I have seen things that skirt the boundaries of comprehension.

Standoffs.

Friendly fire.

Shame. Anguish. Misery.

Lots and lots of snot.

And that’s just on Wednesdays.

For two months now, I have been volunteering each week in my daughter’s kindergarten classroom. Since funding shortfalls cut teaching assistants from the budget, teachers at Angie’s school have relied on parents to help in a variety of ways, including preparing materials for lessons, watching students in the lunchroom and monitoring the playground.

There are 21 students in Angie’s class, and each of them is in a different stage of learning. In the mornings, I help them write and spell numbers in their workbooks. Some of them whiz through the pages, while others are still struggling with the proper way to hold a pencil.

I also break up fights about crayons and wipe tears from the eyes of homesick children. One little boy has cried every day since school started.

“My mommy is coming back, right?” he says, over and over.

“Yes,” I assure him. “She is.”

At lunchtime, I poke straws into pouches of chocolate milk and pull the tops off yogurt containers in the cafeteria. Not a day goes by that I don’t walk to the nurse’s office with a child who scraped her knees in the schoolyard during recess or rescue from the bathroom a boy who can’t manage to button his pants.

Kindergarten certainly has some strange moments. This week I saw a boy lick a library book. I saw another boy lick the teacher.

By the end of the day, I feel as though I’ve been hit by 21 tiny tornados.

So if your child has started school and you’re wondering what goes behind the scenes, here are a few things that I can tell you for sure:

* Kindergarten is a minefield of germs. Your child will not be spared and neither will you. Stock up on vitamins and Kleenex.

* Your little bookworm comes home starving and cranky every day because he doesn’t eat at lunchtime. None of them do. Instead, they talk. They make poop jokes and weird noises. Then, just before the bell rings, they take two bites of their sandwiches and throw the rest of their lunches into the trash.

* Kindergarten is not what it used to be. When I was Angie’s age, I had a dozen classmates and two full-time teachers. We went to school half a day, which we spent singing songs, playing with paste and sharing musical instruments.

Nowadays, kindergarteners do all that and much, much more. They learn about time, seasons, money and weather. They learn letters, numbers and even start to write sentences.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, kindergarteners spend about 31 hours per week in school. The average class size is 21 students.

“Kindergarten is the new first grade,” my daughter’s teacher said. “It really is a lot of work that they are asked to do.”

I have learned a few things during my time in kindergarten. First, my daughter is a different person at school. She wears her glasses without complaining. She follows directions and waits her turn. She is courteous and cooperative — attributes she rarely displays at home.

Second, I am not half as crazy as some moms out there. Sure, I watch Angie like a hawk on the playground and we never leave home without hand sanitizer and sunscreen. But at least I don’t blow kisses from the sidewalk to the schoolyard or check her body for scratches every day after class. I’m nutty, but I’m not that nutty.

Most importantly, I have learned that teachers work really hard and public schools need all the support we can give them. Maybe that means donating markers, paper or other school supplies. Maybe that means cleaning up the playground or even volunteering in the classroom. Whatever we can do, we should do.

Angie and I look forward to our Wednesdays together in kindergarten. And though we are both too busy to talk to one another, I think she likes having me in the classroom.

“Kids like it when the moms are there,” she said. “Because then they can all learn together.”

Wendy Fontaine’s “Party of Two” column appears the first and third Sundays of the month. Her e-mail address is: [email protected]. Follow Party of Two on Facebook and read her blog at PerseveringParents.com.