Tots and Tassels

Wielding cameras and camcorders, the parents crowded near the stage like ravenous paparazzi, eager to capture the morning’s celebrities: their small children, the preschool graduates at Children’s World Preschool in Westminster.

Accompanied by patriotic music and clad in white gowns and blue caps, the 24 children filed up the stage steps and took their small seats side by side in the back patio.

Some kids yawned, some smiled, others frowned. One girl cried until she was later given her diploma, which featured drawings of birds and children planting flowers, and certified she had completed her “preschool course of study.”

Another girl tried to bite her tassel. But all of them were ready to sing children’s songs, eat cake, and enter the big world of elementary school.

Whether you call it a charming new ritual or an attempt by overzealous adults to make high drama of every step their tiny children take, graduations have caught on big in preschools and kindergartens. Some are simple affairs with slippery cardboard mortarboards the kids have fashioned themselves; others are as elaborate as most high school ceremonies--and just about as expensive.

Rhyme University, a San Pedro mail-order business, is devoted solely to selling miniature caps, gowns, tassels, diplomas, graduation invitations--even one size fits all seal rings. Its fancy cloth cap and gown set runs for $14.50. Cardboard caps are equipped with chin straps to stay steady even on hyper children’s heads.

Childhood education experts say such ceremonies can be a delight to both children and parents, as long as they aren’t too strict or formal.

The experience can be overly stressful on kids if it’s a source of pressure and they’re expected to perform, said Dr. Sharon Milburn, assistant professor of child and adolescent studies at Cal State Fullerton.

“One school I observed also had a formal dance and the children waltzed. I think that’s pushing the bounds of reasonable child behavior,” she said.

But Milburn is all in favor of celebrations that make children feel special.

“It’s valuable if there are treasured memories for the kids,” said Milburn.

The Head Start program in Santa Ana generally frowns on cap and gown ceremonies, considering them inappropriate for children, said deputy executive director Ana Jacquette. Instead, teachers are encouraged to take their students on field trips or organize classroom celebrations, she said.

“A formal graduation can be a long ceremony, really for the parents, and the child doesn’t really understand it,” said Jacquette. “We see it more as a passage of going to kindergarten, just the beginning. . . . We want to celebrate their bright futures.”

Stephanie Glowacki, a deputy director at the National Association for the Education of Young Children in Washington echoed that sentiment.

“It’s an unusual event” for small kids, she said about cap and gown ceremonies. “I’m not sure they understand what a graduation is. At best they can equate it to a birthday party.”

Yet Jacquette acknowledged that parents tend to favor caps and gowns. Sometimes if a majority of moms and dads whose kids are in a Head Start class want them, a ceremony with just caps is provided, she said.

At A Child’s Place preschool in Costa Mesa, an event that gives blue ribbons to all the kids is held in place of a formal graduation, said owner Patti Smith. Children also put on a dance recital and make their own cardboard caps, which they all get to sign and keep, she said.

“It’s hard to graduate already when they’re only five,” said Smith.

Yet, at the Children’s World ceremony, parents thoroughly enjoyed the more formal affair. They gleefully watched their kids singing, prancing and clutching American flags in graduation garb. The school purchased the complete outfits and let the children keep the caps.

Only minutes after taping his 5-year-old daughter, Vu Le was already watching footage of her on the small screen of his camcorder. Priscilla was his third child to graduate from the school and he has tapes of all of their ceremonies, he said.

“I want to keep a souvenir for each of them. When they get older, they’ll have something to look back to,” said Le, 44, of Long Beach.

After the graduation, Brandon Heer, 4, relaxed while throwing play putty at a wall.

“It was cool,” he summed up the experience, then sat to talk with his dad.

During the ceremony, father Tom Heer, 29, recalled that Brandon “had a frown on his face for some reason. I don’t know what he was upset about.”

Does he feel different now?, wondered his father.

“Yes, I feel funny,” said Brandon, placing the putty on his head.