Surviving the baby dragon phase and other midnight disasters

It’s 4:12 AM in our London flat, and Florence is standing upright in her cot, gripping the wooden bars like a tiny, furious inmate, screaming for a mythical reptile. Matilda, her twin, is entirely asleep but sporadically kicking the plaster wall in what I can only assume is unconscious solidarity. I’m standing in the doorway in my boxer shorts, squinting through the gloom without my glasses, trying to decipher what exactly my two-year-old means by her aggressive demands for a baby dragon.

I hadn't the faintest idea what was happening. Was she recounting a nightmare? Was this some bizarre developmental leap where she suddenly grasped medieval folklore? My exhausted brain tried to process the demand while I wiped a streak of what I fiercely hoped was just mashed banana off my forearm. I patted her back, whispered some absolute nonsense about how dragons sleep at night, and stumbled back to bed, totally unaware that my household had just been infected by a digital obsession that would cost me my remaining shreds of sanity.

The culprit, it turned out, was my twelve-year-old nephew, Leo. He’d visited that afternoon, slumped on our sofa eating an ungodly amount of Jammie Dodgers, and made the catastrophic error of showing the twins his iPad.

The glowing rectangle of doom

Leo, you see, is obsessed with a mobile game that features an adorable, fire-belching animated creature. The girls had peered over his shoulder, entirely mesmerized. He had spent twenty minutes earnestly trying to explain the strategic mechanics of a baby dragon evo to me, speaking in rapid-fire gamer jargon while I just nodded and wondered if I needed to remortgage the flat to pay for my upcoming heating bill.

He was incredibly proud of building best baby dragon evo decks, which apparently is a thing you do to win virtual battles. I still don't fully understand it, but the twins didn't care about the strategy. They just saw a cute, chubby green lizard that burped fire and made a funny noise, and that was it. The neurological wiring in their toddler brains instantly fused. They were hooked.

By the following afternoon, the situation had escalated from a mild interest to a hostage negotiation. Florence wanted the iPad. Matilda wanted the iPad. I just wanted a cup of tea that wasn't lukewarm. In a moment of spectacular parental weakness—the kind where you’ll do literally anything just to stop the whining for three consecutive minutes—I actually found myself frantically searching my own phone for a clash royale baby dragon code, foolishly believing that unlocking a digital pixel might somehow act as a substitute for Calpol or a nap. I even clicked on a dodgy YouTube link promising a free baby dragon emote code, which obviously just gave my phone a bizarre calendar virus and didn't impress the toddlers at all.

Our GP, a lovely woman who always looks slightly amused by my disheveled state, had previously muttered something to me about screen time and dopamine receptors in developing brains, wrapping the science in enough medical ambiguity that I walked away feeling both vaguely terrified and entirely confused. It sounded like letting them stare at screens was either going to turn them into tech billionaires or completely dissolve their frontal lobes, and frankly, I didn't have the energy to figure out which. So, instead of trying to perfectly balance their digital footprint while hyperventilating over medical journals, I just shoved the iPad behind the toaster and decided we were going back to basics.

Astrology and other things I don't have energy for

Of course, complaining about dragons right now is incredibly ironic, given that everyone keeps reminding me we're currently in the Chinese Year of the Dragon. Apparently, kids born this year are statistically destined to be fearless leaders and CEOs, which is great for them, but right now I'd settle for children who don't actively try to eat the dog's biscuits when my back is turned.

My mother-in-law has taken the astrological calendar as a personal mandate to send us an endless stream of themed merchandise. The postman hates us. We have dragon socks, dragon blankets, and dragon bibs. But thankfully, amidst the chaos of synthetic, brightly colored gifts that make noise, we found a staple that actually works for our analog pivot.

I can't stress enough how much we genuinely rely on the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit from Kianao. When I say Florence lives in this thing, I mean I literally have to peel it off her while she protests like a captured spy. We have it in a muted earthy tone, and it’s become her unofficial "dragon skin" costume. It's properly brilliant because it actually has enough stretch to survive her throwing herself onto the rug to demonstrate how a dragon flies, and the organic cotton means she doesn't break out in that weird, inexplicable red rash she gets when she wears cheap synthetic fabrics. Plus, it survives the punishing 60-degree wash cycles after she inevitably spills Ribena down the front of it. It’s honest, durable clothing that doesn’t require an instruction manual, which is basically my love language at this point.

To make the transition away from the iPad complete, I had to replace the digital beast with an imaginary one. I highly think this strategy, mostly because it requires you to just sit on the floor and point at things while your children exhaust themselves.

Building a nest for the invisible beast

We spent an entire Sunday morning building a "nest" for their new, entirely invisible pet. The rules of toddler imaginary play are strict and terrifying. If you accidentally step on the area designated as the nest, you'll be screamed at with the intensity of a thousand burning suns. You have to tiptoe around the living room, whispering, because the imaginary creature is "sleeping." It’s really quite peaceful until you realize you’re tip-toeing in your own house to avoid waking up a pocket of empty air.

We dragged out all the blankets and piled them in the corner. I tried to incorporate the Rainbow Play Gym Set into the architecture. Look, we had this gym when they were infants, and it was perfectly fine—a nice, aesthetically pleasing wooden arch that looked great in the living room and held their attention for exactly eleven minutes at a time. But as toddlers, they completely ignore its intended developmental purpose. Instead, Matilda dragged the wooden frame over to the blankets and declared it was the "cage" to keep the dragon from eating the sofa cushions. It's a very sturdy frame, to be fair to Kianao, because it withstood two toddlers repeatedly bashing it with a plastic spatula.

Treating this invisible entity as a pet seriously did something miraculous. It stopped the demands for the screen. They were too busy gathering "food" (my missing socks) and arranging the pillows to care about Leo's video game. It forces them to use their brains to construct a narrative, which is miles better than just staring at a flashing screen waiting for a tiny cartoon to burp.

Why we aren't buying a real reptile

In a moment of big weakness later that week, while watching them lovingly stroke a rolled-up bath towel they had named 'Fireball,' I seriously Googled how hard it's to keep a bearded dragon. I figured, why not? A real pet might teach them responsibility.

This was a terrible idea. I mentioned it offhand to our GP during a routine checkup for Matilda's ear infection. She looked at me over her glasses, sighed deeply, and muttered something about salmonella shedding that made my stomach turn. I dimly recall her saying that the bacteria just lives on their skin and terrifies the local health board whenever toddlers are involved, which frankly just sounded like another grotesque thing I’d have to bleach off the kitchen floor. We're absolutely not getting a reptile. I can barely keep the houseplants alive, and at least the ferns don't carry gastrointestinal diseases.

I miss the days when our biggest problem was just teething. Honestly, I look back at the era of drool and swollen gums with a bizarre kind of fondness now. Back then, I could just hand them the Panda Teether and boom, problem solved. That little silicone panda saved us from so many meltdowns. It was straightforward: gum hurts, chew on panda, stop crying. Now, I've to figure out the complex geopolitical landscape of imaginary pets, screen-time guilt, and preventing my daughters from trying to hatch supermarket eggs in my bed.

Surviving the madness

Parenting toddlers often feels like you’re starring in a psychological thriller where the villains are three feet tall and exclusively communicate through riddles and screaming. The sudden fixation on a digital creature was just the latest plot twist.

You can't really control what weird, hyper-specific thing your kid is going to latch onto next. One day it's a mobile game character, the next it’s a specific blue spoon, and God help you if you put that blue spoon in the dishwasher. You just have to ride it out, try to gently redirect the madness into something that doesn't involve staring at a screen until their eyes glaze over, and maybe buy clothes that can withstand a bit of rough-and-tumble floor play.

So, we'll continue to step carefully around the invisible nest in the living room. I'll continue to pretend to feed it imaginary pieces of broccoli. And I'll absolutely never, ever let my teenage nephew bring his iPad into my flat again.

If you’re currently dealing with your own toddler obsessions, whether it’s mythical beasts or an unhealthy attachment to the TV remote, just know you aren't alone. Grab a cold cup of tea, embrace the absurdity of it all, and maybe check out some durable essentials that can survive the phase.

Explore Kianao's full collection of toddler-proof organic essentials here.

The messy reality of toddler obsessions (FAQ)

Is it normal for my toddler to obsess over something they saw on a screen for five minutes?

Oh, completely. Florence once saw a documentary about industrial street sweepers for three minutes while I was flipping channels, and we had to pretend to be street sweepers for six consecutive weeks. Their brains just latch onto novel concepts like limpets. You just have to wait for the storm to pass and slowly hide the triggering objects.

Should I be worried about them wanting to play video games at age two?

I mean, I panicked and assumed my kids were going to end up living in my basement at 35 playing esports. But realistically, they don't even know what a video game is yet. They just like the flashing lights and the fact that a thing reacted when they poked it. I just casually "lost" the charger to our old tablet, which miraculously solved the problem. Out of sight, out of mind usually works at this age.

How do I encourage imaginative play when I'm too tired to move?

The beauty of imaginary play is that you can participate from a horizontal position. Lie on the rug, declare that you're a sleeping mountain or a log, and tell them the imaginary creature needs to climb over you quietly. Boom. You get to close your eyes, and they get to practice their motor skills. It’s elite-level parenting lazyness and I highly endorse it.

Are real lizards really that dangerous for little kids?

According to my GP, who gave me a look that questioned my fitness as a parent when I brought it up, yes. Little kids put everything in their mouths, and reptiles carry bacteria that you really, really don't want to deal with at 3 AM. Stick to stuffed animals. They don't carry salmonella and you don't have to buy them live crickets.

How do I get my kid out of a phase that's driving me insane?

You can't force them out of it, which is the agonizing truth. If you try to ban the imaginary game, they'll only play it harder just to spite you. The trick is to slowly introduce a slightly less annoying phase to replace it. We pivoted from dragons to pretending to be deep-sea divers, which is much quieter because they've to hold their breath. Highly think.