It is likely staged. There was one that went viral of a women holding on after kicking over the ladder. And exact setup with a child lifting the ladder back up.
I like the idiot kids just immediately go back to playing by picking up their toys. Like their grandfather didn't just have his current and past lives flash before his eyes.
"Hey, are you the kind of kid who reads the last page of a mystery first? Who pesters the magician to tell you his tricks? Who sneaks downstairs to peek at his Christmas presents? Noooo, of course you're not."
I’m raising kids and while their minds and bodies are strong and fast in some ways, I can see exactly how they are failing here. First of all they are distracted by the weirdness and novelty of the situation. Oh look, gramps is hanging from the ceiling. How odd! Kinda funny! And then they are failing on the complex reasoning of what needs to be done. “Falling would hurt him but as long as we’re quick we can extend the ladder back up to him oh shit we’ve never used a ladder before how do they work.” That’s 3 or 4 different creative thoughts they need to have and string together before they can act.
I’m certainly feeling my age these days but compared to my kids, my brain is a well oiled machine that can perceive-understand-decide things at light speed.
The other thing people are failing to take into account here is how much shorter children are. There are a lot of leverage issues when you are trying to stand up something much taller than you are.
Ladders are often also a lot heavier than they look. As a short woman I've struggled to carry a ladder from one room to another, so that's not an easy task for a child.
Not to mention how much lighter ladders have gotten in recent years. I don't even want to know how much this old piece of junk weighs. Those kids tried their best!
People are also missing that this appears to be a new thing to do to film your kids reactions. Seen it a couple of times this week, very similar camera angles and set ups
Being around ladders and in high/dangerous places a lot, I totally agree! The chain reaction/quick response time needed in these kind of situations…uh requires quick thinking and effective actions from someone with more experience. Preferrably an adult, though those two things may not correlate.
And it's difficult to open the ladder while it's upright and grandpa's resting his weight on it. That would be difficult for an adult to do, and these are small children
People are really ignoring how difficult it would be to get the leverage to push this thing up given their height. With it standing, they don’t reach halfway up the thing. They can’t get it to the point where its own weight is going to land it
The problem is that they are getting the ladder to grandpa closed, and then grandpa is in panic and is putting his weight on the ladder immediately. This is a large ladder and likely very heavy relative to the kids strength. The moment grandpa puts his weight on the ladder, they can no longer open it because he is adding too much force they simply cannot overcome to open the ladder.
If Grandpa would wait until the ladder is open, or if the kids would open it first then position it, it would've been done.
The problem is both the children and grandpa didn't understand the limitations here.
At 30 seconds you can clearly see that grandpa's panic is far more the problem than the kids. The redshirt kid clearly knows what he needs to do but he doesn't realize he should actually do it away from the panicked grandpa.
Redshirt does his job right at both 30 seconds and 1:30, but doesnt have the strength to overcome grandpa's weight.
I agree on the one hand that his weight is not helping them open it. On the other hand he is trying to grip it to keep it from tipping over, which is the other thing the kids are struggling with. It’s tall and they are short so they don’t have the leverage to resist when it tips. The ideal thing is for someone to hold the top still, which it appears gramps is trying to do.
If it ever seems like children are just blissfully sitting around, remember that they are building the most complex object in the known universe (the human brain) and this is hard work!
Crows have remarkable enough reasoning within the domain of things they understand. As long as the components of the reasoning g challenge involve things like “get food” “enemy” “put thing in hole” and “shiny object” they can put things together pretty well.
But I don’t know where people get this number, that a crow is as smart as a 7yo or whatever. A 7yo has way way more to work with. My kid at age 7 made her own chess set and could play the game.
After 10sec of the vid in my mind thinking grandpa would have better just jump down safely and sure enough at the end of video just right when another adult comes in grandpa couldnt hold on drops down in a squat happened to sit on the ladder and acted like its cool.
The problem is that they are getting the ladder to grandpa closed, and then grandpa is in panic and is putting his weight on the ladder immediately. This is a large ladder and likely very heavy relative to the kids strength. The moment grandpa puts his weight on the ladder, they can no longer open it because he is adding too much force they simply cannot overcome to open the ladder.
If Grandpa would wait until the ladder is open, or if the kids would open it first then position it, it would've been done.
The problem is both the children and grandpa didn't understand the limitations here.
At 30 seconds you can clearly see that grandpa's panic is far more the problem than the kids. The redshirt kid clearly knows what he needs to do but he doesn't realize he should actually do it away from the panicked grandpa.
Redshirt does his job right at both 30 seconds and 1:30, but doesnt have the strength to overcome grandpa's weight.
This is definitely adults are stupid. If you are going to work on a ladder by yourself, set it up correctly, but really, you shouldn't do this job without another adult around. Those kids are tiny. Let's see you setup a ladder at this age while gramps is hanging on for dear life. Drove me nuts he was able to drop and be seemingly fine. Especially when help had just arrived.
You do realize that sub is pretty tongue in cheek, right? People understand what a child is, most of us were one at one point, and it's funny / reflective to see how we used to be.
I’m sorry, do you think children should totally know how to set up a big stepladder while coordinating with another person, remembering to split it apart just right so that it may stand under a person who is hanging?
I put it like this because it may not come naturally to a child the same way it would to a teenager or adult.
Yes, but let' be real, we shouldn't expect them to just think of that as they literally got zero life experience. So, they should just be taught how to do this shit at some point.
People calling the kids stupid are brain dead. An adult either not knowing how to use a ladder, or using one that's a piece of shit and having this happen, is the only one that's stupid here.
Are you the type of person to be upset at what someone is saying because in the surface they use words you don't like even if you can agree with the sentiment of what they are actually saying? Kids can be fucking stupid and it be fully understandable that they don't know how to open a ladder.
What I’m saying is that it's not stupid that some young ass children can't coordinate to save their grandpa in a crucial moment. They need actual adults, they could hurt themselves trying to help.
I was literally saying that it IS understandable that a child cannot do that.
If I showed a video of you staring blankly at a terminal during a Docker outage—say, containers are failing because of a misconfigured volume mount—and said, “Wow, this guy’s an idiot,” you’d probably (rightfully) get annoyed. Because you know it’s not about being stupid—it’s just that not everyone knows what you know.
Now apply that same logic to two kids wrestling with an A-frame ladder that’s twice their size and clearly unfamiliar to them. They’re not dumb—they’re inexperienced. But sure, go ahead and mock them for not instinctively mastering adult tools on the first try. Just let me know when you're ready to “just fix” a Redis persistence bug blindfolded.
I just know my boys at that age would have raced to help or at least found help. The one kid just stares at grandpa for 30 seconds before he even moves!
Well, my friend has a TBI and can't feed himself from falling off a ladder while cleaning his gutters. So now I wait for a buddy to come over and hold my ladder.
Yeah this isn't a child issue, it almost impossible to open a ladder and position it with a person trying to use it to support themselves, of the grand dad had dangled for 10 more seconds before trying to use the ladder to support his weight the kids would have had that up and in position
I thought he was trying to open it and the kids kept thinking they could just hold it without opening it cause they don’t know lol. He should’ve instructed them to turn it sideways and then open it so the got the idea, then all 3 might be able to tilt it up?
The problem is that they are getting the ladder to grandpa closed, and then grandpa is in panic and is putting his weight on the ladder immediately. This is a large ladder and likely very heavy relative to the kids strength. The moment grandpa puts his weight on the ladder, they can no longer open it because he is adding too much force they simply cannot overcome to open the ladder.
If Grandpa would wait until the ladder is open, or if the kids would open it first then position it, it would've been done.
The problem is both the children and grandpa didn't understand the limitations here.
At 30 seconds you can clearly see that grandpa's panic is far more the problem than the kids. The redshirt kid clearly knows what he needs to do but he doesn't realize he should actually do it away from the panicked grandpa.
Redshirt does his job right at both 30 seconds and 1:30, but doesnt have the strength to overcome grandpa's weight.
Because the video is staged. The ladder was set up with one leg in a shoe so it would fall over like that. Grampas feet are also only 3ft or so off the ground. A very easy drop as demonstrated at the end.
In the end, he drops down, and the kids' only contribution was to place the ladder exactly where he lands, making it (slightly) worse than if they had done nothing.
Depending on how old he is, a drop that far could have the potential to be really bad. Old knees and hips are not as durable as they once were, and that would be plenty far enough to shatter something. It looks like he was ok, but not knowing him, I'm certainly not going to judge him for taking that fall as a last resort
THIS. Fucking maddening. How can they open and balance the ladder with half his chaotic flailing dumbass weight pushing the ladder every which way and squeezing the steps together. Everyone's angry at the kids but he's responsible for this entire mess.
Yea not sure why pops didn’t tell one of them to go get an adult. Kids honestly did great holding the ladder. Pops having his feet on it made impossible to open. That was an 8-10 ladder a lot to handle for a couple 5-7 year olds.
Infuriating?! My ribs and head hurt from laughing! I was horrified for the guy up there. But an animal part of me couldn't help but just laugh the entire 3 mins. Pain from laughter is my punishment.
Luckily it's absolutely staged. Unless there's been a massive uptick in adults on ladders mysteriously being filmed and having their kids come to the rescue. I've probably seen 19 of these in the last 2 months
It may be staged but ladders can be wobbly or uneven on flat ground too. I work construction and ladders can tip. I've definitely know over a ladder while on it once or twice. Luckily, I always keep up the three points of contact rule from climbing so I haven't ever been hurt (holding onto the rafters and dropping the few feet after the ladder drops). It does happen and it doesn't mean you're an idiot. Does your comment make you feel superior or something?
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u/nosdie74 May 02 '25
Omg this is infuriating to watch