Nick Ford is a working father from Brighton, U.K.. He recently came face to face with the reality of having a toddler who has learnt to act on their moods.
Nick Ford works from home while taking care of his daughter, Moo. Moo is a toddler with bustling energy, which can become challenging for Ford to concentrate on his work.
His daughter goes to nursery only two days a week, and on those days, Ford looks forward to finishing as much work as possible, without being distracted. However, on this particular day, all his plans to tackle his tasks went out the window as he got a call from the nursery.
Ford has recently shared this story on TikTok video under the handle @twomenandalady. In this video, Ford shared a story that many parents could relate to and could glimpse of what toddlers are like to any expecting parents.
As Ford tells it, on this particular day, while he was working from home and Moo was in the nursery, he got a call from the nursery mentioning that Moo looked out of sorts. She is complaining, irritated, and really wants to go home.
The point to be noted is that it was one of the hottest days of the year in the UK. Though Nick was apprehensive initially as he remembered Moo being her energetic self in the morning. Yet, he didn’t want to risk Moo’s well-being and rushed to the nursery. There he picked his daughter up and brought her back home.
“I know they were just looking out for her as she wasn’t her usual self once there,” Ford admitted. Nick was, of course, mildly annoyed at the timing. However, he acknowledged the staff’s good intentions. “They said she kept saying she wanted to come home and see Dad, which tugged at the heart strings,” he added.
Once home, though, he couldn’t help but chuckle and record his toddler daughter running around, laughing, and enjoying herself. All his lingering doubts were validated or debunked, depending on how one sees the situation.
In the now-viral TikTok video, Moo is shown running around the house, bursting with energy, and asking to go to the park. “She was fine as soon as we left the nursery,” Ford said. “Was asking to go to the park on the way home and then ran wild all afternoon.”
Ford ultimately gave up on understanding what happened and chalked up the incident to the heat and a toddler’s moods. He laughed and said that she was just not feeling the nursery that day, I think.
Which can be very true even for adults, but just that we don’t have anyone to pick up from work and take to the park, just because we don’t feel like working.
The video has now garnered more than 345,000 views. There are thousands of parents who have chimed in with similar stories.
Baby tries to trick parent that he’s still asleep. 😂pic.twitter.com/JKMvHKy1a0
— The Figen (@TheFigen_) September 7, 2024
This video is proof that kids are kids in any part of the world because many parents from varied locations could testify to a similar situation where their “sick” kids were perfectly fine, once they were wicked from school or daycare.
Ford’s experience also highlights the everyday challenges many working parents face. Recently, Bright Horizons commissioned a survey that involved 3,000 working parents. The survey confirmed that a lot of parents, 26% of men and 32% of women, felt stressed and were hardly managing work and home life.
Parents with infants and toddlers, like Moo, reported the highest stress levels.
Despite the disruption, Ford emphasized that his video wasn’t a criticism of day care providers. “It’s just the experience I think most parents going through ‘the toddler years’ go through!” he said.
