A Utah mom got the surprise of her life when she realized she had become the inspiration for the villain in her 9-year-old son’s homemade comic book series.
The character was called “No Mom” — a red-dressed mother who answered every request from her children with a stern “no.” Fortunately for the kids, the comic’s superhero, the Emerald Warrior, swooped in just in time with a magical “yes spray” that transformed the dreaded villain into a much more agreeable parent.
For Stacy Goulding, a health educator, postpartum personal trainer and mother of three boys, the comic was impossible not to laugh at.
“It took me all of half a second to realize who he based the villain on,” Goulding told Newsweek after the comic unexpectedly resonated with thousands of parents online.
The now-viral moment began after Goulding posted a video to Instagram through her account, @stacylyn_coaching, where she regularly shares glimpses of motherhood, fitness and family life. In the clip, posted in April, she flipped through her son’s hand-drawn comic series while trying not to laugh at the exaggerated portrayal of herself as the family’s ultimate buzzkill.
(Courtesy of Stacy Goulding)
As she showed viewers the pages, Goulding read aloud the comic’s opening lines: “Once upon a time there was a mom that never answers her kids questions and always says no.”
She then revealed the next sentence written by her son: “Her kids were really sad.”
The story only grew more dramatic from there.
The video quickly struck a chord with exhausted parents everywhere, drawing tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of comments from moms and dads who saw their own lives reflected in the hilariously relatable story.
“My son recently had a birthday and our sweet neighbor gave him a restaurant gift card,” Goulding told Newsweek. “He kept asking me to take him, but it was tricky to find time to take him out to eat with all of our other commitments. We had already spent two days celebrating his birthday with family and friends.”
That frustration apparently found its way onto paper.
In the comic, “No Mom” refuses every request her children make. The kids grow increasingly sad until the Emerald Warrior appears, spraying the villain with “yes spray” so she suddenly agrees to everything her children ask.
The absurdity of the storyline — and the unmistakable parenting truth buried inside it — had viewers laughing almost immediately.
But Goulding admitted there was also something surprisingly sweet about seeing herself through her son’s imagination.
“He’s a creative little guy,” she told Newsweek, describing the comic as both “creative and hilarious.”
What she loved most, though, was the moment they shared while reading it together for the first time.
“My son watched me read it aloud for the first time, and we both had a good chuckle,” she said. “I could see he took pride in making me laugh. I told him I liked it, and thought it was well done.”
In the caption accompanying the viral Instagram video, Goulding jokingly defended her parenting record, reminding viewers the comic had been written at the tail end of a packed spring break filled with “swimming,” “hiking,” “cousins,” “birthday parties,” “parks,” “movie nights,” “biking” and even “college baseball & NBA games.”
She wrote: “I think for having a ‘No Mom’ they have it pretty good.”
Parents in the comments immediately rallied around her.
One commenter joked: “mine told me I was an evil villain yesterday..bc she couldn’t jump off her top bunk into a pile of stuffed animals..I’d rather be the evil villain instead of the ambulance driver.”
Another praised the boy’s creativity, writing: “This might be the best parenting advice on the internet! Tell your kids ‘no’ more often so they have to learn how to entertain themselves, develop creativity and writing skills and discover the power of persuasive rhetoric …”
The story resonated because, beneath the humor, many parents understood exactly what Goulding was experiencing. Every mom or dad eventually becomes the “bad guy” simply for setting boundaries.
Still, Goulding said she has no plans to retire the word “no.”
“Although I know I could improve in many ways as a parent, I don’t believe saying ‘no’ is a bad thing,” she told Newsweek. “Our children need to hear no. We can’t indulge in every request. I know I’m not a ‘No Mom.’ I try to keep a balance of play, exploring, learning to work, growth and resiliency.”
In many ways, that honest reflection may be why so many people connected with the story. Goulding did not pretend to be a perfect parent. Instead, she embraced the humor in a relatable parenting moment — and reminded thousands of exhausted moms online that being loved by your children and being liked by them every second are not always the same thing.
“All parents have experienced situations when their kids are mad at them,” Goulding told Newsweek. “Good parenting isn’t about being liked by your child 100% of the time. It’s about helping them develop in the ways they need even if that temporarily makes you the villain.”
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