Fallon's Fightclub?!
How my toddler (and our country) is fucking with my moral compass.
Yesterday, my daughter bit and scratched a little boy at daycare. It wasn’t a full-on toddler street brawl, but there was enough bodily harm for a phone call, a Report™, and the kind of shame that makes you feel like a pariah amongst the juice-box crowd.
As a teacher, I know this is developmentally appropriate. As a mom? I am mortified.
I’ve spent years being the person who calmly reassures parents, “Oh, biting is common at this age. It’s just a phase! They’re still learning to regulate their emotions.” And yet, when the roles flipped and I became the parent getting the call, I felt like I’d birthed a tiny sociopath. Like, did I accidentally create a villain origin story? Am I now the Mother of the daycare menace?
The part that’s messing with my mental even more, though, is that while I should be wholly horrified, a small, morally wobbly part of me thought…
Well, maybe time was just UP for that little boy.
I’ve heard his name enough. Even my Mother in law asked wtf is up with this little boy after my daughter talked endlessly about his antics the other weekend. According to my daughter’s perfect toddler speech “He fell on my stomach while I was laying on the carpet”. Maybe my girl was simply the universe’s tiny enforcer, a pint-sized reckoning in OshKosh B’gosh. (I know—I need help.) To be fair, my husband has been saying since she was born that it’s in her blood to “want all the smoke.” And honestly? He’s not wrong.
Motherhood is weird. All of a sudden I’m making sense out of nonsense. But can you blame us? Every day, we watch grown adults—elected officials, CEOs, people entrusted with actual power—act like tantrum-prone toddlers who have never heard the word no. The world is truly giving “unchecked daycare energy” right now. Just full-grown humans taking things that aren’t theirs, throwing fits when they don’t get their way, and refusing to share. When I read the news, it’s like watching a playroom of overstimulated, overtired children running the country, and I’m supposed to be outraged by my child’s behavior?
And yet, I am.
Because even though we are all collectively watching morality unravel in real-time, I don’t want to be part of the problem. Ever.
I don’t want to raise a person who goes through life thinking physical aggression is an acceptable way to express frustration. I don’t want her to believe that when things don’t go her way, she gets to exert dominance with her tiny (but surprisingly strong) hands and teeth.
Meanwhile, the little boy’s mom apparently took him to the hospital. For a scratch. On his face. Which, okay, felt like a gross overreaction, but also… I get it? Because on top of everything else, there’s a measles outbreak in the area, since apparently we’re taking it back to the goddamn 1950s around these parts. So sure, maybe a hospital trip for a minor scratch seems dramatic, but when your kid is one unlucky germ away from a full-blown Oregon Trail experience, I guess I can’t judge too hard.
It’s funny how different group chats handle crises. Pete Hegseth’s boys were out here plotting political plays like drunk frat bros, meanwhile, I texted my mom group chat in shambles and instead of scandal or outrage, I was met with nothing but love, solidarity, and some much-needed comic relief.
My friend Melanie literally texted, “Idk the thug in the girls makes me smile.”
And you know what? Same. I love the way my friends lift me and my girl up, even when she’s out here acting like a baby mob boss.
So yesterday, we had our first real “we don’t hurt our friends” talk. Sis knew she was dead wrong. In the car on the way home instead of her usual belting of Miss Rachel songs she said “I’m shy, don’t talk to me” when I tried to get more info out of her. Daddy and I gave her (and documented) her first ever time-out… But as I try to shape her moral compass, I can’t help but wonder how many of our so-called leaders ever got that talk themselves. Some of them seem to have missed it entirely.
Anyway, if you see me in the daycare pickup line blasting “Hit ‘Em Up” by Tupac and avoiding eye contact, just know I’m still deep in my feelings about this. And maybe, just maybe, praying that the little boy she scratched had it coming… just a little bit.
If you want to hear more hilarious ramblings from me, check out my podcast Doing It All!
xoxo,
Morally Misguided Maya