preschool graduation

A quiet love letter to the preschool years — and to the small, sticky, sparkly world that carried so many families through early motherhood. In this episode, Kathy reads an essay from her archive reflecting on preschool graduation, pandemic parenting, and the unexpected villages that form in parking lots, classrooms, and morning drop-offs. A story about tiny shoes, big feelings, and the strange heartbreak of watching a chapter end while knowing, somehow, that these were the good old days all along.

hosted by Kathy Patalsky

healthyhappylife.com

IG: KathyPatalsky + notes.kathy

Transcript

 "Rollie pollies, finger paint, bubble wands, daily tantrums. We are living in this magical, messy,  fleeting era where our kids are still actual babies and somehow also full grown people."

Notes with Kathy patalsky.

This is a post that is from my blog.

What happens when a small ceremony hits harder than you expected.

Preschool Graduation.

Preschool graduation season. This is my love letter to the preschool era, the place that brought my pandemic baby and me back to life. She was born during lockdown, swaddled in uncertainty, and raised through zoom mommy and me sessions and color coordinated masks. And now somehow she's sprinting across the preschool yard and glitter shoes. Shouting facts about angler fish and handing out frozen band-aids, like she owns the place. It's adorable. It's absurd. And yes, I'll be crying in the car after that final school pickup, like when Inside Out's purple, plush Bing Bong, faded into sparkles shouting, " take her to the moon for me."

We've been deep in it, preschool. The world of Rollie pollies, finger paint, bubble wands, and daily tantrums over tight shoes and apple slices cut the wrong way. We are living in this magical, messy, fleeting era where our kids are still actual babies and somehow also full grown people with opinions and moods and better social calendars than most of us.

Preschool is, where they run wild in sparkle boots and superhero capes.  Negotiate snack trades. Collect treasure, AKA sparkly beads from the sandbox. And roll around on the ground like puppies because happiness is their default mode.

I hope every family can look back on these preschool days and feel deep gratitude for their preschool experience. No school is perfect, but when you find a gold nugget, you hold it tight and just sit back and watch its oiled machine turn brightly.

Let's pause to say out loud, preschool teachers are saints in sneakers and cute sweaters. Drying tears, flushing tiny toilets and opening their arms for a hug, keeping our kids' hearts warm and open, soft and seen. They lead circle time like monarchs. Everyone gets a turn, can have a say and even a hairstyling sesh if they choose. And when you drop your kid off 45 minutes late because of a cereal meltdown or a missing stuffy that simply had to come in the car, but you just could not find anywhere, and then finally found it under a pile of dirty clothes, that sort of thing, 45 minutes late, no problem.

You still get a "good morning!" From the staff. Like tardiness is a rite of passage. Hair's a mess? Two different shoes? Wearing a full on frozen two Elsa costume on a random Tuesday? Of course, nothing to see here. Preschool morning drop off is a thing and I miss it. I don't think I ever got back in my car without feeling something deeply. Something happy, sweet, hard, hilarious. On the yard, as you drop their backpack in a pile of metallic colors and embroidered names and initials, Many mornings their whole bodies squeeze into your legs like a butterfly trying to squeeze back into a cocoon.

Other mornings you easily let go of that tiny hand. You watch tiny reunions. Teacher hugs. Dramatic gasps at new shoes, ouchie band-aids, or a sparkly rock pulled out of a backpack. These friendships, tiny and strong, are real. Messy and miniature. And a little bit sticky, but so real. You're watching their first best friends. Their first play by the rules arguments, their first, "we're playing cats. Do you wanna play too?" Moments unfold in real time and somehow that makes the apple slice meltdown totally worth it.

And soon this little window of time ends and you realize that it wasn't about your ABCs or your one two threes, or learning how to count to a hundred, or learning how to use the potty, even though those things are very big. Very important. The real stuff, the magic that sticks, that's building their hearts and minds that they will carry with them their entire lives.

All of that stuff happened in the in-between, at home and at school. Overfilled bubble baths, hopping across a bubbling stream in the preschool yard, soggy shoes or wet feet. Imaginary worlds, messy art tables, chaotic bedroom floors. Silk scarves as magical power tokens, rainbow popsicles, splash pads, and gasping at honeybees in the garden.

These are the good old days and somehow, sadly, we know it even when they're happening.

Okay. It's not all magic. I know that. It's not all sparkly rainbow moments. This is the era of tiny, enormous feelings. I've taken 10 pages of notes while watching Dr. Becky at 1:00 AM. I've cursed the name of Gentle Parenting while still trying my best to practice it. I've got a cart full of children's books about bravery and kindness and big emotions.

All the things, by the way, I'm still learning to do as an adult while teaching the tiny human.

But the hard stuff keeps me present. It keeps me awake. It keeps me in this time right now. And I know I'm doing my best and I know that I've got this, but this preschool village, it was a huge part of that confidence in myself.

And that's the thing. Our kids, they're gonna be just fine. We've got them.

This transition into kindergarten or tk. This nostalgia for this tiny sweet time. This ache in my chest. It's mostly about me. It's really my heartbreak. Her heart isn't breaking. It's mine. Our kiddos will go to a new school cry when they feel the shift and then move on.

A brand new school year hits kind of like summer camp. They might whine and cling on day one, but then the moment they meet a new kid who smiles at them just the right way, or giggles in a way that makes them giggle too. Or is wearing a fluffy pink skirt that they like.

Game over, a new season begins.

Kids don't really do goodbyes, do they? It's more like what's next? More play. More people, more fun. They're not bogged down by grief the way we are as adults. Those preschool memories, they'll stay lodged sweetly in their hearts. No closure required.

But moms like me. I'm crying hard. Pandemic moms?

We're definitely not okay and we're definitely not ready. We don't need this. We're still trying to regulate our nervous systems from giving birth in isolation and surviving babyhood on Zoom. Yes, we can laugh about it now. The don't touch anything. Paranoia. The washing of groceries? The hand sanitizer everywhere.

That trauma lives in our bones, whether we realize it or not. This preschool community, it healed me.

Preschool. We connected. In parking lots. And at Duck Ponds. Through fruit cart tantrums where your kid needed that cup of man mango, like it was the last thing on earth that they ever wanted ever. Through bounce house birthday parties. The classroom group chat, which was either popping off with heart emojis and "hey, who wants to go to the park?" Or dead silent and awkward.

Either way, we kept showing up. This was the first real village many of us ever found as parents.

We found teachers, friends, drop off, hugs, familiar faces, tiny voices shouting across the yard. Moms lingering just long enough to say "same."

Preschool is where my village bloomed. It gave me my first real mom friend community.

So here I am counting the weeks until summer blindly registering for camps, smiling through preschool prom planning, and talking about 4-year-old graduation gowns, like it's totally normal.

Preschool graduation means this soft, sparkly, messy, magical chapter is ending, and the next one..

I can't wait to watch my daughter become a full fledged person to hear even more angler fish facts. Watch her analyze friendship dynamics with a bigger vocabulary. Watch her finally just want to wear two shoes that always match. I mean, maybe. Elementary school chaos, here we come, but this part saying goodbye..

Well, I guess the truth is. When something was really this beautiful, you should feel a little wrecked saying goodbye.

And maybe years from now when my daughter smells glue sticks or sees a certain brand of markers, or here's a voice like her teachers laugh.

Maybe she'll remember. Maybe she'll feel it in her body. That was a place I was safe. A place I was loved. A place I grew up. And me, I will remember it all, because just like hers, my heart was all the way in.

This was Notes by Kathy Patalsky.

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