Mom's Practical Joke on 8-Year-Old Son Goes Viral After She Tells Him He Accidentally Bought $50k Car on eBay

Some parents love pranking their kids and getting a good laugh as their children cry about their loss of Halloween candy or whine about the bad Christmas gifts they've been jokingly given. But some think this mom who led her son to believe he had purchased a $50,000 car on eBay went too far.

In a YouTube video posted December 30, the mom wrote, "My 8 year old almost bought [a] $50K Mustang on eBay, I decided to tease him a little."

The video starts with the son laying forlornly on an ottoman as his mother Paula Papen says "Did you buy that $50,000 Mustang on eBay?" He swears he didn't, but she says he did and the deal is done. Then the crying begins.

(Image: YouTube screenshots)

"Can we cancel it?" the son asks.

When told no, he covers his eyes, cries and says, "We'll have to sell everything. I am horrible." Papen assures him that he's not horrible; that he just made a mistake.

Dad gets involved too prompting the son to explain what happened.

"I didn't mean to buy it. I was just looking at it and then when I tried to exit out, it bought it. I was like 'Oh no, oh no,' and so I turned the iPad off."

The mom before one minute of teasing is up, relieves her son's conscience and tells him he didn't really spend $50,000 on a car. So thankful, the son issues a final "fistful of snot," as the mom described it in the video title.

Watch the slightly more than one minute video:

Some in the comments though think Papen might have been a bit cruel, teasing her son in this fashion. Here are a few of those comments:

• marshalt: A wonderful mother does not make her son cry, and then put it on the internet and expose him and the rest of their family to internet trolls for years to come.
• Kratos Blades: Nice! I think that more parents should traumatize their children and then post it on Youtube!
• faintygirl: Joking around as a family is one thing, as a family we have always joked around and we love to wind each other up. But what you did to your son was cruel. When he burst into tears, that was the point where you should have put your camera down and let him know that you were joking. Instead of continuing to video him when he was upset so you could upload it to youtube and humiliate him.

Others have come to Papen's defense and she too wrote a response to these comments:

Haha folks, this was not planned, sorry the vertical video is such an issue...lesson learned. As for the claim of abuse, the user below defined it, it's a 'pattern' there is one video, labour ONE minute long. It was a joke, take it for what it is! Laugh a little. Anyone who knows us knows that we are a silly family who laughs WITH and yes, sometimes, even AT each other!

What do you think of Papen's joke? Let us know in the comments.

(H/T: Huffington Post)