Toddlerhood: 32 Comics Loosely Based On My Experiences As A Stay-At-Home Parent

From an early age, I knew I wanted to draw cartoons. I grew up reading comics such as Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes and watching cartoons like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I would spend hours drawing, even during class. As a teenager, I drew cartoons for my high school’s newspaper, and with the rise of webcomics in the mid-aughts, I made my first attempts at creating comic strips regularly.

After a few years (and many failed webcomics), I created Beware of Toddler nearly on a whim. My then nearly two-year-old daughter did something I thought was funny, so I drew it as a comic strip. As soon as I posted it online, it instantly gained attention. People gravitated to this simple comic strip about a dad hiding in the closet, so I drew another one. And another one. And now I’m approaching number 300. Since then, Beware of Toddler has won two awards, been nominated for several more (including a Ringo!), and is currently distributed by King Features Syndicate. There was also a printed book collection successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter in 2022.

One of my favorite things about the comic is how inspired it is by real-life events. Seeing the main character, The Toddler, writing on the wall or throwing objects in the toilet was taken straight from real life, though exaggerated. These moments, in addition to the comics taken directly from The Toddler’s viewpoint, are some of my favorites.

When I began drawing these, people would always tell me how much the characters reminded them of their own lives. That’s why I haven’t revealed the characters’ names yet. Some of my favorite comments are things like, “You are in my house!” and “That’s exactly how it is in my house!” It’s interesting to know that many of our parenting-related experiences are similar to each other.

One of the things I’d like readers to take away from Beware of Toddler is that there isn’t a lot of media with a focus on dads–especially stay-at-home dads. This can be exacerbated when it comes to marginalized dads but ultimately, I think all fathers can relate. The fact of the matter is we exist, and I hope my comic is successful in bringing a bit of visibility to this fact.

Anyways, these comics are a small sample of the series. There are many more, and I hope you can read them all. Even more so, I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoy making them.