Earlier this week, the ridiculously funny Matt Coyne (aka Man vs Baby) shared his struggle with his son’s ‘smacking phase’ on his Facebook page.

Now I can really sympathise here, what with having my very own home-grown hellraiser, so I commented:

“Worried that my child (also 18 months) is basically feral – we’ve had 3 biting-related incident letters from nursery this year already, and when we visited a farm this weekend, I sh*t you not, she punched a chicken…”

And that’s when about a thousand other people got involved…I’m really not exaggerating here – 1,399 likes, 195 replies and one actual ‘child vs chickens’ home video (!) later, it became clear that toddlers assaulting farm animals was a far more widespread issue than any of us imagined!

What was also apparent was the sheer bloody relief when parents discovered that their child wasn’t the only one pulling this kind of messed-up crap on a daily basis. From the kid who poked a goat in the face with a stick, to the boy who bitch-slapped a swan, to the little girl who ‘cuddled’ a fish for slightly too long, everyone had a story (some more terrifying than others)…

What I’m taking away from the whole experience, aside from a truckload of Facebook notifications and the limited edition ‘mother of the chicken puncher’ t-shirt that’s apparently winging its way over to me, is that we really should share the madness as often as the milestones. It’s lovely to hear that your tiny person has taken their first steps or FINALLY slept through the night, but it’s flippin’ fantastic to know that you’re not the only one lying awake at night wondering if that box set of Criminal Minds you watched in the early days has somehow broken your baby…

So yes, my little girl is as cute as a button, funny as hell and pretty damn loveable. But she also wields ‘That’s Not My’ books like lethal weapons (a close encounter with That’s Not My Lion gave me a nose bleed), delights in ‘cooking’ unsuspecting CBeebies figurines in her toy microwave, and has no standards at all when it comes to what she’s prepared to put in her mouth (the other day she got hold of a sparkly Christmas candle I’d left in a drawer and was literally sh*tting glitter for two days straight).

And that’s really ok. Well, not the candle eating thing, that was my bad, but all the other crazy stuff…