“Spend Some Time With Him” — Baby Daddy Asks Woman for Pictures of Their Son, She Sent Back This

A mother explained why she watermarked her son's pictures before handing them off to his father in a viral TikTok that's accrued well over 11 million views.

Q's (@qssansiwswa) "petty" move has been lauded by several other users on the platform, and many have said they did the same thing for the same reason.

"Tell me you're petty, without telling me you're petty," a text overlay in a stitched TikTok from another user on the platform reads before Q's video cuts off his commentary.

In her clip, she describes her pettiest moment. Understandably, it involved the father of her child.

She explained that the man had requested photos of their child. While Q obliged his request, she decided to ensure that everyone he shared the photos with knew exactly where they came from.

"When my baby daddy asked me for pictures of our son I sent it to him with my name watermarked on them," she says in her clip.

While there are probably a lot of folks out there who would shake their head at this level of pettiness, there are others who would probably commiserate with Q and understand where she's coming from.

That's because, according to the TikToker, he wasn't an active parent in the child's life. She seems to think that if the man wants to act like he's a father and talk glowingly about his children, then he should be more present in their lives.

Doing so would unlock certain privileges — like non-watermarked photographs.

Or, he could just snap his own photographs with his son if he spent time with his son.

"Spend some time with him and you can take your own pictures. But see that little boy right there, that's all my work. And you ain't finna be flexing like you daddy of the year," she says into the lens of her camera.

Several people who responded to her video didn't seem to think that Q was in the wrong for her watermark play against her baby daddy. One person penned that they just recently learned about this phenomena and approved of her technique. "I just found out about watermark photos at the beginning of this school year and yall ain’t wrong AT ALL."

Someone else wrote that they not only supported Q's watermarked photos but that they also didn't think the tactic was even all that petty. "I actually don’t think this is petty at all."

Another user on the application who was also dealing with a deadbeat dad who didn't seem too concerned with spending time with his children wrote that they trolled their baby daddy by sending him pictures of someone else's kid.

The guy, when trying to chase clout for social media and make himself seem like a great father, ended up playing himself in legendary fashion.

"I sent mine photos of a friends child (with permission) and he didn’t even know it wasn’t his child because he never sees him then goes on socials talking about 'my boy.'"

One TikToker said that they make sure their children are walking advertisements for which parent does the heavy lifting in the family when it comes to child-rearing. "I put all three of my kids in 'I love mommy' 'mamas boy' 'mamas girl' clothes. Buy them clothes and see them more often if you don’t like it."

Someone else wrote that they, too, had a baby daddy who seemed more concerned with getting photographs of their children than they did with actually spending time with them. So they employed a similar method as Q with a favorable result: "I did this too! he stopped asking for pictures."

And then there was this person who pulled the old, "Let me Google that for you" tactic: "Mine asked me to print out the school calendar (as if it’s not online). I printed the Google search page that pops up when you search my son’s school. And drew an arrow to 'click' the link."

There are many who caution against separated parents who allow their children to become privy to arguments they have among each other. This Quora post posed a question to folks of divorced parents asking them what their outlook on the verbal spats they saw their parents get into.

Several people responded that they had wished they never saw them growing up. One person penned: "It ruined my whole life. It took me many years to learn how to talk to people and how not to be frustrated with them over trivial things. It also took me many years to get my parents’ voices out of my head. They still invade my thoughts from time to time, and cause fear. It’s PTSD. It lasts."

Evolve Adolescent Behavioral Health also writes that "conflict between divorced parents can harm kids' mental" well being. The piece cites a study which highlighted some startling analytics. "In the study, fear of abandonment was not short-lived. Three months after exposure to parental conflict, children still expressed concern about being abandoned, and this predicted mental health problems 10 months later."

Multi State Father's Rights also supports the aforementioned claim and writes about the adverse effects arguments between separated parents can have on a child's mental well-being.