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:

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:

If only I’d known.

Men don’t want to be treated like equals.

They want to be to jump like dolpins!

At least that’s what Amy Sutherland teaches in her book “What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love and Marriage.”

It’s true. I learned all about it on Fox News.

What if Sutherland said the secret to a good marriage is to stop nagging, ignore annoying behavior and reward positive behavior?

It probably wouldn’t be offensive, but it probably wouldn’t get her on TV.

Counseling wives to train their husbands like animals… now that’s an attention grabber.

It’s also “malicious marriage manipulation,” according to marriage counselor Victoria Baum, who was interviewed for the news report.

“The idea of positive reinforcement is wonderful, but to ignore the negative means that you’re holding in and you’re not getting your needs and your wants either communicated or met,” Baum said.

Sutherland, however, maintains this is a different way of communicating she noticed immediate results in her relationship.

Plus, she says anyone can use these training techniques to improve relationships with friends, family and coworkers.

“Even with myself I’ve used these ideas to sort of change behavior in myself that have been entrenched for a long time,” Sutherland said.

I’m no expert on relationships, but I’m not ready to buy into training people like animals.

Peace or…

Party!

When my friend called a couple weeks ago asking how he could childproof his home to protect it from my four-year-old, my first thought was, “She IS housebroken, you know.”

Bwahahahaha!!!

Housebroken is such a relative term, isn’t it?

I was pretty sure I could count on my daughter to not pee on the floor, but beyond that, I wasn’t sure what I could promise, knowing that there would be a few other kids her age there. At house parties, a gang of small children can be more terrifying than a gang of teenagers.

Case in point: The older kids hung out around the Wii. The younger kids became fast friends, and by fast, I mean racing around the house fast.

As a seasoned parent, I don’t mind chaos, but I also don’t mind leaving it behind to go spend some civilized time with my peers. In general, that means that I keep my family life and my social life separate, except on those occasions when the adults are doing something the kids would enjoy.

One thing I know kids don’t enjoy is sitting around quietly while their parents talk to other adults, so it was with great trepidation that I accepted an invitation to our friends’ home on behalf of myself and my two children.

Our hosts were prepared. They had plenty of kid-friendly food, video games and board games, a box of action figures and adults to dote over the little angels and whisk away breakables when the need arose.

One of the notable things about the smaller set, though, is that while older people tend to wind down over time, kids — especially those who have been allowed more than the usual allotment of sugary snacks — wind up.

It’s unsettling, literally. When you arrive, you hope that your children will find playmates. If they do, there’s an immense sense of relief as they entertain each other, giving parents a chance to socialize with their own kind. But while their parents are talking, the kids are talking, too. They’re inventing new games and one-upping each other.

Before you know it, there are naked G.I. Joes all over the floor, Monopoly money flying through the air and hysterical laughter drowning out all other conversation. The kids never seem to understand why this means the party is over. For them, it’s just getting underway.

As we drove home afterward, my 12-year-old — who was tasked with redressing the action figures and helping get his sister out the door — noted astutely that little kids party too hearty.

His sister wasn’t offended. She passed out in her car seat within five minutes of getting into the car.

This is when you know it’s time to go home.

As my son enlisted a toddler to help corral the two 4-year-olds my daughter’s new BFF tried to protect her, yelling, “She’s not a chair!”

He tried his hardest to hold her down…

… but he was no match for a girl so fast I couldn’t even catch her on film.

At this point, I realized that I should help the poor guy out by putting away the camera and picking up my daughter.