A man on Reddit is being slammed after he scared his 9-year-old son with a mean prank.
Now, his wife is refusing to speak to him.
In his post, the man explained that one night, while his wife was working late and he was watching a movie with their daughter while their son was visiting a friend’s house, he decided to pull a prank on the little boy.
“Around 8PM, his friend’s mom texted me letting me know that she was driving him home,” he wrote, revealing he and his daughter decided to team up for a prank.
The pair dimmed the lights and hid behind their couch while wearing Halloween masks. When the boy walked into the room, they jumped out and scared him.
“Now, here’s where I fully admit I messed up. I thought he’d just be startled for a second and then would laugh with us over the prank. But that’s not what happened,” the man shared.
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“We ended up frightening him WAY more than I’d anticipated. He first started running off and then ended up having a HUGE, trembling, crying, adrenaline dump for a long time. I felt really bad, and so did his sister,” he continued.
When the man’s wife came home, she was furious.
“I screwed up. However, she has stayed mad at me for all these days afterward. She will barely talk to me. I eventually got tired of it and told her that she needed to get over it,” he wrote, adding that he told her he didn’t “mean any harm” while his wife thinks he “should have known better.”
In the comments section, Reddit users scolded the man for scaring his child.
“Honestly, I think adults scaring kids is the biggest [a–hole] move. They’re just so vulnerable. You can literally scar them for life. Why would you ever do that to your child?” one person wrote.
“Why did I already know from the word ‘prank’ in your title that you would be insufferable? ‘I didn’t mean any harm’ is no excuse,” another commented.
“It was nighttime, and your kid was looking forward to seeing his family when coming home. You potentially traumatized him instead. Your intentions don’t mean anything here. Common sense says you should’ve known better, so I agree with your wife there too,” someone else weighed in.