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’m a nail-biter.

Every once in a while, I’ll buy something to try to keep my hands occupied to stop chewing my nails.

I’ve tried tangles, stress balls, Kooshes, Rubik Snakes, hand exercisers, putty and when I’m feeling more artistic, even those little magnetic desk sculptures.

Apparently, I’ve passed on my need to fiddle with things to my son. If he doesn’t have anything else handy, he’ll try doodling on clear plastic cups with ballpoint pens. He needs some handheld stress reliever. It would relieve some of my stress, too. I figure if I find something to keep his hands busy, he’ll keep his hands off things that I don’t want to mess with.

I thought I found the perfect toy yesterday at KB Toys, an inflated rubber worm, about a foot long with rubber “hair” that can be stretched, squeezed, tangled and even whacked around to set off sparkly lights.

I bought one for my daughter, too, so she wouldn’t steal his. No one will tell me how her worm ended up deflated, but she ended up with the one I bought for my son.

Now I’m back on the market.

What’s good to keep your hands occupied that won’t end up breaking, stuck in the carpet (or a 4-year-old’s hair) and is portable and unlikely to distract anyone else?

Or, if you have other ideas for keeping idle hands from getting into trouble, I’ll take recommendations on those, too.

News of George Carlin’s death reminded me of an ongoing discussion I’ve been having with my 12-year-old.

He’s been asking me which comedians he’s allowed to watch and, quite frankly, I always draw a blank. I don’t watch much stand-up and the comedians I am familiar with aren’t really appropriate for middle schoolers. I love Ricky Gervais’s stand-up, for example, but no way am I watching it with my son.

He tested me on Dane Cook, but a quick Google search put that option to rest.

I remember being his age and arguing with my dad over Eddie Murphy. When he wouldn’t let me buy his album, I borrowed a tape from my friend. My dad destroyed it — then had to buy a new copy for me to return.

Now that I have a 12-year-old of my own, I’m can empathize with my dad. It’s kind of funny, considering Eddie Murphy has remade himself as a family movie star and my 12-year-old thinks he’s too old for that stuff.

So, who’s clean and funny?

I’ve been amused by Infinite Solutions with Mark Erickson but I doubt that’s the kind of thing my son is looking for. In fact, I could see him trying to follow the tutorials and ending up frustrated rather than amused.

He’s more the type to appreciate Will Ferrell’s Pearl videos on Funny or Die but that’s hardly the kind of thing I want my son to watch. He might get even more ideas on how to train his 4-year-old sister.

My inability to find comedy for my son means that he watches episodes of “The Simpsons” over and over and over.

There has to be something else for him.

Any recommendations?

I was in bed nursing a chest cold last night while my 4-year-old bounced around singing, “Let the dogs out, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo!”

“Who let the dogs out?” I corrected.

“You,” she responded.

“No,” I explained. “The song goes, “Who let the dogs out?”

“Knock, knock,” she said, ignoring me.

“Who’s there?”

“Let the dogs out.”

“Let the dogs out, who?”

“Let the dogs out, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo!” she said as she resumed jumping around.

“Woof,” I muttered and let her go.

The kids and I took advantage of the midweek holiday to hit the movie theaters.

If you haven’t seen “Kung Fu Panda,” go. My 4-year-old loved it, my son rated it 9 out of 10 and I was still chuckling as we left the theater.

As we drove home afterward, my 12-year-old and I discussed “kids” movies, specifically why he tends to prefer Dreamworks movies over those released by other studios.

It was a pretty broad generalization – I mean, Dreamworks was responsible for “Bee Movie” – but I could see his point. He likes comedy, and movies like “Kung Fu Panda,” “Shrek” and even “Madagascar” manage to find a way to amuse viewers of all ages.

Why?

As we discussed the movies we ALL like, they all seemed to have one thing in common: butts.

Well, that’s the way my daughter simplified it.

I think it’s more because they have unlikely heroes who break the archetype because they have traits that we can relate to.

We like that the ogre gets the girl, and that the princess realizes that looks and social standing aren’t all that counts.

We like that the caged animals in “Madagascar” can’t deny their true natures. That’s something that transcends different cultures, because if you Google “Alex and Marty” (I was checking their names), you can find the scene where the lion bites the zebra in the butt on YouTube, dubbed into foreign languages, i.e., “Madagaskar – Alex biter Marty i baken.”

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We like “Kung Fu Panda” because just the concept of a roly-poly panda doing kung fu amuses us.

It puts the impossible within reach.

That isn’t why the movie is successful, though.

In this case, the pacing was perfect. The moments that could have been corny took unpredictable twists. My son noted that they didn’t go for “cheap jokes,” but rather extended scenes that allow for more complicated humor that keeps you laughing even as they deftly move the plot along.

Mostly, though, it was just a fun family film that doesn’t play off the last successful kids’ movie.

The value to me, though, is it’s one of those movies where the entire family leaves in a good mood and when you’re trying to entertain a kindergartener and a middle schooler at the same time, those movies can be hard to come by.