They say you learn everything you need to know in preschool, but I never learned this things until I became a parent, so I cry foul.

1. There is so much homework!  I don’t know if these preschool teachers know, but I was all ready to savor a final year of no homework before my child starts real school, but here I am, saddled with homework and math projects and ugh like could we not?!  Sometimes it feels like preschool teachers think I need to spend more time with my child, and they aren’t technically wrong, it’s just that, I have a full-time job, and spending time together doing homework isn’t my idea of quality time with what time we have.  So, confession, I……just let ’em skip it a lot. I’m like, meh, there are no GRADES here, you’re four!
2. Letting your impressionable young child watch Peppa Pig and Puffin Rock = your impressionable child will develop British/Scottish accents for some words, and it will be impossibly cute, but also perplexing until you realize where these words are coming from.  But also, at least they’re not naughty words! So I’ll take it as a win overall, even if it is a dead giveaway that yes, my kid has screen time.
3. They never stop eating!  Ever! At all! Snacks! SNACKS!  THERE MUST BE SNACKS!
4. Preschool will do this “special kid” week in which they get to lug around a special class stuffed animal on “adventures” and all you can think is, I hope the kid who had it the week before wasn’t sneezing on it day and night and oh no we’re all sick again!
5. Sometimes you’ll think they’re getting so big, your heart just bursts, because you see in them a glimmer of who they’re going to be when they’re all grown up, and you want to stop time and make everything freeze in place, just shut everyone up in a snowglobe where they stay exactly as they are, beaming and gap-toothed and perfect, and then the snow globe gets shaken up and they’re having a foot-stomping temper tantrum in the blink of an eye, and you wonder why you ever wanted to pause this age, and then they’re back to being a DELIGHT and you’re like, softly singing melancholy Joni Mitchell in your head, dreamily sadly singing about the painted ponies going up and down on the carousel of time…

Yeah, turns out there might be moments of ridiculousness (looking at YOU, Penelope the Peacock stuffed animal who had to have her photo taken doing all sorts of activities for the preschool project, like I don’t take enough photos of my kids just doing their thing, you have to make me post a stuffed animal all over the dingdang park)…there are moments of joy too.  In fact, most of them are the joy. Only some of them are the questionably sanitary stuffed peacock being taken to bed anyway, because by bedtime, you’re just worn down enough not to care.