The school where my daughter is starting kindergarten isn’t unfamiliar. Since her big brother has gone there since kindergarten, she probably went there for the first time within a couple weeks of her birth.

Here she is, a few months old, back in 2003:

Today, she’s there officially:

Rather than speculate about what she’s going through, I’m going to post quickly, finish up my work and plan my lunch break and end time to actually find out for myself. I know that’s what she wants.

While I was working on a photo project last week, she asked me why I was looking at photos of her.

“Look at the real me!” she insisted.

I’m going to take her advice.

On the eve of my daughter’s birthday, I tried to broker an impossible deal.

When you’re done being four, I proposed, why don’t you go back to being three?

“But then I can’t learn how to read,” she argued. “I won’t get to grow up!”

By time the garbage truck hauled away the wrapping from all her gifts a couple days later, however, it started to occur to her that there were downsides to being five.

It all came to a head the night before her kindergarten assessment. I encouraged her to shower early so she could get enough rest before the test.

At that moment she realized, as if for the first time, that all this preschool graduation and birthday business was just a build up to the scary unknown.

“What if I don’t know the answers?” she asked.

As I tried to reassure her that it wasn’t that kind of test, another thought popped into her head: “What if I never see my friends again?”

Although I’d known this day would come, I wasn’t anymore emotionally prepared for it than she was. As she teared up, so did I.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t promise her that she’d see her friends again, some of whom she’s known since she was 18 months old. But I could take some proactive measures.

I taught her to use the phone, in case she ever had the opportunity to call her preschool friends for a play date. I also helped her print out labels for small goodbye gifts that let people know how to get in touch with her.

Most of all, though, I assured her that even if her school changed, she’d still have the same family. To help drive the point home, I brought out the two necklaces I’d been planning to save for the first day of school. One pendant was a heart that said “Love.” The heart fit into the other pendant, which read “Always.” She chose the latter.

As she fretted about having to go off with a kindergarten teacher without me, I assured her that I’d wait outside. If she was worried, she’s have a heart next to her heart to comfort her… always.

After a bit, she asked hopefully if going to kindergarten meant that, like her brother, she could buy her breakfast from the nearby store. At that point, I figured that things were going to be okay.

She was still apprehensive…

… but she was cheerier when it was over.

Still, she was happy to get back to her preschool…

But I expect we’ll both be teary-eyed when she finishes her last day today.

With only days (DAYS!) left until my son’s eight-week summer vacation draws to a close, I’m left with a nagging question:

How is it possible that parents once survived three-month summer breaks without going absolutely insane?

The only answer I can come up with is they did it by neglecting their children.

I’m talking neglect by today’s standards, of course. In the 1980s, it was perfectly acceptable for 12-year-olds to run wild in the streets. As we headed into summer, I said I was none the worse for wear because of it. Two months later, I have to wonder if the same can be said of my parents.

Sometime between when I was a 12-year-old and when I became the parent of a 12-year-old, societal norms changed. For more than a decade, I never really considered that things like daycare, summer camp, sports, enrichment classes and other supervised activities were optional. If anything, I felt guilty that I didn’t have time to enroll my children in more programs.

If you had asked me a few months ago, I might have argued that kids need lots of structured activities to give them a leg-up in life. It hadn’t yet occurred to me that these “extras” might benefit parents even more than their children. After all, kids kept entertained and engaged by day tend to be exhausted by bedtime.

Last year, ferrying the kids from one place to another threw my schedule into chaos and no one was happier than me when summer arrived. I had no idea my bliss would be as short-lived as my son’s interest in using his vacation to beef up his math skills.

Despite putting up some tough resistance, my son did actually pick up some math concepts this summer. He took a course in graphic novels. He read more books in a few weeks than I’ve read all year and taught himself to use a video editing program that allows him to make movies of all his computer game accomplishments.

However, I’m the one who got the real education this summer. I learned that it’s easy enough to “program” your kid, but it takes a lot more to deprogram them than saying, “You have free time. Go have some fun!”

Looking at it in perspective, my son did a fine job of entertaining himself — most of the time. It’s the rest of the time that was a problem. A bored 12-year-old can be a scary thing and for the first time in his life, my son’s boredom wasn’t limited to an hour before bedtime or a few hours on the weekend. He had long stretches of excruciating boredom and he made sure that everyone felt his pain.

Now that school’s starting, we’re swinging back to the other extreme and I’m so filled with relief that it’s going to be hard for me to resist filling up my son’s “free time” with new activities. In between studying math, science and social studies, I’m going to make sure that kid has plenty of time to learn how to entertain himself.

If this summer taught me anything, it’s that the last thing I want is to go into next summer with a bored teenager on my hands.

I was looking through an old photo album over the weekend and came across this photo and was struck by the realization that it almost could be my daughter. It’s all in the hair.

Here’s me, sometime in the mid-1970s:

Here’s my daughter playing air hockey with me over the weekend:

*****

My daughter turned 5 yesterday, which meant two days of festivities — Chuck E. Cheese, “Space Chimps” (don’t see it!) and lots of cake and ice cream.

Rather than bore you with the details, behold the magic of Animoto:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/fYMUq9VEg_g" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

You’d think I see enough kids’ movies and am subjected to enough children’s programming to be aware of most of the upcoming family-friendly features.

We’ve seen the trailer for “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” so many times that my daughter bounces around yelling “ChaWOWwow” all the time.

We’ve even also seen the trailers for “Hotel for Dogs” and “Bolt” (about a TV star dog). I’d say the year is just going to the dogs, but that wouldn’t really explain why the “Madagascar 2” trailer shows before every movie I see these days.

So, where’s the hype over “Space Chimps,” which is opening this week to almost no fanfare?

I wouldn’t even know it existed, except for a sticker on the door at the movie theater and, of course, my job.

But my daughter knows. She can’t read, so she can’t figure out the date. She can’t tell time. But somehow she knows that “Space Chimps” opens this weekend.

Since my daughter’s birthday falls on Sunday and my parents already claimed Chuck E. Cheese, I get to take my daughter to “Space Chimps.”

I didn’t really HAVE to go look at the trailer to figure out that it was a movie about chimps in space, but I figured I might as well give it a look. Now I see why it hasn’t generated a lot of buzz.

If the movie has escaped your notice, too, now’s your chance to watch the trailer:[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/_OGFM6p4AnQ" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]