I’m Younger Than Most Parents at the School Gate. Here’s What I’m Proud of Anyway.
The kindergarten doors open at 3:15, and I always try to arrive a little early, not because I’m eager, but because I want to find a spot on the wall that isn’t the main crowd. I stand there with the stroller, watching the other moms and dads scroll through their phones or chat about soccer practice. Today, a woman in a nice wool coat smiled at me and asked, “Is your little one in the morning class or the afternoon class?” I pointed toward the line where I could see my daughter’s orange jacket. “Oh, who are you picking up?” she said. “A niece?” I said, “My daughter.”
She didn’t mean any harm. The word “niece” is just what people say when you look too young to be someone’s mother. I’m twenty-four. I also look twenty. I was nineteen when my daughter was born, which makes me younger than most of the parents here by a good ten years, sometimes more. Some of them have been married longer than I’ve been an adult. It used to bother me, the way people’s eyes would flick to my left hand, then down to the stroller, then back to my face, like they were trying to solve a puzzle.
But I’m proud, too. That’s the part I don’t always know how to say. I’m proud of this specific, particular, fierce little girl with the curly hair who runs at me and yells “Mama!” in a voice loud enough to stop traffic. I’m proud of the fact that we get here at all, every single day, with matching shoes and brushed teeth and a snack in her backpack that I made the night before.
The odd thing is, I think my daughter became so confident because I was so worried at the beginning.
When she was tiny, I spent a lot of nights crying in the bathroom, absolutely convinced I was going to ruin her. I didn’t have a routine or a career or any of the things the parenting books assumed I had. I couldn’t afford a baby class, so we just sat on the floor of our apartment and played with plastic cups. I would say, “Look, red cup. Red. Can you give Mama the red cup?” and she’d stare at me like I was insane. But we did that. Every day. For months.
Now I sit on the same floor with her doing her phonics worksheets. The other day she got frustrated because she kept writing the letter “g” backwards. She pushed the paper away and crossed her arms. That used to throw me, the anger. But I’ve learned that when her jaw gets tight like that, it means she’s scared of failing. I said, “That looks like a tricky one, huh? Let’s see the backwards g. It’s kind of funny-looking, like a little fish with its mouth open. Give it a new mouth.” She looked at it and giggled, and then she wrote it again the right way.
That phrase, “Give it a new mouth,” is something I started saying when she was three and she would get furious trying to put on her own socks. I realised I couldn’t fix every frustration for her, but I could show her that frustration has a next step. My mom never did that for me. She did everything for me, actually, so I never learned that I could fix things with my own hands. I wanted to give my daughter the thing I didn’t have: a sense that no matter how stuck she feels, there is a move she can make.
Her teacher told me at the parent-teacher conference that she’s “persistent.” That word nearly made me cry. The teacher said, “When she can’t figure out a puzzle, she just says, ‘We need a new plan.’ And then she tries something different. It’s quite advanced for a five-year-old.” That’s my line. That’s what I say to her when I’m tired from my late shift and she is tired from the day and we’re both grumpy over dinner.
We have this little ritual now to help us both work. I’m taking my GED and hoping to do a nursing degree eventually. I can’t study at night after work, so instead we do what I call “Grown-up School” and “Kid School” at the kitchen table. I have a timer. I set it for twenty minutes. I take out my notebook, and she takes out her coloring book, and we both “work.” If she asks a question, I say, “That’s a good question. Save it for the break.” At first, that felt mean. But something shifted. She started to see that I was also doing something hard, not just telling her hard things to do. Sometimes she sees me staring at my math problems, and she says, “Are you doing a trick one, Mama?” I say yes, and she nods, very seriously, like we’re in this together.
I’m not writing this to say that being a young parent is some kind of advantage. I have zero desire to glamorize having a kid at nineteen. There are days when I’m exhausted all the way down to my bones, and I feel incredibly embarrassed that I can’t answer the other parents when they talk about 401(k)s and school districts. I don’t have a house. We live in a small two-bedroom apartment near the gas station, and my daughter has a bunk bed she doesn’t even climb up on. But I have noticed something: when you live a little closer to the struggle, you have nowhere to hide. My daughter sees me work hard, but she also sees me mess up. I multiply numbers wrong. I spill my coffee. I get a low grade on a practice test and I say, “Ugh, again,” right in front of her. And then I pick up my pencil and try again. That is the only thing I’m trying to model. That she doesn’t have to be perfect. She just has to believe there’s always a next move.
Last week, I was pulling into the school parking lot and a woman from the next class over stopped me. She said, “Are you the mother of the little girl with the orange jacket?” I braced myself for a complaint, because I know what some of them think. But she said, “My son comes home talking about her. He says she’s the funniest kid in the class.” She paused, then said, “You’re young. I remember that. It gets easier, but also, hold onto this. You’re doing okay.”
It was such a small thing. I know she didn’t mean it to be important. But I thought about that moment for the rest of the day.
There are still plenty of times when I feel out of place. Next year is kindergarten graduation, and I’ll be twenty-five, standing in the folding chairs, probably getting confused for her big sister again. I don’t know what the next few years will look like for us—maybe nursing school will work out, maybe it’ll take longer, maybe I’ll fail that one anatomy exam for the third time. But when I watch her lean over her paper, tongue sticking out, drawing that letter “g” with intense concentration and pride, I know we’re not doing this wrong. We’re doing it our way. That’s enough for now.
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