Paragon Prep in Austin, TX

Dear Paragon Parents,

Do you remember what it felt like to be new?

A new school. A new job. A new team. Maybe even a new city. Do you remember walking into a room where everyone else seemed to know where to sit, who to talk to, what to do– and wondering if you would ever feel like you belonged there?

I’ve been thinking about that this week.

When we’re young, we’re constantly being asked to do things that are uncomfortable. Walk into the classroom. Join the team. Sit with someone new. Learn the instrument. Speak in front of the class. Go back tomorrow even though today wasn’t great.

And as adults, we usually tell children some version of the same thing: Keep going. Give it time. You can do hard things.

But I’ve been wondering– how do we actually learn the difference between something that is hard because we’re growing and something that simply isn’t right for us?

How long do you stay uncomfortable before uncomfortable becomes comfortable? When does perseverance build resilience, and when is walking away actually the braver choice? Looking back at the uncomfortable seasons of your own childhood, which ones are you grateful someone made you stick with? Which ones do you wish someone had given you permission to leave?

I don’t know that I have a neat answer this week. Maybe this is just a week of questions.

What I do know is that childhood gives us hundreds of small opportunities to practice. Sometimes our children need us to scoop them up. Sometimes they need us to change something. And sometimes they need us to stand just far enough away that they can discover, I thought I couldn’t do this–and then I did.

Maybe our job isn’t always to remove the hard or insist they push through it.

Maybe it’s to stay close enough to help them figure out which kind of hard this is. And perhaps that’s something we’re all still learning.

With lots of questions and plenty of hope,

Lindsay Hay, M.Ed.

Head of School