'Cry like no-one's watching': My story of surviving the first day of Kindy

"I'd prepped the kindy transition perfectly, but it had a flaw: I hadn't prepped myself."

Nobody warns you about the meltdowns you’ll face from the family cry baby on the first day of kindy.

Fine yes, it’s me, I’m the cry baby! I had the meltdown.

But only after I got us all there in one piece.

To ease our worries, in the lead up we focused on preparation. We followed the advice, listened to the podcasts, set the expectations and went over the routines. We met the kindy teacher and even had a fresh haircut!

We were so stressed about the kindy transition, but it went so smoothly.

I mean, I still sobbed in the car afterwards, but I was expecting that.

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RELATED: Transition days from kindy to school are brutal – for me

"The flaw in my kindy plan"

Toddler experts, Big Little Feelings, are always saying ‘give kids lots of notice and let them know what to expect’ so we did.

I explained we’re changing rooms at daycare and will be in the kindy room now. We visited the room, we met his teacher. We talked about kindy daily.

We had pre planned a comfort item in the form of his best friend. I brought the promise of chocolate cake into the mix. What a better way to settle a child into their new routine than with a chocolate cake? (And I don’t want to hear anything against bribing children with cake ok. Bribery is great, it reliably works and is the same thing as ‘reward systems’ without the positive PR.)

The flaw in this plan is that I hadn’t prepped myself.

'Cry like no one's watching!' Image: Angus the Label/TikTok

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"In my defence..."

As women we naturally absorb so much stress and emotion. Always trying to anticipate problems and plan the next move to keep everyone else happy. And just as you’d expect that leads to holding approximately- a metric shit ton of stresS!

And at some point it just has to escape...So for this Mum, this week, it was the first day of kinder.

Look in my defence I made it through the morning routine, we got dressed, did teeth and sunscreen and got in the car mostly uneventfully.

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We walked into the Kindy room. This joint is paradise, we agree. Great toy selection. Fantastic activities that I would never set up. There’s accusations in his eyes ‘you’ve been holding out on me Mum look at all this cool stuff life has to offer. Dunno what kind of shit show you’re running but kinder is a lot better than being at home’ his expression tells me.

After much clinging and tight hugs goodbye his gorgeous kindy teacher scooped him up. I was able to take my other son into his usual daycare room and get myself back out to the car before a  major meltdown.

But who’s going to scoop me up! That was stressful, I’m feeling stressed! And the most humiliating part about it is that when I’m stressed I bloody cry! Always crying. Yeah I’m the family cry baby.

And I suspect like millions of other mums I’m having a private little teary in my car this morning. But in lieu of someone dropping us down next to a soothing little activity, with a piece of chocolate cake, this is all we’ve got.

You know what they say ladies, cry like no one is watching!

Originally published as 'Cry like no-one's watching': My story of surviving the first day of Kindy