No pressure; just let my child in.

I’ve just returned from a kindergarten assessment at a nearby private school. Despite my reassurances that this would just be a fun meeting, a play date of sorts, my preschooler was anxious. She had never been there before, she explained. And although they may want to ask her questions, she anticipated she might be shy. Instead, she had a ball. She moved around the staff stations like a congenial host, answering questions, showing off her alphabet letters when asked, rhyming words, counting out blocks, and demonstrating her skill-set in hopping, skipping, and scissor mastery.

Required to sit on the sidelines, I couldn’t help peering and peeking, trying to see the pictures she was describing and wondering if her lower case letters were sitting neatly in a line. I walked over to a tissue box on a side table, feigning sniffles, all a ruse to get a better look as I walked past. Other mothers busied themselves with the contents of handbags and stole glances at the other preschoolers going through the motions. By the time it was all over, my cheeks were hurting from smiling sweetly and nodding encouragement to the other mums and their pint-sized progeny.

I am certain I’m not a pushy mother; I know this having encountered a few, including a very nice Cypriot mother of four lounging by the pool on our recent trip to Florida. Her children were each exceptional in some way but, as she explained, one or two needed more coaching and pushing than others. Don’t let them slide by in preschool, she cautioned. You need them to stand out! My bent has been learning through creative play, so Waldorf and Montessori approaches have always held broad liberal appeal, but now, faced with a kindergarten assessor, her tales of separating wheat from chafe filled me with a new kind of fear over the pressure to get in.

A few years back, I read a revelatory piece in the New York Times magazine that described the pressure cooker process of admissions for top New York City kindergartens. The author, in the position of securing a spot for her own child, found herself caught up in the mummy wars over first and second choice schools, and waiting in agony for letters of acceptance to come in the mail. The dismay – no, the shame – that came with rejection letters voicing sorrow at not offering a place, smacked of paranoia, competition gone awry. The last time I dwelt on academic admissions so earnestly was awaiting selection by university and graduate schools, but kindergarten? This had to be rooted in status, not outcome.

My new Cypriot friend was patient. Exceptional children need exceptional schooling. Each of her girls were bright, conversational, and apparently academic, but the local state school wasn’t going to afford the opportunities her girls would need to shine. To her credit, she championed the state school system, but only schools for the gifted. And the admissions process, especially for the School of Performing Arts, sounded as cut –throat and arduous as any audition for ‘Fame’. Still, she clearly had her reasons: among her daughter’s classmates is Lourdes, Madonna’s child.

A few years back, a work colleague was in a panic. She’d had her daughter’s name on the waiting list for Albany Academy for Girls, a single-sex private school of note, since her child was one. Now, although she had made it into their co-ed kindergarten program, it was unclear whether there would be enough places, based on gender, for her to continue the following year. Her lament? She should have registered her pre-birth. An in utero registration was necessary, it seemed.

I was late to understand the social stratification of schools in the US. As a foreign undergraduate, I didn’t know about the Ivy League, or the private schools that fed them. In picking my American exchange, I cared only about its proximity to New York City. And since no city colleges had partnered with my university, the upstate SUNY system was next. So, I could have attended Amherst, or even the University of Miami, but instead my sights were set on Albany. Stateside, I soon picked up the academic pecking order, and the obnoxiousness of a family friend’s perpetual reference to his children as ‘Brown’ and ‘Yale’.

At the assessment, I saw a mother join her child at one of the tables to help lead her in answering the teacher’s questions. I had a knee-jerk guilty reaction: Should I be doing the same? But above the hubbub of teachers’ voices and children playing, I heard my daughter’s four-year old voice piping out her ABCs. It’s human nature to want the best for your child but if the point of assessment is to measure readiness, it’s not a decision that should be forced. If anything, it’s the first time they stand away from you and demonstrate a little of what they know. While I sat with these anxious parents, our children were happily playing along, oblivious to the observations taking place. When it was over, a teacher returned my daughter to me and assured me I had a bright, verbal child. I should wait for a phone call with their decision, I was told. No pressure, I thought. But I still hope she gets in.