A mom who noticed her toddler son had been “quiet for a minute too long” could barely believe the state she found him in.

Ally Robinson, a mom of two from Manchester in the UK, had just come back from a family lunch with her wife Chelsea, their two sons Harrison and Riley, and her sister-in-law and niece when all hell broke loose.

“They’d come back to ours so the kids could play in the garden before heading home,” Robinson told Newsweek. “My niece took Harrison to play upstairs for a bit, which they usually do.”

As parents, it’s important to foster independence in children from an early age. In 2023 a study in the Journal of Pediatrics identified evidence of a possible link between lower independence in today’s children and increased mental health problems.

Robinson and her partner might think twice about giving Harrison this kind of freedom again for a little while long after what happened when their backs were turned.

Harrison and his cousin were upstairs for about 30 minutes. Robinson assumed “they were playing together” throughout this time, but that wasn’t the case.

“We were on FaceTime with my mother-in-law who was in Jamaica,” Robinson said. “The next thing we knew Harrison was at the baby gate.”

There was something noticeably different about Harrison when they saw him. Unbeknownst to the rest of the family he had found a pot of Sudocrem antiseptic cream and had proceeded to cake himself in the contents.

“My niece was still playing in my son’s room, not realising he had even disappeared,” Robinson said. “The Sudocrem had been on the bedside table in our room and he had grabbed it, sat on the top of the stairs smearing it all over. “

The results were captured in a video posted to Robinson’s TikTok @als_robinson, where it amassed hundreds of views since being shared earlier this month, alongside the caption: “POV: Your toddler was quiet for a minute too long.”

While the Sudocrem Harrison was covered in was tricky to clean off in itself, it was nothing compared to trying to get it off everywhere he had smeared it in the house.

“It was horrendous to get out of our carpet and off of his clothes,” Robinson said. “Luckily my mum is staying with us for a few months from overseas and got straight to it, Googling all the tricks to try and get it out.”

Robinson reckons it “took a good few days” to clean the Sudocrem off the stairs. “If you look closely you can definitely still see it slightly,” she said.

Despite the mess made, the entire episode had everyone in the family laughing, which is why she opted to share a clip from it to social media.

“We were laughing our heads off for so long in disbelief,” she said. “I just hoped it would make people laugh like it did us.”

She said It served as an important reminder to them and anyone with a toddler that “you have to have eyes in the back of your head.”