After losing his parents at 6, boy gives toys to strangers for heartwarming reason

For kids, parents are their entire world. While it's difficult for adults to get over the loss of a parent, for children, it's even more heart-wrenching. But a kid from Georgia who lost both his parents at a very young age turned his grief into something heartwarming. After losing his father at four, Jaden Hayes was heartbroken when his mom unexpectedly passed away in 2015 when he was six. However, he didn't let his distressing life break him. Instead, he decided to bring smiles to sad faces, as reported by CBS Sunday Morning 9 years ago.

Hayes recalled the painful moment when he found his mom dead in her sleep. "I tried and I tried and I tried to get her awake - I couldn’t," the boy told the media channel. Losing both his parents within a span of two years took a toll on Hayes's emotions. At such a young age, his life taught him that "anybody can die." However, how he handled his tough time was both astonishing and inspiring. Hayes was then used to seeing sad faces after two funerals and he was not happy about it. So, he was determined to make people smile and he shared his wish with his temporary guardian Barbara DiCola back then. 

Hayes's mission to spread joy began right after his mom's funeral. He asked DiCola to get him a bunch of little toys to give to random people near his home in Savannah, Georgia. "Well, I’m trying to make people smile. Rubber duckies, dinosaurs - those are the things that make people smile," the little kid said. DiCola chronicled the kid's journey of making sad people smile with the hashtag #thesmileexperiment on her Instagram handle (@barnjdan5). Pictures of Hayes with random strangers in public places show how the kid had managed to liven up their day. 

Though not every stranger reacted as expected, Hayes made an impact in his area. One picture shared by DiCola shows Hayes grinning at dozens of rubber ducks he received as a gift. "He is already making plans on how to use them to make others smile," Dicola mentioned in the caption. All that he wanted from those strangers was a smile and nothing else in return. The boy got emotional that he was still not over his mom's demise but he found his calling in this thoughtful adventure. His goal was to uplift the day of at least 33,000 people and he was quite strong-willed to reach that goal. 

A couple of years later, when Hayes was interviewed again in 2017, Hayes was in a much merrier state, as per CBS. He was then living with Scott and Diane Hollars, his uncle and aunt in Winterville, Georgia. The cheerful little boy implied that with time he was able to get over his melancholy and was in a "happier place." However, he put a little pause on his "smile experiment," to focus on his goals. Soon he hoped to get back to make sad strangers smile but as of then, he wanted to work towards becoming "a famous basketball player and a famous baseball player."