Top 10 ways you know your kindergartner is the youngest child

1. At the "meet the teacher" day before school starts you note that there is a long line to meet your child's teacher, so you suggest to your child that maybe she can just wave to her from afar so that you can leave. You don't really need to meet the teacher in advance, do you?

2. You receive a packet you are supposed to fill out and send on the first day. You forget. And then you can't find in anywhere in your house. And then you shrug and figure that if it's important she'll send a new packet home.

3. You buy all of your school supplies on Amazon 2-day shipping because going to Target and sifting through the picked-over supplies since you waited until the last minute?

4. You don't buy new clothes for the first day of school. In fact, you don't buy new clothes period, and your child goes to school in a hand-me-down dress.

5. On the first day of school you realize you haven't considered the closed-toed shoe rule and your child has lived in flip-flops the last month. As you survey the closet you realize every pair of shoes she owns have the toes blown out. Oops.

6. You have no idea what is on the school menu but you send her with money instead of a packed lunch because you forgot to stock the fridge with lunch stuff and figure she can "wing it."

7. On the first day, when the teacher walks the students from flag deck to the classroom, you don't ignore the teacher's request and bottle-neck the line in order to give your child one last tearful hug. You might even roll your eyes at the parents who are ignoring the rules because their special snowflake is different, knowing that making a scene like that only increases a kid's anxiety. You watch her go and she doesn't even look back.

8. When you do pick-up on the first day, you don't park and greet your child at her classroom. You let her walk to the pick-up curb with her siblings and you show up at the exact time you've estimated, through experience and careful calculation, that will allow you to avoid waiting in a car line without technically being late (3:06pm). You are the last car in line.

9. When you drop her off for her second day, you don't even walk her in. You tell her older siblings to make sure she gets to the right place.

10. None of the above matters because she has watched her older siblings go to school for years and she's finally a part of the club and NOTHING CAN CONTAIN HER ENTHUSIASM. Not even your slacker ways.