My 6-Year-Old Handed Me A 9-Word Note. When I Read It, My Stomach Dropped.

<div class="content-list-component text"><p>It was a typical Wednesday evening. The kids had just gotten home, and we were deep in the post-school vortex of homework, playtime, screen time, and the daily exchange where parents beg for any crumb of information about their children’s day.</p><p>I was cleaning up while the kids coloured at the dining table. The iPads hummed in the background with some combination of Zombies and YouTube Kids.</p><p>Then my daughter Millie padded over, holding something behind her back, and handed it to me.</p><p>My stomach dropped before as I made sense of the blocky first-grade letters my six-year-old had pencilled onto an index card.</p><p>“I am sad and I do not know why.”</p><p>I marvelled at her handwriting and how much she had already learned in first grade. She looked up at me with wide brown eyes. Expecting... what? Answers?</p><p>I froze. Was this a moment? Was this the beginning of something bigger – childhood depression, anxiety, a shadow forming in the shape of mental health issues?</p><p>I panicked and did what mothers do when we have no clue how to hold something so heavy – we turn to snacks. I told her I’d be right back, ducked into the kitchen, and stared into the cabinet. </p><p>That’s when it hit me: the weight of this moment wasn’t hers, it was mine. Millie wasn’t panicked. She knew about feelings – we have plenty of books about them on our bookshelves. There’s the Little Feminist Book Clubs’ <a href="https://littlefeminist.com/product/little-faces-big-feelings/?srsltid=AfmBOorwYt3mOX5JnvbjEzTw-EWEARu52DPEplr_eqf9cks7sJBTKAL4">Little Faces Big Feelings, which shows us </a>what emotions feel like.<em></em>The Color Monster teaches us almost nightly what to do when our feelings get all jumbled up.</p><p>And we’ve talked about feelings before, of course:</p&