MOM'S THE WORD WINSLET TAPS INTO PARENTAL ANGST.

Byline: -- Glenn Whipp

Kate Winslet loves ``Little Children'' -- she gushes over the movie -- but admits that if she met her character at the swing set, she'd probably remove her children and leave the playground immediately.

Based on ``Election'' author Tom Perotta's caustic book of the same name, ``Little Children'' follows Winslet's rudderless suburban mom as she embarks on an affair with a stay-at-home dad (Patrick Wilson).

Other characters include an uptight mom who schedules sex with her husband and a pedophile returning to the neighborhood to live with his mother. Todd Field (``In the Bedroom'') directs.

``There's a strangely hypnotic documentary quality to the movie that sucks you in,'' Winslet says of the film, which won raves at the Toronto Film Festival. ``It's a story about people who are lost and trying to figure it out, feeling suffocated in the suburbs but not knowing how to escape that feeling of being trapped.''

Winslet, mother to a 5-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son, found the movie ``upsetting'' and ``challenging'' -- which, for her, are the signs that she made an ``immensely rewarding'' choice.

``This woman is not a very good parent, and I found it very difficult to respect her,'' she says. ``The worst thing was being cold to this little girl who plays my daughter, so between takes, I had the most possible fun with her to let her know that I adored her, no matter what we were doing on screen.''

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``LITTLE CHILDREN''

OCT. 6

Kate Winslet plays a stressed-out suburban mother, with Sadie Goldstein as her young daughter, in ``Little Children.''