Growing Pains and Kindergarten : HEARTS OF THE CITY: Exploring attitudes and issues behind the news.

The moment has finally come. My baby, the fierce blond who screamed in outrage for much of his first year because he couldn’t walk, is starting kindergarten. Kindergarten. The Big School. Homework. I might as well just hand him the car keys and be done with it.

Needless to say, I’m anticipating this event with all the enthusiasm of my next birthday. Just when I was getting used to the idea of preschool, just when I was getting used to being rejected in favor of the rowdy 4-year-old next door, to reading “Where’s Waldo?” at bedtime instead of “Good Night Moon,” I have to adjust to kindergarten, the ritual end of childhood. “He’s still only 5 years old,” my husband, the level-headed one in the family, says. Hogwash. The kid is leaving us. Doesn’t he get it? Tomorrow it will be the 3-year-old, his sister.

It’s not that I didn’t realize this day was coming, that I’ve been asleep on the job. After all, my son attended preschool for two years. Last June there was a graduation ceremony for the 4-year-olds, complete with diplomas and ribbons and a scratchy well-worn recording of “Pomp and Circumstance.” It was too sweet for words, and my husband and I sat there in the metal folding chairs in the school courtyard along with 200 other dumbfounded parents, our hearts caught in our throats, misty-eyed.

I’ve also been keeping on top of the school situation, which in Los Angeles practically amounts to a full-time occupation. Last year I started looking into public and private schools, poring over test scores, badgering parents who were total strangers about kindergarten teachers, academic philosophies, class size.

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In the end, the onetime public schoolteacher in me won out, and we went with the well-regarded elementary school in our Eagle Rock neighborhood. I was so earnest that when I called the school in January to set up an appointment to visit, the woman in the office practically laughed me off the phone. “Call back in another month,” she said, and hung up.

But choosing a school is a snap, simple and far removed, sort of like practicing Lamaze techniques without actual labor. Showing up the first day is quite another thing, the beginning of letting go. Now I know what parents mean when they offer wistfully--and it is always wistfully--”enjoy them while they’re little, they grow up before you know it.” In fact, I can’t tell you how many people have said that to me in the last week, including the check-out clerk at the market.

Just yesterday, a woman in my office said that to me as we were walking to the parking lot. She was taking her 10-year-old daughter shopping for school clothes after work. When I told her that my son was starting kindergarten, her brow furrowed and she patted my hand. “Ooohhh!” she said, in a tone of great sympathy, as if he were going off to join the Army. As if the psychological trauma weren’t enough, it seems I also have to worry about how he will do in kindergarten, whether we have adequately prepared him. Right here on my desk, for instance, is an article from one of those silly parenting magazines: “Winning at Kindergarten: How You Can Ensure Your Child’s Success.”

“Each year, thousands of academically able kindergartners falter in the classroom, learning far less than their intellectual potential would suggest,” it gravely begins. Suffice to say this “epidemic” of underachievement--as one so-called expert quoted in the piece terms it--is due largely to the ineptitude of parents. As the article goes on, “While your child’s intellectual potential may be a given, her level of motivation and her acquisition of learning skills are very much a product of your influence. “ (Italics mine.)

Unlike his mother and the parenting gurus, my son is having none of this drivel. He’s as excited and unperturbed about this milestone in his young life as he was the day I left him at preschool without so much as a tear.

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The other night before bed, we sat on the patio in the warm summer air, eating chocolate ice cream and talking. Certain this was one of those defining moments of parenthood, I asked him what he’d been thinking about his new school. Like most 5-year-olds when pressed, he said something silly and akin to bathroom humor--which I won’t repeat here. Sensing my disappointment, he then looked up at me with his big gray eyes.

“Well,” he began pensively, “I’m thinking about the new friends I’m going to make, and the toys I’m going to play with.”

“Do you have any questions?”

He thought about it for a second. “No,” he said confidently.

Thank God for his younger sister. She begged to come along this morning as I was taking him to school for his big orientation. When I cheerfully reminded her she was going to get to go to her school next week, she burst into tears. “Don’t wanna go to school!” she wailed.