Few people understand kids better than their teachers. Not only do they spend all day with their students, but teachers get to know their kids' parents pretty well, too. From parent-teacher conferences to field trips and snack days, it's a collaborative relationship meant to foster their child's development into a fully functioning adult. With the teacher-student relationship comes insight beyond their academic strengths and struggles, though. They also pick up on how their kids' parents are helping, or hindering them, as they grow.

One TikToker, @elenanico22, is the daughter of a retired teacher, so she interviewed her mom Lisa in early 2025 to get some insight on the question: "What's one thing you saw people messing up with their kids?"

Lisa's response was simple: "They didn't enjoy them." Elena asks her mom to elaborate, and she goes on to share, "Kids are fun. You’ve got to enjoy them. They wanted them to be something that—most of us aren’t exactly what other people want us to be—so enjoy the kid you have."

Lisa says it like it is #momlife #momsoftiktok #momwisdom #momtok #momhumor #parenting #parentingwisdom

To drive the poignant point home, Lisa turns to Elena in the video and says, "I enjoyed you."

The comments were flooded with positive replies from moved parents: "Kids aren’t a chore, they’re a joy. 🥰," one wrote. Another added, "Parents are stressed, and they don’t realize how quickly childhood goes by."

A mother and daughter embrace.via Canva/Photos

The post also resonated with other teachers and professionals who work with kids.

"This is so true. I work in childcare and lots of parents literally cannot stand their kids. They get so angry when we close. They can’t wait to drop them off and pickup last minute. Breaks my heart," one commented.

Another wrote, "Toddler teacher. Same. So heartbreaking. I saw it a lot when I worked with highly educated parents with high incomes."

One teacher shared her own experience, writing, "So true. As a elementary teacher sometimes playing Barbie Dreamhouse with my 4 y/o is the last thing I want to do but I always do because I know I'll be wishing for it one day ♥️."

Still another professional shared, "As a pediatrician, I agree."

The video concluded with another piece of strong advice from Lisa: "Never send your kid to school with carrots." The reason? She explained a story involving a prominent doctor at her school who was "super strict" with what his kids could and could not eat at school.

"So, of course, what did the kids want? Everything they couldn't," she said. You are bound to have kids who are going to have food issues." Psychology backs up the retired teacher's thoughts on sending your kids to school with carrots for lunch. It's called reactance theory, which states that when people feel their freedom is being restricted, they are more likely to do the opposite of what is being asked of them. So, parents who want to raise healthy kids who turn into healthy adults should allow them to eat treats in moderation.

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Plenty of parents offered their thoughts on this last tidbit.

"Omg I love her! Please post more. As a mom I’m enjoying time with my kids, loving their personalities and so anti food restriction teaching them intuitive eating. Because I wasn’t taught those things," one commented.

Another shared, "The food statement is so true. My son shared that a boy from his class (who has food restrictions) steals the other kids snacks at school! 🙈❤️😂"

This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.

It's one of the most iconic and haunting photos of all time, up there with the likes of Hindenburg, The Falling Soldier, Burning Monk, Napalm Girl, and many others. It's called simply Migrant Mother, and it paints a better picture of the time in which it was taken than any book or interview possibly could.

Nearly everyone across the globe knows Florence Owens Thompson's face from newspapers, magazines, and history books. The young, destitute mother was the face of The Great Depression, her worried, suntanned face looking absolutely defeated as several of her children took comfort by resting on her thin frame. Thompson put a human face and emotion behind the very real struggle of the era, but she wasn't even aware of her role in helping to bring awareness to the effects of the Great Depression on families.

It turns out that Dorothea Lange, the photographer responsible for capturing the worry-stricken mother in the now-famous photo, told Thompson that the photos wouldn't be published.

Of course, they subsequently were published in the San Francisco News. At the time the photo was taken, Thompson was supposedly only taking respite at the migrant campsite with her seven children after the family car broke down near the campsite. The photo was taken in March 1936 in Nipomo, California when Lange was concluding a month's long photography excursion documenting migrant farm labor.

Worried mother and children during the Great Depression era. Photo by Dorthea Lange via Library of Congress

"Migrant worker" was a term that meant something quite different than it does today. It was primarily used in the 30s to describe poverty-stricken Americans who moved from town to town harvesting the crops for farmers.

The pay was abysmal and not enough to sustain a family, but harvesting was what Thompson knew as she was born and raised in "Indian Territory," (now Oklahoma) on a farm. Her father was Choctaw and her mother was white. After the death of her husband, Thompson supported her children the best way she knew how: working long hours in the field.

"I'd hit that cotton field before daylight and stay out there until it got so dark I couldn't see," Thompson told NBC in........

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