Toddler Watches Mom Get Ready for Work After a Rough Night. Then, the 3-Year-Old Gave Her the ‘Most Confusing’ Compliment

A mom got the sweetest — and most baffling — kind of compliment from her toddler, and she’s still not sure how to take it.

In a recent Reddit post, the mom explained that she was getting ready for work while her 3-year-old watched nearby. She hadn’t slept well the night before, her hair was a mess, and her under-eye circles were, as she put it, “doing Olympic-level performances.”

That’s when her toddler paused, stared at her for a long moment, then toddled over and gently touched her face.

“You look like a mommy who tried,” the child said.

The mom admitted she didn’t quite know what “tried” was supposed to mean — joking that maybe her little one was praising her for simply making it through the morning. Still, the moment felt oddly moving.

“And the way they said it was SO sincere,” she wrote. “Pure admiration. Zero irony. They genuinely meant it as the highest compliment.”

Curious if other parents had experienced similar toddler-logic praise, she asked commenters to share their own most confusing compliments.

One parent replied with a memory about her older brother and their mom. As a child, he once ran over to hug their mother around the waist and announced, “Mom, I like to hug you because you’re soft.” The commenter added that her mom started working out again the very next day.

Another person suggested the toddler might have been aiming for a different word entirely.

“Adorable either way,” they wrote, “but could they mean tired?”

And one mom said her toddler recently complimented her driving — in a way that was both encouraging and unintentionally hilarious.

“My toddler likes to give me directions when we drive and he often says something like, ‘You’re a good driver, ma, you didn’t crash into that Nissan!’” she shared. “Thanks, but the bar seems to be low.”