Video of 3-year-old boy using a stool to care for his dad, who is in a vegetative state, goes viral

A video of a 3-year-old boy standing on a stool while trying to help his sick father has gone viral on Chinese social media.

Liu Na, 31, did not expect that her video would go viral after she posted it on her Douyin account on March 27. The clip shows her son, nicknamed Tutu, climbing a stool to adjust his father’s head.

“When Tutu was about to take a nap, he noticed his father’s head tilted to the side, so he went over to help him adjust it,” she told South China Morning Post. “But he is too young to hold it steady.”

Liu installed a camera in their house so that she can monitor the condition of her husband Ding Yong, 33, whenever she is away. She said that she saw their son’s touching gesture while checking in on her husband during her lunch break. She also added that the boy was alone with his father because his grandparents were running errands at the time.

“Seeing how hard Tutu was trying to take care of his dad was especially heartbreaking,” she recalled.

Ding suffered a brain hemorrhage while at work on Feb. 27, 2020 and has been in a vegetative state ever since. Ding and his family lived in eastern China’s Anhui Province, but they moved in with Ding’s parents after the incident so that they could help Liu look after her husband and two children.

“I am working at a construction site doing clerical work,” Liu told the Morning Post. “The job distracts me from feeling sorry for myself. Now, I don’t cry as often at night as when the incident had just happened.”

Liu said Tutu sometimes mimics what the adults do when they look after Ding, such as feeding him through a tube. Sometimes, the boy asks to do this all by himself.

“He once told me, ‘I want to grow up to be Ultraman to protect dad,’” Liu shared.

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