Justice

Dad's Reaction to His Daughter's 'Accident' at School Is Going Viral

April 18th 2017

Prepare for your heart to melt at these parenting goals.

When one dad heard that his daughter had an accident at school, he quickly thought of a way to make her feel better that soon went viral.

tattooed-man-holding-baby-daughterStocksy/Alison Winterroth - stocksy.com

Ben Sowards admits that there's very little he won't do for his kids.

"I love my daughter. I knew she was heartbroken, and this was the first idea that instinctively and impulsively came to my mind," the 40-year-old told ATTN: Tuesday.

When he arrived to the school to pick up his daughter, Valerie was looking at the ground unaware that her father had a similar stain on his pants. He snuck up on the 6-year-old and asked for her backpack, which Sowards said made her confused. As she looked up to hand him her backpack, she saw that he had wet his pants with water to make her feel less embarrassed about her own accident and they laughed as they went to the car, the Utah dad said.

Sowards family adopts four children into their homeLucinda Sowards - twitter.com

"We snuck out of that school like we were getting away with robbing Fort Knox," he said.

The father of 11 and his wife, Connie, have seven biological children and four adopted children, which they just finalized the paperwork for on Monday night. The Sowards family have been advocates of foster care for years. The new additions to their home make them "so happy and joyful, it's been a blessing to have them in our family," said Ben Sowards.

Sowards represents a new face to parenting that some wouldn't expect, and a tweet of him picking up his daughter from school on that day seemed to resonate with a lot of people, with over 255,000 likes and 63,000 retweets.

The response to the photo was overwhelmingly positive:

While mothers are traditionally seen as doing more for their children, the strides that some fathers go through for their kids shouldn't be overlooked.

This undoubtedly creative response to a daughter-in-distress proves that fathers aren't just babysitters for their children. They are not only capable of being more involved with parenting but also prefer it — as expressed by one father on Reddit, whose "dads don't babysit" T-shirt went viral last year.

While Sowards rightfully deserves all the praise for his creative parenting approach, dads are often praised for simply showing up which plays into harmful parenting gender roles.

As these comics point out, dads are often treated differently in public than moms, who are held to an unreasonably higher standard.

Sowards went on to tell ATTN:

"My wife is twice the dad I am. You cant say one is more important than the other because you need as much support as you can get as a kid."

There a lot of challenges children face, but unconditional support — whether it's from a single mom, dad or same-sex couple — is one the most important things a parent can offer.

"It would be easier to make a list of things I wouldn’t do for my kids, than what I would do for them," he said.

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