Frida leaves Harriet home alone for two hours, and a neighbor calls the police after hearing the toddler crying.

Police hand Harriet to Gust's care, and social worker Ms. Torres schedules three supervised visits for Frida.

CPS men install cameras throughout Frida's house to monitor and analyze her emotions.

A family court judge rules that Frida must attend a year-long live-in rehabilitation program for bad mothers.

A bus transports Frida and other mothers to a former liberal arts college campus surrounded by barbed wire fences and wilderness.

Director Ms. Knight presents the program's strict rules, including automatic termination of parental rights for any violation.

Instructors reveal AI robot dolls that resemble each mother's real child; Frida names hers Emmanuelle.

Instructors slap the dolls repeatedly to provoke crying, then order the mothers to console them using prescribed hugs.

Lucretia's doll dies after touching snow, triggering a fight with Linda and resulting in Lucretia's expulsion from the program.

Margaret dies by suicide, and the other mothers are punished for openly grieving because displaying sorrow is considered unmotherly.

A July 4th picnic brings the mothers together with fathers from the nearby school, where Frida meets Tucker and his doll Jeremy.

Instructors program the dolls to hurl racist and sexist slurs at each other, triggering widespread fistfights among parents.

The program's final evaluations conclude and the dolls' memories are wiped, devastating Frida after a year-long mother-daughter bond.

The judge terminates Frida's parental rights, overruling supportive testimony from Gust and Susanna on the basis of doll data.

Frida withdraws cash, packs supplies, and drives off with Harriet into the night, knowing she will eventually be caught.

Frida's life unravels after she leaves her toddler daughter Harriet alone for two hours, triggering a CPS investigation that costs her joint custody. A judge sentences her not to prison but to a secretive year-long boarding school designed to rehabilitate bad mothers, housed on a beautiful former college campus surrounded by barbed wire. There, Frida and the other mothers are assigned AI doll children and subjected to increasingly abusive and nonsensical lessons run by people who have never been parents. The program's contradictions and cruelties mount over the year, including expulsions, a suicide, and the arrival of fathers from a nearby school that operates under far easier conditions. Despite completing the program and earning support from unlikely allies, Frida loses her parental rights permanently when the court places total faith in the doll data over human testimony. Left with nothing, Frida makes one final, desperate choice: she kidnaps Harriet and drives into the night, knowing she will eventually be caught.

The headline events that define Frida's fight to keep her daughter.

Frida visits Will at his apartment; they kiss but agree to wait before going further.

A court-appointed psychologist evaluates Frida and implies her Chinese immigrant background is the source of her parenting failures.

Frida spends the night with Will the evening before her first supervised visit with Harriet.

The first supervised visit goes badly when an overtired Harriet bites Ms. Torres after being denied cuddling and forced to play.

The second supervised visit is finally held after multiple postponements; Harriet throws a tantrum when Gust and Susanna are sent from the room.

Frida's roommate Helen quits the program after a single day, calling it psychological torture, since her teenager is nearly grown.

Frida receives a new roommate, Roxane, a young mother whose infant son is in foster care after an unexpected work emergency.

Frida successfully consoles Emmanuelle for the first time by channeling the empathy she once felt when comforting an injured Harriet.

Distracted by news about Harriet's diet, Frida pinches Emmanuelle during a tantrum and is sent to talk circle as punishment.

An eleven-year-old boy doll runs into the school's electric fence and dies; his mother is blamed and held financially responsible for damaged equipment.

Mothers practice removing dolls from fake hot cars while headsets play distressing videos of their real children rejecting them.

Tucker openly pursues Frida despite the program's rules against fraternizing; she secretly slips him her phone number before the fathers depart.

Susanna and Gust's baby Henry is born prematurely via emergency C-section and transferred to the NICU with serious health complications.

At the final supervised visit, Harriet must be forcibly pried from Frida's arms screaming; security escorts Frida out and she collapses in the street.

Frida arrives at Will's apartment and consumes all his liquor within days as he watches her closely for signs of suicidal intent.

Before the school, Frida's isolation in Philadelphia pushes her toward Will, Gust's best friend, while a biased psychologist and a series of sabotaged supervised visits make her legal situation steadily worse. At the school itself, small but revealing moments define daily life: a roommate who quits on the first day, a breakthrough in bonding with Emmanuelle, a punishment for a moment of frustration, and a doll's death that exposes the program's lethal design. The later chapters at the school reveal the program's escalating cruelties, from distressing emergency drills to Tucker's persistent romantic pursuit, which Frida resists at great personal cost. The story closes on two devastating scenes: a final visit where Harriet must be physically torn from Frida's arms, followed by Frida collapsing in the street and then quietly unraveling at Will's apartment as everyone around her waits to see if she will survive.

The personal moments and institutional details that shape Frida's year.

Lawyer Renee warns Frida that CPS is becoming more aggressive and developing secret experimental new programs.

Frida finally tells her parents she has lost custody of Harriet; they respond that she should have called a babysitter.

Ms. Torres double-books and postpones the second supervised visit four additional times, cutting the court-ordered visits effectively to two.

Renee coaches Frida to appear complacent and to downplay her Chinese heritage before the family court hearing.

Frida arrives at the school and discovers she is the only Asian mother among a population that is mostly Black and Latina.

Lucretia asks the instructors whether they have children; they confirm they do not, prompting deep frustration among the mothers.

During a video call, Harriet refers to Susanna as Mommy Sue-Sue; Gust refuses to intervene despite Frida's plea.

Ms. Torres claims Frida's phone calls retraumatize Harriet and indefinitely suspends Frida's phone privileges.

Two mothers caught kissing are interrogated in talk circle, where counselors declare that romantic desire is unmotherly narcissism.

Frida's brain scan reveals multiple negative emotions, and her official prognosis for regaining custody is rated fair to poor.

Tucker tells Frida she is a good mother, making her feel worthy of love in a way she has not felt in a long time.

Frida learns that Susanna is pregnant and that Gust gave her his grandmother's engagement ring, which he had withheld from Frida.

Meryl is discovered hiding in the school's flooded basement after being recaptured while trying to reach her daughter; she is returned to class.

Frida calls her parents to tell them she has permanently lost custody of Harriet, then books a one-way ticket to move back home.

Frida persuades Will to leave her alone with Harriet for one hour, then straps her daughter into the car seat and drives away.

From the very beginning, warnings and small revelations signal that the system is rigged against Frida: her lawyer predicts CPS will grow more aggressive, her parents respond to her confession with judgment rather than comfort, and a court hearing is staged in ways that disadvantage her from the start. At the school, key moments expose the program's institutional bias, from the instructors' admission that they have no children, to a counseling session where lesbian relationships are dismissed as narcissism, to the suspension of Frida's phone privileges based on the social worker's one-sided claims. Personal discoveries in the school's later months compound the injustice: Harriet has begun calling Susanna Mommy, Tucker's kindness makes Frida feel worthy of love for the first time in years, and Frida learns Susanna is pregnant and newly engaged to Gust. The final turning points arrive in rapid succession after the program ends: a permanent loss of custody, a conversation with her parents, and a quiet hour alone with Harriet that Frida chooses to make last as long as possible.