When kids are small, they learn most of their big lessons through trial and error. As parents, we usually try to circumvent the tougher lessons — for example, we're not going to let a kid touch a knife just so they can see that it's sharp — but many of us also try to sit back and let kids explore when they're anxious to try something that's not thought to be dangerous. When one mom's son wouldn't begging to try some plain, unsweetened cocoa powder, she did just that. She gave him a spoonful and recorded his disgusted reaction. Now, other parents are saying she put her son in danger.
"This child will not stop insisting on tasting this," the mom said in the video. "I keep telling him it's going to be gross."
Instead of making her son take her word for it, she let him have a taste.
Unsweetened cocoa powder, if you've never tried it, has the bitterness of dark chocolate cranked up to 11, with no break from the gross taste at all. The little boy took a baby spoon and ate a glob of the cocoa powder, then contorted his face in disgust before running to spit it out.
The video went viral as people laughed at the kid's reaction and applauded the mom's choice to let him learn by experience.
But not everyone saw it as harmless fun.
Many parents pointed out that eating plain cocoa powder could be compared to eating cinnamon, which has had deadly consequences in the past.
In 2015, a boy choked to death after ingesting ground cinnamon. The coroner in that case told Fox 8 the strong taste of the cinnamon caused the boy to choke, which helped the cinnamon powder get into lungs and caused asphyxiation.
But others said they did the exact same thing when they were kids and lived to tell about it.
It's hard to say for sure if this is one parenting ploy that could have had dangerous consequences. Luckily, the little guy in the video is just fine, but it might be best to keep the cocoa powder where the kids can't find it just in case.
