Dr. Madeline Levine, a practicing clinical psychologist in Marin County, California, and author of "The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids," offers advice to help mothers get beyond the anxiety and guilt that often accompanies their children’s entrance into school.

1. Trust your gut.
"Somewhere deep down, you know what your five-year-old needs. That, in fact, they don’t need to know how to read or do flash cards. It can be hard, though, to say, ’I just want my kid to throw rocks, make mud pies and play in the dirt,’ when everyone around you is quizzing their kindergartener on their academic acumen.’ "

2. Focus on teaching your child self-control.
"This is the single most critical skill a child can develop at this stage. They need to learn how to get along with other kids. We know that there is no advantage to an academic preparation for young children - those differences wash out by second or third grade. You shouldn’t be taking away from the appropriate developmental task, which is to not smack the kid next to you in circle time and not punching the girl who’s ahead of him on line for water."

3. Nix the guilt.
"Everything in the culture pushes moms to feel guilty about these choices we make for our children. Moms makes most of these decisions when kids are young and the research shows that moms have the most impact on their kids when they’re young. But it doesn’t help your child if they can sense your anxiety."

4. Don’t believe the hype.
"You’re always reading these stories in newspapers and magazines that rank colleges like U.S. News and World Report about how hard it is to get into Harvard and how you can’t even get into a second-tier school because they’ve become the first tier. As if most kids go to those schools. The reality is, there’s a bell curve that professional people don’t like to acknowledge, which says most kids are average. There’s a huge cottage industry geared toward higher education, and it’s incredibly damaging."

5. It’s all about E.Q.
"The emotional, inter-personal skills are what kids need to learn in kindergarten. It’s that social intelligence - knowing how to deal with people, being able to work in a group, being liked by other people - is often an undervalued skill and its what carries you through life. We’ve got to get back to the basics of child development, which is learning about the world and being connected to a parent."