Stop Press! Kindergarten in Russia Is Wonderful

The Detsky Sad is an enormous success. I was so terrified by Russians' stories of misery, regimentation and dire illness that I wouldn't even let Sasha send Vita there until I was back in Moscow. I wanted to monitor her mood and be alert to every tear and reluctance before I gave it the all-clear. The first morning I hung around, to the irritation of the staff, and crept back earlier than I'd said I would to try and catch them out in some cruel ritual. I spent the intervening hours hovering on the balcony with a pair of binoculars to see if she was being beaten up in the sandpit or crying in the corner of the yard.


I was abandoning little Vita, at the tender age of two, to a monstrous state system which only the eulogies of our Anglo-American friends upstairs had persuaded me to try in the first place.


Well, the news is she loves it. She didn't even notice that I'd stayed on the first day. On the second, she ran in at 8:15 a.m. to help Baba Lyuda set the table for breakfast kasha. By day three she was kicking her little legs in protest and refusing to come home at lunchtime when all the others were settling in for the afternoon nap.


To be honest it's a bit depressing how much she doesn't want to leave.


Of course these Detsky Sads vary enormously, and we must have hit on a good one. There's no regimented potty-sitting with children not allowed to get up until they've "done something."


On the first day they asked, to my amazement, if there was anything she didn't like to eat -- there isn't -- and when we said, Western-style, that we don't make her eat everything on her plate if she isn't hungry, they agreed that they never force the kids to eat.


In fact, compared to my own English education, when you had to "think about the starving children" and eat every last disgusting slice of spam and tinned tomatoes on your plate, it's positively progressive.


Twice a week they have fizkultura in the gym -- for which Vita wears last summer's shorts but the trendier 2-year-olds don lycra -- where they enjoy singing and dancing. They do plasticine and drawing, run around outside, and there's even a little swimming pool.


Vita now comes home elated and talks about her new friends: five Dashas, three Nastyas and one boy.


And as for me, I've been co-opted onto a parents' committee to protest against the dogs who take their evening constitutional through the playground and to put a stop to the cars racing past the gates.


Yes, I'm all in favor. But in shock. I came out here for the usual carefree single, childless correspondent adventure, and now I'm agitating for the local kindergarten ...