We may have momentarily dreaded the end of summer, but from what I can see at drop-off these days, parents – particularly mothers – have never been happier. The structure of school is back in place.

Not that Six Flags and Rye Playland and Splish Splash weren’t fun. But so is dropping off your children at 8 a.m. and having several guilt-free hours to go to work, to the gym, or to art class with your toddler.

For parents with older children, the freedom that school provides is in place by now. I bumped into a friend of mine who has children ages 5, 10, and 14, after she dropped her son off for his first full-length day of kindergarten. “My desk is piled up to the ceiling,” she said. “I haven’t had a second to myself since camp ended. Today I have seven hours,” she added giddily.

For those of us with younger children, or a mix of young and old, freedom is only the light at the end of a very long tunnel. To be specific, it’s the light at the end of a long, staggered schedule that is meant to ease the children’s adjustment to school and reduce their separation anxiety.

Children in nursery school often begin school the same day as their older siblings. But in New York, it can take anywhere from two weeks to two months for the full school day to begin. Even then, a full day might only mean 9 to 11:45 a.m. For the first week of nursery school, your child may be in class from 9 to 10 a.m. By the beginning of October, pickup might be stretched to 11 a.m.

That schedule is lovely and warm and nurturing when you are helping your first child adjust to nursery school or working with a child who has trouble separating. But for the most part, all I hear in the nursery school halls is agonized moaning from parents who act as if the staggered schedule that is meant to benefit their children was invented as a torture device for exhausted grown-ups.

“These couple weeks are hell,” a mother of four said. “My oldest gets dropped off at 8; the one starting kindergarten gets dropped today at 9, but this week gets picked up at noon. My 3-year-old also gets dropped off at 9 for a whopping 45 minutes. Next week she’ll go for an hour. In October, when school isn’t off for Columbus Day or Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur, school will be from 9 until 11.”

For the parents of children who have difficulty adjusting to a longer day, the staggered schedule can mean the difference between a happy transition and one filled with tears. But some parents don’t buy into the process. “For most of the kids who have trouble separating, no amount of staggering will make things better,” one exasperated mother said. “So much of the time, it’s the parent who can’t separate anyway. And I think ultimately going cold turkey is the way to go. Maybe I don’t really believe that, but I’d certainly be saner that way.”

Regardless of how many child-free hours parents have during the school day, there is still the crunch time between the end of school and dinnertime, when every child needs to be at a different place at a different time. Chess and ballet and tennis and soccer and Hebrew School begin at 4 p.m. and end at so many different times it’s enough to make you draw up an Excel spreadsheet.

“At every graduation party or sweet 16 or bar mitzvah, the kid is always thanking his mother for taking him here and dropping him off there and taking her here and picking her up from there,” a mother of two said. “Before my kids were in grade school, I didn’t really get it. But now I do … Next time I go through customs and am asked to list my profession, I’m going to write ‘Personal Valet.'”

It is often during the shuffling from one activity to the next, however, that a stolen parenting moment takes place. It’s when we hear about the daily worries and pleasures that fill our children’s day: the scary math teacher, the bully who finally got sent to the office, the gross food in the cafeteria, the newly acquired dirty joke.

For some of us, particularly those of us with boys, it is when we hear absolutely nothing at all. Even then, as a personal valet – and mother – I wouldn’t trade it for anything.