Kindergarten scares parents more than child

Little Kaya Bos woke up an hour ahead of her usual schedule.

By 7 a.m., the 5-year-old had already picked out her ensemble: a blue shirt and a pair of freshly purchased boot-cut jeans with fancy blue embroidery running up and down the sides. After making sure her ponytail was perfect, Kaya was ready to enter a whole new ''big girl" world -- her first day of kindergarten.

Her mother's stomach, not the 5-year-old's, was twisted into knots.

Last September, Kaya became the first of the three Bos children to start school.

''She was excited, we were the ones who were nervous," said Leslie Bos, who works as an affordable housing and economic development counselor at the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation.

As the parents dropped Kaya off at the schoolhouse doors, the questions lingered.

''Did we do the right thing? Was this the best school? You just never know," said Kaya's dad, Peter, a computer programmer who has recently returned to college to study education.

Sending young children off to school for the first time is a rite of passage every new parent faces.

For the Bos family, the preparation began long before Kaya's first day of kindergarten last September.

The parents believed the key to their child's academic success was finding the right classroom with the right teacher at the right school.

They began the search with confidence. They already had practice finding a private day-care center for Kaya. They spent weeks visiting school open houses in Boston, peeking into brightly colored classrooms and talking to teachers.

But the search wasn't as easy as they had hoped. They had so many choices: public schools, private schools, charter schools, experimental public schools called pilots.

''I didn't know what to look for," Leslie Bos said. ''I didn't know what to look for in a classroom, or with a teacher, or school."

The family also was thinking ahead. Kaya has 2-year-old twin sisters, who likely would attend the same school.

''One of the biggest issues we had was deciding what type of school to send her to," Peter Bos said. ''I was interested in one of the charter schools, but then we heard a lot of parents were pulling their kids out of that school, so we just didn't know."

The parents did know their daughter's likes and dislikes, helpful information for families looking for the right kindergarten.

Kaya is eager to share her opinion at home. She makes friends easily enough, and she has a thing for science, quick to put aside dolls and glittery nail polish if the Museum of Science is on the day's agenda.

''We've spent hours in the body section of the museum, and she was obsessed with the puzzle of the digestive system," said Kaya's mother.

''She could tell you the difference between the trachea and the esophagus."

Her mother talked to other parents for guidance, quizzing them about certain schools and their staffs.

She looked for a school where a few of Kaya's friends planned to attend so her daughter wouldn't feel so alone in the new classroom.

And after checking out seven different schools, she found what she believed was the right one: the James Michael Curley Elementary School, just a few blocks from home.

Leslie Bos liked the school's neat and organized classrooms, which she said were a contrast to the Bos home.

''Considering how chaotic our home life is, I thought, at least somebody can give this girl some structure!" Leslie Bos said.

The Boston school had a spot for Kaya. The Bos family had a match. Kaya enrolled at the school for kindergarten.

On the first day, Leslie and Peter Bos placed the twins in their stroller and walked with Kaya to the campus, just 15 minutes away by foot.

When they arrived at the school playground, Kaya spotted her day-care buddies.

And while the little girl was off making new friends, her mother peppered the teacher with last-minute questions.

''I really tried to keep my anxieties to a minimum," she said." But the teacher was really good about it."

While Kaya's father tended to the twins, her mother had planned to walk her daughter into the classroom the same way she had done at day care. But she followed the other parents' lead, leaving her child at the schoolhouse door.

Unlike her first day at day care, there was no leg-hugging or tears. ''Kaya was ready to leave me and kiss me goodbye," she said, shrugging her shoulders.

But after the first few days, the school year brought a few challenges. Kaya was assigned a new teacher after the original one went on maternity leave.

''All the stuff we were anxious about before started all over again," Peter Bos said.

Leslie Bos decided to help out by visiting the classroom whenever she could.

Throughout the day, children huddled together at different stations for reading, writing, pretend cooking in a play kitchen, and working on projects.

Once a week, the children either took music lessons or had lessons about other subjects, including plants.

''The class had an intimate feeling about it," Leslie Bos said.

By the end of the school year, Kaya had won an award for reading, and the knots in her mother's stomach had disappeared.

''It was so clearly just the environment she needed," Bos said, letting out a sigh of satisfaction. ''She just sky-rocketed."

But for Peter Bos, questions remain.

''Maybe we could have sent her someplace else that would've handled her strengths differently," he said. ''She did well here, but she might've done even better somewhere else. I guess we will never really know."