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Parenting

30th Jun 2017

Dad overwhelmed by celebrity response to son’s bullying

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Conor Heneghan

This will restore your faith in humanity.

Anyone that spends enough time on Twitter knows that that it can sometimes be an unpleasant forum for conversation and debate.

It can often be a haven for bitterness and spite, but there can also be a positive side when so many people are able to engage and collectively pull together in aid of a good cause.

On Thursday, a man named Christopher, the parent of a nine-year old boy called Ollie, issued what he dubbed a “strange request” for well-known or famous people to send his son a positive message to cheer him up following an experience with a bully that had him down in the dumps.

The response was nothing short of incredible.

In the space of 24 hours (at the time of writing), the original message has been retweeted nearly 10,000 times and has garnered over 4,000 replies, including from some very famous people indeed.

But it’s not just the replies from celebrities that make it such a heartwarming and positive thing to read; ordinary Twitter users have been inundating Ollie with messages of encouragement and positivity, many of whom have been through similar experiences themselves.

Some of the responses from well-known faces have been included below, but if you’re looking for a reminder that people really can be great sometimes, you might want to spend 10 or 15 minutes having a scroll through the thread it its entirety.

You won’t regret it.