Pre-School

| Surviving the Emotional Rollercoaster of Sending my Toddler to Pre-School |

The time has come for my first baby to go to pre-school.

Such a bitter sweet thing really.

I’ve spent the last three years and eleven months adamant that MY child will never go to a day care.

Yes, I have been that snobby mother up until now. There’s just too many day-care horror stories out there! I never wanted to subject my daughter to the billions of different strains of germs floating about at a day-care centre or the bad habits and behaviours of the other children. Or the mistakes and assumptions of teachers, the bullying of others or the blatent horrible things that sick people do to innocent children.

And quite frankly, I didn’t need too. I am privileged enough to work alongside my husband running the business and my job is to handle all of the online work which isn’t so much, so I’ve been free to tend to my daughters every need on my own. Luckily, because even though I have a lot of beautiful, loving and present family members, they all have lives of their own and so the ‘village’ so to speak; doesn’t exist.

My daughter is one that they would call; strong willed and has kept me on my toes for the most part including many (mostly) sleepless nights. She’s a dare-devil, fast learner, stubborn, head-strong kinda gal, and we love that about her.

This also means that I often found myself wondering; how will anyone else be able to handle her?

I have enjoyed spending my days with her, teaching her things, painting, baking, snuggling up to movies, going for walks and the cute little ‘mummy and me’ dates. She’s been my best friend for the last almost four years.

And she has taught me so much too! The many, many trials of how to be a parent. How to love unconditionally. How to tune into my intuition and make decisions you would never have thought about before. And patience (which I haven’t quite yet mastered) just to name a few.

The arrival of my second baby has meant I need to level up my parenting game, and quick.

Although she absolutely adores her baby brother; it has been quite the adjustment for my daughter, having to now share the amount of attention she gets with her baby brother. Or with anyone really.

My husband and I have found that we both cannot do anything without some un-impressive behaviours erupting. And by ‘anything’ I mean we can’t even talk to one another in the same room as her without her doing everything in her power to shift the attention back on herself.

Now, I know that I can not talk on the phone without her acting out and interrupting four hundred and sixty times no matter how many times she is warned or told to go play quietly while I’m talking. So, when I had to have a zoom meeting recently; I decided to include her and sit in her bedroom just the two of us so she could talk too.

Well that went down well.. not!

She was quite literally bouncing off the walls, laughing and screaming shrills of delight as she got on every single nerve I had left. She even took the pillows out of their cases and got herself inside them and proceeded to roll around on the bed until I just couldn’t take anymore and had to have my husband remove her.

After my zoom call which actually ended up being a phone call because technology was not on our side that day, I was left feeling exhausted and depleted. One; because I have social anxiety and it took me an above-average amount of time to hype myself up for it and two; because my daughter had ended up sucking the life out of me in the time frame of the call.

Not the first time I have been feeling this way lately. And every time I collapse with the overwhelm of motherhood I’m faced with the ‘day-care talk’ despite it being a very clear boundary I’ve held this whole time.

Although, I have had many faults about it, at this stage of her life; it’s what she needs and what she craves! It’s time for me to let my guard down and trust someone else to take good care of her while she navigates making her own friends and frolics around expending all her energy.

She will benefit from activities that I just don’t have time or energy for anymore.

Next year she will have to go to school anyway so it will be a good introduction and practice run to spend a year in pre-school to get her ready, but am I ready? My mental health is, I can say that much.

And now I will have a chance to spend one on one quality time with my son, the same way she got to experience me and that soothes some of the mum-guilt.

My girl is growing up. She’s about to encounter a world of dirt, germs and bullies. Learn right from wrong by watching her peers and getting caught up in the nonsense.. and discover a whole new world without mummy or daddy holding her hand.

There’s going to be mess, and tricky conversations. There’s going to be illness and tears. There’s inevitably going to be sand. Everywhere…

But there will also be my girl, growing and flourishing into a little lady, making friendships of her own, bringing home artwork she has made and discussing stories she’s been dying to tell us!

There is going to be time for me to miss her and days for me to be excited to see her face light up when I pick her up!

I’m getting teary just thinking about it, but the time has come.

My baby is going to pre-school.

Excuse me while I pool into a giant puddle of tears.

Sobbing; Trina x