Tara Lynn: Getting teary - at a school my rising kindergartner may never even attend

I cried touring a school my child may not even go to.

Let me say that again. I went to tour an elementary school because my four-year-old daughter will enter kindergarten next year. It’s January. School won’t start until August, and I had to fight tears exploding from my eyes.

Ya’ll … what is going on? Sure. I’ll cry on her actual first day of school I’m sure, but this was just a tour for a school she may not even attend! There I was standing in a circle with dozens of other parents and I was an emotional mess. I was completely caught off guard.

Wake schools to hold series of magnet mini fairs for rising kindergartners

I grew up in Chesapeake, Va. Wherever you lived, you had one school that you would go to. But Wake County is a confusing system that we are currently trying to navigate. Do we apply to the magnet school that is just four minutes from our house or stick with our base school, which is also a fantastic magnet school, but wouldn't give us magnet status? At least these are questions somebody can answer for me.

But can anybody help me figure out why I walked into a kindergarten classroom with tears in my eyes and a little boy staring up at this stranger wondering why in the world she was crying in his classroom?

Maybe I just didn’t sleep well and was tired. Maybe I just haven’t cried in a long time or it was just allergies. Or maybe I’m in complete denial that this upcoming transition for our family is going to be exactly that, a transition and that it is OK to be emotional about it.

5 things parents need to know about Wake magnet, year-round school applications

As we’ve watched our neighbors send their kids to kindergarten each year, it’s been exciting and a group effort to encourage the kids and parents. It’s kind of a big deal that you try to make not such a big deal. I watch in anticipation knowing that our turn will be here before we know it, and yes, here it is.

She’s growing up. It really is exciting to see this unique person she is becoming. I’m proud of her. I’m so in love with her. What I have learned though now is that all the talks I have with my husband and myself about her growing up and being her own person and knowing that I have an identity that is not solely dependent on being a mom have simply fooled my brain, but not my heart.