COLEMAN, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) – Twelve-year-old Caden Ballard was sitting at home in Coleman, Texas, with his older brother, scrolling on TikTok, when they came across a video they wanted to try.

Ballard said he and his brother grabbed the materials and thought the experiment went well, until it did not.

“You basically take some rubbing alcohol and you put it into a bottle, and then you light it on fire, and the fire shoots up the bottle. I did that. My brother and I did that, and it was cool,” Ballard explained.

“It looked like the fire had gone out. So, my brother grabbed and said, ‘Here, throw it away.’ So, I grabbed it to throw it in the trash can, [and] my shirt was on fire.”

Isopropyl alcohol, when ignited, can have an invisible flame, which is what caused second-to-third-degree burns across his body.

Caden’s mom, Christina, said she was on the other side of the property when the incident happened and got the news from a friend nearby who heard the boys call 911.

“When I walked up to the porch, he was just face, chest, arms, stomach covered in burns. It looked like his skin had been melted away,” Christina recalled. “They like to listen to the story times on TikTok, you know, the Reddit stories. So I never expected things to go the way they went.”

Because of Caden’s older brother’s quick action, he was able to minimize the amount of damage. He pulled off his brother’s shirt and told him to stop, drop and roll to put out the flames.

“I don’t know how you were brave enough to reach into the flames and pull the shirt off of your brother. But I thank God every single day that you were brave enough to do that,” Christina said.

Now, the mom is urging other parents to have the tough conversation with their children about mimicking what they see online.

“Just tell your kids because you never know when something they see online could end up putting them in the hospital or worse. We got very lucky; unfortunately, it’s bad, but Caden and I are very lucky that it wasn’t a lot worse,” Christina said.

Caden is being transferred to a children’s burn unit in Galveston. The family has set up a fundraiser.