The unique sweetness of preschoolers
How cruel that nature pairs a human's sweetest phase with their grumpiest
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
This is the sweetest age.
The preschool and kinder years are a time when kids have the unique ability to simply exist and love and be who they are. Their little hearts are always open, always a little bit raw.
With this stage, you get sweetness like this little one is showing here — but you also get the raw hurt, frustration and fear that leads to temper tantrums and moments that I often slip and call “dramatic”. They become afraid of things that make no sense to us, things they were never afraid of before, and typically they do not try to hide or mask those big feelings at all.
Once I connected the open sweetness like this perfect little gal in the video is displaying with the open frustration and feelings we often call “bad”, I was better able to be patient with my kids during tantrums and panicked moments. While I’m far from perfect (cough, cough, very far), I’m trying to be more patient, open and compassionate.
Someone once said to me, “no rain, no rose”, and it has stuck with me. There’s a night for every day, rain for every bloom, and a sad/bad/mad feeling for every bit of joy.
My oldest child is about to become an adult, and his life has put in perspective how true it is that the time goes quickly. Slow days, fast years. Long weeks, short decades. Each of these cliches feels so true.
Over time, these big reactions settle down — but so do these incredible sweet moments. If you’re up for it, join me in trying to appreciate all aspects of the openness of our little ones, even when it’s challenging.
Hopefully you’ll also join me in accepting ourselves as good parents even when we fail to appreciate the tantrum in the middle of the frozen foods section that happens every. single. week. when we say they cannot buy yet another box of popsicles.
No rain, no rose. That goes for us, too.
