In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic prompted widespread shelter-in-place recommendations, the Pond family was at home in Yakima, Washington, when father Ricky Pond realized his teenage children were restless and “bored out of their minds.”
One Sunday afternoon after church, “they came up to me and said, ‘Hey Dad, come and do a dance with us on TikTok.’”
Pond’s initial response was a hard “no.” He liked dancing but wasn’t interested, plus he was aware of a trend at the time for young people to put their parents on social media and make fun of them in hopes of gaining followers or going viral.
“No, you guys spend way too much time on that app,” the 51-year-old father said.
The Pond children didn’t give up. After additional rejections, daughter Audrey and son Dallin Pond informed their father they had created an account for him—now he had to post something.
Ricky Pond then looked to his wife, Roxane, for direction.
“Just go do a dance with them,” she said.
So he did, never suspecting that over the next five years he and his family would bond with one another as they created scores of fun and entertaining dance videos that would amass millions of followers on various social media platforms and earn him the nickname “The Dancing Dad.”
Read the rest of the article at the Church News.
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