If this video doesn’t pull on the heartstrings of parents everywhere, you probably need to have your heart checked.

An anti-smoking campaign commercial shot in a busy Australia bus station pictures a little boy who is separated from his mother amid the bustling scene. The boy looks sincerely lost. The cameras capture a very real moment where he turns from surprised to scared to just plain sad, with tears streaming down his face.

Queue the somber music, followed by an ominous voice: “If this is how your child feels after losing you for a minute, just imagine if they lost you for life.”

The ad by Quit Victoria, a nonprofit established by a local government in Australia, is creating a buzz.

Parents are asking whether it was appropriate to put the little boy in a situation where he very seemingly believed he had lost his mother. Quit’s executive director appeared on the Today Show this morning and said the boy and mother were actors who were coached for the commercial. Still she came short of denying that the scene, captured in one take, was anything but real for the little boy.

My question: Is it wrong to try to evoke a real response from child actors? Matt Lauer seemed to think so. But is it so different than the photographer who tries to capture a few alligator tears for the camera? (My parents have one of those shots of my sister when she was just a few months old.)

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