Among them will be my nephew, Jonathan, otherwise known to himself, his doting grandparents, fond parents and his two aunts, as "Baby".
Poor Jonathan will discover, probably to his shock, that there will be 40 other "Babys" in his class all with equal claims to that title which, in the Chua household, allows him to lord it over even the patriarch my normally stern father.
The unwary child aged three years and eight months, is looking forward to going to school. He looks at the calendar, does mental sums in his head, and asks: "Do I go to school on Monday? Or Tuesday?"
His comprehension of time is limited to the week, because he knows Sunday is the day his grandmother and full-time nurse, cook, playmate and otherwise devoted slave, takes time off for her game of cards with her cronies.
He is a gregarious child, if unused to social niceties. My sister-in-law, a wonderfully relaxed mother, says he will adapt fine to school. He likes other children. He has,, like his father, a cheerful, happy-go-lucky temperament He is (so we think) quite a quick child, and often has to be told the name of a thing once only for him to remember it.
Still, I worry. He is tall for his age. Will he be relegated to sit at the back of the class, where, as any school child will tell you, it is easier to escape the teacher's attention and develop extra- curricular pursuits?
Will he be bullied by other more street-wise children? What if his teacher takes a dislike to his (as even doting aunts must admit) slightly thuggish, definitely non-cherubic face?
Most of all, will this Teochew baby be able to cope in an English-speaking, or even Mandarin-speaking environment?
Colleagues and friends regale me with tales of their talented children/nieces/nephews. I listen politely, occasionally with genuine admiration. More often than not, I feel slightly murderous towards these, my little defenceless nephew's potential competitors in school and at work decades hence.
One colleague has a niece, aged just four, who can recite poetry with words like "reprose". My nephew cannot say R properly.
Another has a charming daughter, aged three, who makes friends at the drop of a hat, very prettily. My nephew's way of making friends is to grab them around the waist.
Will these be the people my poor HDB-born-and-bred nephew has to go to school with, and eventually (horror of horrors) date, and marry?
I console myself. My nephew learns fast, especially in the dialect he grew up with. He has been taught to shake hands and say hello, and will actually do so if bribed sufficiently. He does show the occasional sparkle.
Once, after visiting his maternal grandmother's cramped one-room HDB flat and returning to the relative palace of my parents' three- room flat, the boy told his grandfather gravely: "Gong Gong (Grandfather), we must be rich, because our house is big. Maternal grandmother is poor, her house is so small."
He can argue, negotiate, bargain for more tidbits, more time to play before bed, to be taken out for a ride -- in Teochew. He can plead, cajole, throw tantrums, be loudly and sweetly loving -- again, in Teochew.
He would have a wonderful time if he were sent to a Teochew-medium school somewhere in Shantou, where his grandparents were born. But this is Singapore, and next year, he goes to a Mandarin- and English- speaking nursery school.
My mother, who has spent the last 40 years of her life in Singapore without stirring out of the country, and who has resisted learning Mandarin (never mind English), is her usual phlegmatic self on this issue.
She points to her three intelligent children, including her two bookish daughters, and believes firmly that natural intelligence will win the day. After all, as she says each time I voice my worries for my nephew, my sister and I did well in school made it to university and so on, despite our Teochew upbringing, our kindergarten-less education, and our book-less and televisionless-childhood.
At least, Jonathan has his colour television and Sesame Street programmes, his pre-Primary 1 exposure in nursery and kindergarten, educated parents and aunts. He is growing up surrounded by his aunts' discarded books, which he flips through to read the letters when he is in a good mood, and tears up when he is not.
At least, he knows his alphabet, which was more than his father or aunts did when they were his age. He can count, and even add to small sums. He adept with the calculator, and can do any problem, addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, you ask him to, and read out the correct answers ---- all in Teochew, of course.
Surely, it will not take him too long to adapt to school, even in an English--speaking environment.
I am half-consoled. Perhaps children are more resilient than adults think. Perhaps, he will turn out to be a child who likes to learn. Perhaps, everything will turn out well, like they do in fairy-tales.
Then I read about schools where they teach the Primary 2 syllabus in Primary 1. In my time, the teacher assumed you knew nothing, not even your ABCs, when you went to Primary 1. It was a correct assumption where I was concerned. So we were taught from scratch.
I look at advertisements for ballet, speech and drama, enrighment English, enrichment Chinese and violin classes for three-year-olds. I hear of babies who recognise words at 17 months old, and recite Keats at four.
I hear of parents who buy educational videos and play them softly while the baby slumbers in the same room, hoping that some subliminal message will rub off on it. And I feel nervous for my little nephew.
Like my mother, Jonathan's parents are sanguine about his future. They do not worry over much about how he will cope. My sister-in-law tells me she wants him to enjoy his childhood, and not feel stressed about homework and studies.
I admire their calm.
Still, I cannot help knowing that in a week's time, poor Jonathan's babyhood will be over, and he begins the rat-race that is called school, which is just the prelude to that worse rat race called working life.