I am... I mean my son is in preschool!

I'd heard of moms crying after their kids went to school for the first time. I'd heard of parents feeling stressed about the busy schedule of school being added to the family. But I didn't expect to feel like I was the preschooler.

On the first day of school, the teachers had the class pet on the rug for circle time and Nathan barely heard me say goodbye before he was drawn to the rug with his new classmates. There were no tears; however, I was almost in tears yesterday after picking Nathan up from school at the end of his second week. I think it was because I was not expecting my own transition into a new time where other adults have a fair amount of input into my child's development and suggestions for my role as a parent.

I was left surprised and speechless when one of Nathan's teachers instructed me on 2 specific ways to interact with him at pick-up time and described several parenting skills to work on outside of school. Upon reflection, I think they were all good suggestions; I was simply not expecting that I would be the one learning new skills in preschool. While I was hearing the directions and suggestions, I had a flood of explanations and reasons and opinions swirling through my head, but my pre-schooler self just stared at the teacher, unable to find any words for my thoughts. Frozen. As I was walking out of the building, my teenage self wanted to yell and start a debate... but my mom-of-school-age-children self, that is new and fragile and still forming, managed to say, "wait."

It's my mom-of-school-age-children self that seems to know that learning new ways to be a mom at school and even discovering parenting skills will only help me. It does not mean I am a student like the other 3 year olds in the room, it just feels that way because this new self is so young and still taking shape. In some ways I am a student in this preschool class, we're all learning how to grow up just a little more.