My Tattooed Toddler

Published in the World Journal, April 2nd, 2026 Issue

My nearly two-year-old recently got his first tattoo. I walked into the house, returning from a work trip. He rushed me, proudly holding up his little shirt to show the large fish seated just under his ribs. 

Hold your torches, now, it was just sharpie! His father has the same tattoo, and the kid got fixated on it around the holidays. He began constantly pointing at his dad’s fish, then tucking his chin and searching for it on his own belly. On an evening of February babysitting, he was finally able to convince his grandfather to grant him his very own belly “foosh” with a thick black marker. What got me thinking, however, was the way that he kept pulling the hem of my shirt. He was looking for my fish tattoo, returning with great confusion every time it wasn’t there.

Working in a small community, I often reflect on the important distinction between the Golden and Platinum Rules. For those who are unfamiliar, the Golden Rule–the one most people were raised with–states, “treat others as you want to be treated.” 

The Platinum Rule was first shared with me when I was in high school, and changes the classic moral of the Golden Rule to say, “Treat others as they want to be treated.” 

When you get down to it, the latter is the only one that makes sense. Both can be taken to mean “Be Nice,” or “Share,” but the Golden Rule forgets an important reality: we are not all the same. We don’t have the same needs, preferences, capabilities, or context. Despite that logic, I still find myself regularly caught up in this gilded fallacy.

My son’s face, twisted with confusion as he searches with a frantic, “foosh? foosh?” for my nonexistent fish tattoo, I think that’s what I look like when I’m caught up in the Golden Rule. 

I’m confused and frustrated when Jim-Bob doesn’t answer my emails, but he has told me a dozen times that he prefers phone calls. I’m deeply embarrassed when the directness of my feedback is perceived as harsh by Betty, but I know that a gentler approach makes her feel valued. 

In those and countless other situations I am expecting a fish to be there because I have one. It’s not that I am doing anything wrong per se, but I know that the best work that I’ve done in building community, running programs, and generally working with people has come when I stopped expecting them to be me. 

Here’s hoping that catches on for my boy at some point in the next sixteen years.