A tearful mom who dropped off her kids at kindergarten received the best encouragement from a teacher.
“She was so warm and welcoming,” Tavia Wade, a mother of three in Utah, tells TODAY.com.
Wade shared what happened in a TikTok video: “My daughter’s kindergarten teacher made me cry today ... I’m dropping my girls off for the very first time, they’re twins, it’s all-day kindergarten, emotional.”
According to Wade, one of her daughters’ teachers handed her a package of tissues attached to a note. “I dare you not to cry when I read this,” Wade said in the video.
The note read:
“I give you a little wink and smile as you entered my room today.
For I know how hard it is to leave and know your child must stay.
You’ve been with them for many years now and have been a loving guide.
But now, alas, the time has come to leave them at my side.
Just know that as you drive away and the tears down your cheeks may flow, I’ll love them as I would my own and help them learn and grow.
So please, put your mind at ease and cry those tears no more. For I will love them and take them in when you leave them at my door.”
The note was signed, “Love, Mrs. Durrant.”
“I was immediately ugly crying,” Wade said in the video. “My husband and I couldn’t even lift our heads until we were halfway home ... we were both uncontrollably crying.”
She adds, “That poem is so sweet, it got me deep in the heartstrings and dropping your kids off at school for the first time is really hard and emotional.”
Wade, who also has a 17-month-old daughter, tells TODAY.com that her twin girls were excited to enter kindergarten. Mom, however, was “a ball of nerves.”
“The girls did preschool three days a week for two hours,” says Wade, “so this was definitely a big change and an adjustment.”
Unlike in preschool, Wade’s twins will be in separate kindergarten classes. Wade says when she handed off one daughter to a teacher named Katie Durrant, she handed her the note and tissues, a gift to all incoming parents.
“You try to keep it together for your kid, so I just smiled with my lip quivering,” says Wade.
Katie Durrant tells TODAY.com that she read the poem on the Instagram page of Maddie Ward, a fellow kindergarten teacher in Florida, who tells TODAY.com that she is unaware of the poem's original author.
Durrant, who has a 14-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son, recalls the anxiety she felt when her eldest started kindergarten.
“I followed the school bus!” says Durrant. “I had to see if she made it inside.” The kindergarten transition for her son was easier because he was a student in her class.
Durrant, who is entering her seventh year of teaching kindergarten, knows it’s hard to say goodbye on the first day.
“We wave and blow kisses to parents,” she says. “Most kids are excited but there can be tears (for both).”
Wade says the note made it easier to step away.
“It’s all you hope for as a parent, knowing your kid is in good hands,” says Wade. “I want teachers to know they matter and if you’re a crying mom, you’re not the only one.”
