The kids are back to school.

I know that because today, for the first time in three months, I worked out.

Yes, I know that I could and should work out even when the kids are home. But I also shouldn't be eating leftover mac and cheese and cold chicken nuggets for dinner and, sorry to say, that just happens sometimes. In parenting, exhaustion often defeats willpower.

It's true that, as a parent, you need balance. On one side of the scale are your children's needs, and those are paramount. They weigh more than your needs, which often (but hopefully not always) come second.

Now that the kids are in school again, I have the chance to even the scales a bit. I can add more to my side — write, work out, maybe grocery shop without saying "put that down" 1,000 times in a row.

I've also mostly recovered from the horrors of the school supply list, which gets longer and weirder every year. This year, I had to purchase beans (yes, beans ), not one but two cans of shaving cream and boxes of pasta. I don't know how many macaroni necklaces one kid can make, but I did as I was told.

Both of our kids were less than thrilled to return to the classroom. The first grader resentfully trundled out of the car every day for a week before his younger brother went back to school.

"Why does he get more summer than I do?" the 6-year-old asked.

"The older you get, the harder life is," I told him, and though in some ways that's true, it occurred to me later that it's not entirely so.

The realization came as I was serving as a "lunch helper" at the elementary school, a task mostly consisting of withstanding the aural battering of 100 first graders eating lunch in the same room.

As I opened innumerable milk cartons and potato-chip bags, I looked around at the kids and saw that the social strata were already in place.

Some children nervously walked the room holding trays of food, looking for a spot near a friend or friendly face. Others were the Masters of the Universe, holding court in groups of acolytes.

There was the ease of childhood on display but there was also anxiety and fear, fear of danger as imminent as any adult faces in their daily life.

As lunchtime concluded, one of the teachers told the kids to pack up and go outside for recess. The students scrambled up and out of the cafeteria. The last to leave was a skinny boy wearing glasses. He sat quietly, tears streaming down his face, as he hurriedly stuffed food in his mouth.

He didn't look like a Master of the Universe. More likely, he was one of those who'd had trouble finding a spot. None of the other kids had waited for him.

A teacher came up to him and offered a napkin, ostensibly to wipe his hands.

She sat and talked with him quietly for a minute, and once he was done eating, he wiped his face with his hands and walked outside.

It broke my heart, and it reminded me how difficult childhood can be — not even in any large, terrible way but just in the everyday ways, the ways that include not finding someone to sit next to at lunchtime.

They're the ways that slumber parties and cafeterias and playgrounds can be harsh. And it's not that you forget those experiences when you age, but you can forget how small they might appear to someone on the outside, to an adult.

After that day in the lunchroom, I told myself that I'll try to be more sensitive to the little agonies my children face, the daily miseries that aren't bigger or smaller than those in my life, at least when they're shown to scale.

Their worlds are smaller, after all, and so are the stressors and sadness.

Seen from a child's perspective, however, they're exactly the same size.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

Photo credit: stevepb at Pixabay