Dad sparks a debate after not letting his daughter beat him in a race: ‘It builds character’

‘Build that child up, not break her down,’ one respondent says in the comments

( itsdmills/TikTok)

A dad has sparked a debate after not letting his daughter beat him in a race.

In a TikTok video posted on February 2 by @itsdmills, who refers to himself as “girl dad” in his profile’s bio, was running next to his daughter.

As the parent and child are racing each other in the clip, the father is clapping his hands and screaming. He then beats his daughter to the finish line.

He starts to celebrate his victory and shouts “yes” and “let’s go.” And as his daughter begins to cry, he is still excited about winning and jokes that she “could never” beat him. He then tries to ask her what’s wrong, but she moves away from him.

However, prior to this video being filmed, this father didn’t win every race.

“I Let her win three times before this,” the caption of the video reads.

This video has over 3.4m views, so far, with viewers in the comments noting that it was a good thing that the father didn’t let his daughter win.

“It builds character,” one user said, while another wrote: “She’ll be fine. It’s life.”

Other TikTok users noted that they don’t necessarily let children win every competition either, as losing can be a learning experience.

“Why is this me,” one viewer wrote. “I don’t let children win. they earn theirs with me every. time. they’ll thank me one day.”

“I’m sorry but this the type of dad ima be,” another user wrote. “Nothing easy young bull.”

On the opposite side of the coin, some viewers claimed that competition between parent and child can be a bad thing and that this father could harm his child’s self-esteem by not letting her win.

“My father use to challenge me in almost anything,” one viewer said. “[It’s] not good at all to fail in everything. Don’t compete with kids.”

“A grown man beating a child and saying it’s a lesson in life??…come on man,” another wrote. “Build that child up, not break her down.”

The Independent has reached out to  @itsdmills for a comment.