This week my friend complained to me about her daughter’s math homework.

“Last night she had seven pages of difficult problems. It took her more than an hour. I fell asleep before she did,” she said.

“Why don’t you say something to the teacher?,” I asked. Her daughter is, after all, in first grade.

“Well, you know,” she said, “she’s in this advanced math group and I don’t want her to be taken out of the class.” My friend is worried that if she tells the math teacher about her daughter’s struggle, her daughter will demoted to another math class.

There’s no telling if a teacher will confuse a parent’s concern about a child’s amount or kind of homework with the child’s academic ability. But let’s assume she does, and the child, at 6, is booted out of the top math class. Would that be so bad? Does it matter if your child is in accelerated math in first grade? In third grade? In fifth grade? Ever?

The pressure to be in an advanced math class, captain of a sports team, and fluent in a second language has always existed in New York. It’s just that 20 years ago the pressure began in high school, whereas today it seems to begin at an increasingly early age.

“Three weeks into third grade, my son came home and told me that all his friends were talking about getting into college,” a mother of two boys said. “He was genuinely anxious about how he would get into college. He was 8.”

Another mother said her daughter came home from school and told her she needed a tutor. “‘What kind of tutor,’ I asked her,” the mother said. “She said that everyone she knew went to the tutor after school. I think she thought all her friends were going to the same person after school, and that somehow she had been left out of some great club. She is 7 years old, and basically all her friends go to a tutor. Some even go during the summer.”

When Diane Keaton starred in “Baby Boom” in 1987 she panicked that if her daughter didn’t get into the right nursery school, she wouldn’t get into the right elementary school, high school or, of course, college. Parents, especially city slickers, nervously laughed along. But today, too many young students seem in on the joke.

“My kids have classmates who are ranked tennis players, horseback riders, fluent in three and four languages, chess masters – you name it,” said a father of a fourth-grader at a private school in Riverdale. “Of course those are just a few kids, but it raises the ante for the others. These should be pretty carefree years, and yet so many of the kids seem focused on finding ways to stand out. Sometimes it’s because the kids are passionate about a particular sport, and sometimes it’s because they have crazy parents who are worried about getting their 9-year-old into an Ivy League school.”

Children attending public schools such as P.S. 6 that end in fifth grade or private schools such as Allen-Stevenson, St. David’s or Rodeph Sholem that end in eighth grade seem especially focused on resume building. They do, after all, have to prove to the high schools that they are worthy of admission.

“Unless your kid stands out in some way, it’s really difficult to get a spot at one of these high schools,” a mother of three who just completed the high school application process said. “The schools are looking for kids who are going to get into top-tier colleges. It’s not enough to be a wellrounded, nice kid. You have to stand out,” she said.

Parents of students at the schools that have kindergarten-through-12th-grade programs report increased anxiety in their children as those new students enter the schools in ninth grade, adding stiffer competition.

“The children who entered my daughter’s freshman class this year were an outstanding group,” said a mother whose daughter attends a private school on the Upper East Side. “There were hundreds of applications for the 10 or so spots. The kids who used to be the cream of the crop are struggling.”

Parents are quick to blame the schools, but I actually think it’s the parents who need to stand up and protect their children from unnecessary pressure during elementary and middle school. Résumé building shouldn’t be part of childhood. It’s hard enough for teenagers to handle such pressure.

sarasberman@aol.com