How Preschool is Teaching Me to Be A Grown Up

By Diane Clehane

Now that kids are back to school (and those dreadfully inconvenient abbreviated days have come to close), the majority of moms I know are still in a period of adjustment. While kids’ and (most) dads’ lives have gone back to normal, mothers are faced with a host of changes that usually take most of the year to get used to.

Whether a woman is a “stay-at-home mom” (a term I find ridiculous because, as most moms will tell you, if you’re parenting 24/7 you’re rarely at home) or a working mom (another misnomer since everyone with kids ‘works’), each school year brings its own set of unique challenges that, once conquered, are replaced by new ones.

While I was waiting for my daughter’s one-hour first day of preschool class to let out today, I sat with another mom who was manning her iPhone like a general going into battle with an oversized calendar spread out before her. She was penciling in all her kids’ activities for the fall while calling the people that hadn’t bothered to RSVP to her daughter’s birthday party this Saturday. In between that, she was scheduling doctor’s visits for the family and an appointment for a haircut for her husband. (That’s love!) It was only when she finally hung up that she realized she’d forgotten to make a time to get her color touched up. When I told her I was just trying to figure how I was going to get my (day) job done this week because of the shortened class schedule, she remarked, “I gave up on trying to keep a job long ago. Who would keep track of all this?” Indeed.

Just yesterday, I received an invitation to attend a luncheon-slash-brainstorming session at the offices of the media company who hires me to write a weekly blog on Manhattan’s glitterati. I was so relieved that I was finally going to be able to make it to something there since I’ve had to beg off from the last three events they’ve had due to a variety of reasons all related to child care. Then, this morning I learned that my daughter’s class will be going apple picking on that very day and if you can’t attend with your child, there will be no classes. Apple picking it is.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the time I’ve spent with my daughter instead of working over the past few years. As someone who thought nothing of regularly working 12-hour days four days out of five most weeks and at least a few weekends a month, it’s been a very, very difficult transition. I have always largely defined myself by my work. Sure, I had to work to making a living, but I always worked because it was at the center of my life.

Now that I’ve been a mother for four years, all of that has changed dramatically and I would have been the last one to predict there was even a remote chance of this happening.

But it has.

When we first came home with my daughter from China and she was just a baby, I really struggled with trying to “do it all.” (Whoever first tried to perpetrate that concept on American women should be boiled in oil). I wound up hiring babysitters who, at times, made more than I did in a week, in order to try to keep up with everything. No one was happy – especially me. That went on for two years.

Then, my daughter entered preschool and I found I was able to do a bit more work. Still, I always wanted to be a part of activities at school so I’d be there for her. I’ve since figured out I was scaling back more for myself than my daughter because I loved being the “class mother” who came in to read favorite childhood books to a group of enthralled three-year-olds. I wouldn’t have missed making and serving cupcakes for the class’s St. Patrick’s and Chinese New Year celebrations for the world.

This year has been the most illuminating. In many ways I’ve been fortunate as the economic downturn has coincided nicely with my desire to spend more time with her. Over the course of this year, I have seen many people that I know have their professional lives diminished in so many ways – lost jobs, reduced salaries and consultant fees, additional responsibilities for no pay, and the realization that things aren’t likely to be “the way they used to be” any time soon, if ever. Personally, as a member of the media, I have had to face the fact that print journalism is, at best, undergoing a sea change that will forever alter the business and how it’s done and, at worst, is going the way of the horse and buggy.

For me, this has meant making choices that used to be tough but are getting easier. It seems I am finally embracing my husband’s advice about really thinking about whether or not it’s actually worth it to do a job from a financial and personal standpoint. There will be no more bemoaning the fact that I want to do this assignment or that job but can’t for whatever reason. Things are what they are. I can’t change them. The only thing I can do is how I choose to react to them. I am no longer ambivalent about saying that a lot of the time, it’s not. It just doesn’t make sense anymore to turn myself inside out to do a job that barely covers the cost of child care and miss out on these fleeting childhood years.

My daughter is in her last year of preschool. Next year, she goes to kindergarten and, in many ways, I’ll be losing her to the world. A good friend of mine whose daughter is one of my daughter’s BFFs and who has a seven-year-old son, agrees. “Once they’re in school for real it’s different. They don’t need you the same way.”

Today, watching the children file in from the playground and witnessing the joy on my daughter’s face as she caught my eye in the crowd, was a revelation. This is where I want to be. I don’t want anyone else to be the recipient of the hugs and kisses that I got this morning.

So, while I adjust to this year’s head-spinning schedule that includes swim lessons, class trips, birthday parties, and play dates, I am enjoying these last sweet months of toddlerhood with my daughter. And I’m not going to feel guilty about anything. I am focused on the here and now and vowing to enjoy every minute of it. I’m not projecting into the future and how kindergarten will once again shuffle the deck and change everything next year. I’m not regretting the past years of the work I missed and the opportunities I didn’t pursue.

This is where I’m supposed to be right now. It’s only the first week of school, but I feel like I’m finally starting to learn the most important lesson of all.