Montessori Dad with J.D. Murgolo

There's a moment, and if you're a parent, you've felt it, when you realize your child no longer reaches for your hand the same way. They still reach. But differently. Steadier. Like they already know the ground beneath them.

What we explore in this entry:
  • The quiet grief of watching your child grow up too fast and why that feeling is worth sitting with
  • How Montessori independence isn't about doing it alone, it's about trusting the environment you've built
  • Letting go as an act of love, not detachment, for intentional dads navigating each new stage
  • Perspective, impermanence, and parenting toddlers (and kids of every age) with presence
  • How respectful parenting prepares kids for the world, without rushing them toward it

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This episode is part of Montessori Dad, produced by Story House. We believe story is a tool for meaning-making, not just performance.
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Creators and Guests

Host
J.D. Murgolo
Founder of Story House

What is Montessori Dad with J.D. Murgolo?

What would it look like to parent on purpose? Montessori Dad Podcast with J.D. Murgolo is a respectful parenting podcast for fathers navigating the beautiful chaos of raising kids. Each episode explores Montessori principles, emotional intelligence, and conscious fatherhood — so you can show up for your kids in a way that actually feels like you.

Entry #73: The Hands That Hold, and Let Go
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Every story begins somewhere. This one begins with Storyhouse Studios.

Hey, I'm JD and this is the Montessori dad, a journal style podcast where I reflect on Montessori parenting, emotional growth, and the quiet lessons my kids teach me along the way, it's for every parent learning to grow alongside their child. Welcome to another entry, and thanks for pressing play.

There's a particular kind of grief that doesn't come from endings, it comes from growth. From watching something change exactly the way it's supposed to and realizing that the version you loved yesterday won't return tomorrow. Parenting is full of these small departures, not dramatic goodbyes, just subtle shifts.

Arms that don't wrap the same way. Hands that don't reach us as often. Voices that sound a little more certain. This entry lives in that space between holding and letting go.

Hey kiddos, it's dad. I've been thinking about your arms lately, not in the way you think, not in the scraped knee. Reach for me kind of way. More in the quiet, noticing way, the way your bodies feel different when I pick you up. Now, heavier, yes, but also longer. Your legs hanging lower against my sides. Your shoulder is sitting higher on my chest than they used to.

There was a time not that long ago, really, when you fit into the curve of me, like you were designed for it. Your head tucked under my chin, your breath sinking with mine. Without effort, I didn't have to adjust. I didn't have to think about how to hold you. Now, when I scoop you up, I feel myself bracing a little, shifting my stance.

You don't mold the same way anymore. You perch, you clinging for a second, and then you're already pushing away to get back down. And I understand it. I do. You're supposed to grow. You are supposed to move outward to stretch into your own shape, to need my arms less, because your legs are strong and your ideas are forming, and your world is widening beyond the walls of this house.

I still, there's a quiet ache in it. Not dramatic, not desperate, just a steady hum under the surface of things. Sometimes I watch it. You play across the room and I can feel the distance expanding in ways that have nothing to do with physical space. You're deep in your own stories now. Negotiating rules, building alliances, , holding your own opinions about how something should go.

There are moments when you don't look for me before deciding something. You don't scan the room to see if I'm watching you just act. And to be honest, I'm proud of that. Fiercely proud. But there's a flicker of something else too. A recognition that the version of you who reached instinctively from my hand without thinking is already becoming memory.

The other night, one of you was so upset about something small, maybe a block tower, falling a cup, it wasn't the right color, that kind of thing in the scale of adult life feels almost invisible. And I felt that urge rise in me, the one that wants to say, it's okay, this won't matter. You're little. Just enjoy it.

Don't waste this time being upset as if childhood is a limited resource. You might accidentally squander as if fun is something I can schedule and protect and insist upon, but I caught myself because what right do I have to press any bit of my awareness of time onto you? You don't feel the clock the way I do.

You aren't standing outside your own life measuring it against what's coming next. You aren't tallying up how many times you'll fit in my arms or how many more summers will feel endless. You're inside the moment completely. If the tower falls, that's the world ending. If the cup is wrong, that's real disappointment.

If something feels unfair, it burns bright and hot and immediate and maybe that intensity. The very thing that tempts me to pull you toward perspective is part of what makes childhood what it is. I don't wanna rush you. Not toward experiences, not toward milestones, not towards some imaginary checklist of fun.

We have to complete before time runs out, and then I yet I feel time running away. It shows up in the way your shoes suddenly don't fit in the way your words are more complex than they were a few months ago in the way you can both climb into your car seats without help. Now I can see your independence blooming and I wanna water it.

I want to stand back and watch it grow tall, but I also wanna freeze it just a little to hold onto the version of you who still curls into my side on the couch. Who still ask to be carried, even though you can walk, who still believes that? I know most of the answers. There's grief in loving something that is designed to change, not because the change is bad, but because every new version means a previous one is gone.

Sometimes I wonder if you can feel my awareness hovering if when you're upset about something small, you sense me holding the bigger picture in my mind, the knowledge that this stage is fleeting. That one day you'll look back and barely remember the block tower, the wrong cup. I hope you don't feel that pressure.

I hope you feel allowed. Be fully loudly, messily young to cry over small things to laugh, too hard to stomp your feet to forget perspective. There will be plenty of time for perspective later. There will be years when you understand how quickly things move. When you look at someone smaller than you and feel that same strange ache of watching them grow away from your arms, for now, I'm trying to practice something quieter, not freezing you in place, not pushing you forward, just standing near you as you move.

Letting your independence bloom without interrupting it as loss. Letting your intensity exist without trying to smooth it into something more reasonable. Letting your growth be what it is. Steady and unstoppable and beautiful. I don't want you to rush toward the world, and I don't want you to rush through this.

I want you to breathe in your own time, to live inside your own seasons, to be children without knowing how brief that word can feel from this side of it. I'll keep holding you when you let me and when you don't, I'll stand close enough that you can step back into my arms if you want. Not to keep you small, just to remember how it feels.

I love you both so much. Dad.

Montessori speaks often about independence, but not as separation. Independence in this framework is the natural unfolding of a child who feels secure. Children move outward when they feel safe, you stretch away. When they trust the ground beneath them, they release a hand when they know it'll be there.

If needed. We sometimes mistake this outward movement is distance, but it's not abandonment, it's growth. The adult's role isn't a cling and it isn't a rush. It's to prepare an environment steady enough that the child can move freely and a presence steady enough. That returning is always possible.

Holding and letting go are not opposites. They're a rhythm.

This entry showed me something about my own relationship with time. My children are not aware of the fleeting nature of childhood. They're inside it fully. The egg belongs to me. It's the ache of perspective of knowing what they cannot know yet. Hm. But perspective, if I'm not careful, can become pressure.

It can turn small disappointments into something they're not meant to carry. It can whisper. Don't waste this. It can crowd out the purity of the moment. I don't want to press my awareness onto them. I don't wanna wrap their intensity and my nostalgia. I want to let them be young without commentary, and I want to practice loving without freezing.

'cause growth is not theft. It's not something being taken from me. It's something being built within them. And my role isn't to stop it. It's to stand near it.

There will come a day when my arms don't lift you at all. Not because they don't want to, but because you won't need them in the same way, and that day isn't here and it doesn't need to be for now. I'll keep holding you when you reach. I keep standing close. When you step away, I'll let growth happen without turning it into grief.

The hands that hold are the same hands that learn to let go, and maybe that's what love looks like over time.

Thanks for listening to the Montessori. Dad, if today's reflections stay with you, I hope you find one small moment to pause and notice the quiet ways your child is teaching you too. This journey isn't about perfection, it's about presence, patience, and growing together.

Until next time, keep learning, keep breathing, and keep growing alongside your child.