‘Thanks for making me feel like an epic failure of a mother’: Dad records daughter on first day of school every year, and now she’s finally a senior

Not all parents are created equal. If you need proof just look to TikTok user Ray Petelin (@raypetelin) and the heartwarming dedication to his daughter more than a decade in the making.

The top-tiers pops decided to use these fancy recording tools we all have at our beck and call to immortalize a permanent fixture in his daughter’s life. Starting when she took her first steps into the U.S. education system, Petelin’s been recording every single first day of school across his baby’s entire educational career. The final entry landed in August of 2024, when his high school senior headed off to secondary school for the very last time.

The entire video contains 13 years of human life in less than a minute and a half, and every second is utterly wholesome. It starts with Elizabeth Petelin’s very last first day, as she goes through the same ritual she’s been doing since she was five. She spells her name for the camera, and then a wholesome cycle initiates, as Elizabeth informs the camera of what she wants to be when she grows up. It changes numerous times over the years, as the little one changes and grows herself, and shifts aspirations from doctor to teacher to magician to open heart surgeon, before finally landing on “physical therapist or nurse.”

The entire video will make any heart swell at least three sizes, as papa Petelin cycles through a decade of memories in record time, reminding his little one that “mommy and daddy love you very much” with each one.

The video is too sweet to pass by, which led it to rapidly collect more than 31 million views, alongside 7.6 million likes and nearly 40,000 comments, all of which heap praise on Petelin’s peak parenting. Responses range from pining — “Oh to have a dad that loves you this much,” — to aspirational — “I can’t wait to be this type of parent,” — but each and every one basks in the wholesomeness of the video.

Petelin got some great memories from his annual tradition, but he likely accomplished something else as well. The first day of school is notoriously stressful, no matter how old you get, largely because it’s a big change. We all have internal alarms that go off when something new rears its head, but those “alarms” can’t always distinguish between exciting and scary. As a result, many young people associate those “change incoming” alarms with fear, which then bleeds into their academic experience.

That’s likely not the case for Elizabeth, however, thanks to her dad’s persistence. Since he added a dose of regularity into every first day of school, that “newness” wouldn’t have been so jarring to his little girl. Instead of starting every school year with nothing familiar, Petelin provides his daughter with just enough consistency to keep her grounded.

As a result, it looks like Elizabeth has blossomed wonderfully. A high school senior with her eyes on a future in healthcare, she’s got the world ahead of her, and all the support she needs to reach the very top.