Little boy, you broke my heart today.
We were at your very first classmate birthday party: a bouncy castle in the corner, cake and balloon plates ready on a table, preschooler shrieks echoing bat-like against the walls. You'd been talking about it for weeks. You fidgeted as we put on a shirt and jumper, and zipped ahead of me on your scooter as we walked down to the hall in the sunshine.
You hung onto my hand until two of your friends arrived. They ran off to play without a backward glance at you. You went after them when I prodded you, and came back a minute later, drooping.
'They don't want to play with me', you whispered in my ear. 'I don't think they like me'.
Honestly, it cost as much for me to hear it as it did for you to say it.
And listen, I know you're three, and three-year-old shyness often doesn't last, and three-year-old squabbles definitely don't. By the end of the party you were fine. You won't remember this, though I will. But let me tell you some things, the things I wanted to whisper back and couldn't. Just listen.
You are fantastic. And though you're fantastic, maybe because you're fantastic, you might just spend the next fifteen years feeling too small for your own skin.
Today isn't the last time you'll worry that someone doesn't like you. My love, there are hundreds of halls like this. They will be spaces filled with your peers, and you will walk in and your blood will tingle hot with agony, and your smile will edge towards a manic grimace in your effort to seem normal, likeable, friendly. You might find someone you can sit with. You might not, and crawling into a molehill will seem like the only sensible alternative.
Don't. Resist the molehill. Resist the idea that your worth is measured by your distance from the cool table, or how many people want to play with you on the bouncy castle.
If you end up exaggerating or inventing new characteristics to fit in better, don't beat yourself up for it. We've all done it, because attracting people feels good, and loneliness is so very, very hard. Eventually you'll gently shed the parts that feel less like yourself.
But don't be unkind in your rush to be funny.
Don't exclude because you know how bad exclusion feels, and you'd rather them than you.
Don't compromise anything you believe in because you're afraid of being laughed at.
Perhaps there will be halls that will feel very lonely indeed. If you can, when these come, stand up straight. You are good, and warm, and witty, and any one of those kids would be lucky to know you. You are fantastic. You will find friends that understand you and love you for who you are. I don't mean to minimise the hurt of these moments, because they do hurt. But they don't last. And the self you're building - quiet and kind and flipping glorious - will be yours for a long, long time.
I think there's a power in being the one standing at the edge of the hall. You never really forget what it's like to be ignored, even after you've found your people. One of my biggest, best hopes for you is that you keep looking for those on the peripheries, and draw them in. You'll change everything for them, when you do.
I watched you dancing today during the party games - forgetting your self-consciousness for once, for once, and pumping your little fists in the air - and thought my heart would explode for love of you. My opinion will count for much less than your friends', by the time you read this, but if it helps at all, I will tell you this:
I think you are fantastic. And I've known you the longest, so I should know.
I see you, shy boy. I can't go in front of you and fight your battles, but actually, you know, you don't need me to. May your halls to come be damned.
This post first appeared on Make a Long Story Short, where Rachel writes mostly about toddlers and biscuits. She cannot tell you which one she likes better.
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