom adds with a sigh, before turning the camera to her unimpressed face. She then jokingly insists, “I need to report my daughter.”
The humor of the clip aside, the video unintentionally aligns with findings from a Stanford University study, published in Nature Communications, that explores children’s developing ability to draw and recognize objects.
Researchers gathered approximately 37,000 digital drawings from kids aged 2 to 10 at the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose. Using a kiosk, children were asked to draw specific items and guess what others had drawn. Machine learning was then used to assess how recognizable the drawings were, with about 2,000 of them further analyzed by adults who labeled individual object parts.
The study concluded that improvements in drawing recognizability throughout childhood are not solely due to motor skills or stereotypical cues, like adding long ears to a rabbit. Instead, they also reflect how children convey meaning and intent—even if a drawing isn’t visually accurate, it may still signal, for example, that the subject is an animal or large in size.
“Children’s drawings contain a lot of rich information about what they know,” said researcher Bria Long. “And we think this is a really cool way to learn about what children are thinking. Just because your child isn’t drawing something really well doesn’t mean they’re not expressing interesting knowledge about that category.”
TikTok/@mbnks205
The lighthearted video has clearly struck a chord, garnering over 4 million likes and more than 11,000 comments.
“She better draw a new home,” wrote one user, racking up 179,500 likes.
“I mean … it’s a healthy way to deal with anger,” another posted.
A third commented: “It’s the fact that she is a gifted illustrator that makes this so hurtful. That’s REALLY how she feels.”
“This is a hate crime,” added a fourth.
Newsweek reached out to @mbnks205 for comment via TikTok. We could not verify the details of the case.