An Open Letter To My Daughter - 2

Dear Daughter,

The day you started your new Montessori School or "Office" as you like to call it, was a big day for you and significantly bigger for me! As you enter your office in the morning and I am left standing outside the door waving bye excitedly while waiting for you to respond, I feel like an intruder. Your office is such an engrossing space that the moment you are greeted by your colleagues, you totally forget about me. This particular act of yours is a sheer joy when I talk about your school to other people and is so comforting when I think about you later but every morning when I am in that very moment, I feel so left out of your life.
As you grow each day and gain new skills to do things independently like bathing, using the toilet, eating, dressing yourself, buckling the car seat, bringing your clothes to the laundry room, waking up, making a sandwich and many many more, I swell with pride at my parenting skills and I say to myself "I must be doing something right". There was a time when I had to prop your mouth open in order for you to get started with the feeding and now every act of yours is prefixed with "No, don't do it for me, I will do it all by myself". I am finding it very difficult to come to terms with these times when you do not need me as much. I might get into a tug of war with you at times to do things for you to satisfy the mother in me. I am much older than you are but the mother part of me is just your age. She was born with you and that is the reason that your mother sometimes doesn't act the way you expect her to. While I am there to help you with the setbacks and the failures, there is really no one with her. She will grow but at a much slower pace than you are. All this is very new to her, she is just so used to being indispensable in your life!