An Illinois mother’s TikTok video is resonating with parents everywhere.
Christine Litteken, 36, shared a tearful TikTok video on Jan. 3 because her son Rhett did something “so small” that meant so much to her.
“My 7-year-old son just called me to tell me he’s having fun at a basketball game and the high school boys gave him high-fives. We got him a watch for Christmas that only calls mom and dad. Then he said to his friends, ‘Guys say hi! It’s my mom.’ Then my heart exploded,” the mom wrote on top of the video of her wiping away tears and holding a hand to her heart.
The mother of two, who lives in Trenton and works as a videographer at Switzerfilm, also captioned the post with a hopeful message.
“I know it’s like so small, but I can only hope he’ll always be this excited to call me first and tell his friends to say hi to me,” she continued.
The emotional video has attracted more than 6 million views, 1 million likes and 4,000 comments as of Wednesday, Jan. 15.
Christine tells PEOPLE she “never imagined it going so wild,” adding she “just wanted to share a little proud mama moment with my TikTok friends.”
Christine and her husband, Justin, 37 — who are raising Rhett, daughter Reese, 5, and dog Gunner, 11 — reveal they had bought a children’s smartwatch, which their son used to make the call. “We purchased the TickTalk 5 off of Amazon. It has its own phone number and cell plan, but we program the watch from an app on our phone,” the mom explains.
The proud parent compared the moment to a Hallmark movie.
“I mean at that age, young boys are playing it so cool,” she says. “For him to be having that much fun to reach out to me in the middle of the excitement, it felt so wholesome. … When he called out to his friend though, my pride and emotions just overflowed. That call felt like the ending of a Hallmark movie.”
Christine and her family have enjoyed reading the comments from viewers who related to the video and shared their own parent-child experiences.
One fellow mother commented, “I feel my son still does this at 17. Boys are just different,” while another parent wrote, “My stepdaughter texts me pictures of the sunset and says it reminds her of me 🥺.”
A third TikTok user shared, “I panicked when I saw multiple missed calls from my son (17) and four voicemails. It was individual messages from his friends saying hi. I saved each message.”
Christine admits to PEOPLE that her TikTok video “became bigger” than just the “special moment between me and my son.”
“I keep saying we carved out the most wholesome spot in that corner of Tiktok,” she shares. “While I’ll bottle up that call from my son and cherish it forever, I’ll also remember the ripple effect his call made that day.”
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Another element that made her video special was re-using country singer Lee Brice’s 2017 ballad “Boy” as the soundtrack for her viral TikTok video.
“This is our song for ‘Bubba’ [Rhett], so it just felt right. … We used this song in his birth story video of my pregnancy journey,” she tells PEOPLE. “I battled infertility issues, so we started documenting our journey and this song just hit different and tugged at our heartstrings after our success with the IVF process. Using Lee Brice’s ‘Boy’ as a backing to another core memory just makes it that much more special.”
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