Here it is. End of July, and school beckons from around the corner. Just like every summer, the months race by, and we're back to the same old school routine.

For us, this year, it's going to be a little different, and it won't be the same old school routine. Our daughter Kathryn will be entering middle school. Her anxiety level is rising, and she's reading all sorts of books like A Smart Girl's Guide to Starting Middle School (American Girl) and How I Survived Middle School: Can You Get an F in Lunch?

Her biggest concern? How to open her locker, of course. To me and my husband, that seems to be the smallest of concerns. We don't discount that a locker combination seems to be an impossible mechanical device. We just know that she'll conquer the technology behind the locker combination pretty quickly. Other issues, though, won't fade so fast.

She's going to have to deal with cliques and mean-spirited people. Boys may become more of a fixture in her everyday thoughts and conversation. (Chris, my husband, is not too happy with that one.) Homework will be more challenging. She's in Math 7, as opposed to Math 6, and she's wondering how hard it will be. She won't have the attention of a single homeroom teacher; instead she'll have seven different teachers whom she'll have to get to know and learn their particular styles.

While Kathryn is the type of person who can feel anxiety over anything she can't fully define or control, we're doing what we can to allay her fears. I told Kathryn we can go up to the school and tour it every week in August if she likes, before her half-day orientation. My husband has an old combination lock that we're letting her practice on. We're trying to get her in the habit of acknowledging her fears and accept all her feelings, even the "bad" ones (her words), as part of who she is. We're talking about middle school and not just brushing off or avoiding her concerns.

The one thing she'll have to learn, however, is just to deal with it and feel positive that it will turn out just fine. Our favorite words for Kathryn are "Go with the flow." She needs to be able to accept what's happening now and not to try to figure it out ahead of time or control it.

I suspect that when the first week of school is over, she'll laugh at her anxieties over the locker. She'll get used to the routine of changing classes. She'll happily reunite with old friends and meet some new ones. She'll be able to traverse the corridors of her new school with no problem.

Most importantly, she'll have this experience of being scared, preparing for something new and unfamiliar, talking it through, and working through her fears.

As Kathryn put it at Six Flags last weekend: "I want to ride every ride at least twice: once because I'm scared, but at the end I enjoy it; and the second time so that I can enjoy it from beginning to end." Now she can't go through middle school twice (is that a nightmare or what?), but she can try to get a handle on her angst so that she can fully enjoy middle school from beginning to end.

She'll get through middle school, high school, college, dating, and beyond. Although her father and I will gleefully ignore those particular milestones. No need to worry at this point. We'll save that for future summers.