When the movie “Groundhog Day” was released in 1993, I didn’t have children. It was, for me, just another night at the movies.

But today, 12 years and four kids later, I am convinced that I am living in my own little version of “Groundhog Day.”

A little refresher on the movie, in case you haven’t seen it lately: Bill Murray stars as a cynical weatherman who is forced to live the same day over and over again. Initially, he uses the situation to his advantage, but eventually he realizes that nothing is more depressing than spending day after day in the same place with the same people.

For me, every weekday begins the same way. I pull on some clothes and make school lunches, put out breakfast, and stick the coats and backpacks next to the elevator. I wake up the three children that need to get to school and make sure all of them get dressed, with varied levels of assistance. The baby wakes up and is fed. Faces are washed and breakfast is eaten.

As I grab my cell phone off the charger and down one last gulp of coffee, I firmly tell the kids, “Go brush your teeth and we’re off.” No one moves.” Come on guys. Hurry up.” No one moves. I yell, “Unless you want to be late, go brush your teeth.” No one moves.

This is when the dreaded “Groundhog Day” feeling hits me. No matter what creative ideas I have that particular morning, brushing teeth in our house is like, well, pulling teeth.

If Albert Einstein was right when he said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, then all parents must be crazy. Day in and day out, our job is to keep doing the same thing over and over again, while always holding out hope for our children’s growth and development.

“I don’t want to go to school,” one of my children moans as we wait for the elevator. Nothing new here. He’s been saying that since his first day of school many years ago.

“What am I doing after school today?” another one asks.

“You have tennis today,” I say with a big smile.

“I don’t want to go to tennis,” he moans. Nothing new here. He says that about all extracurricular activities.

My eldest stoically marches into school, my middle moans and groans. My youngest clings for an instant, then runs off.

At pickup time, the middle one wants to go to the candy store. Every day, he wants to go to the candy store. How many days a week can you go to the candy store?

At tennis, my eldest doesn’t want to leave. He never wants to go to an activity and he never wants to leave.

And no matter what’s for dinner, someone always says, “Oh, gross.”

I feel like I have swallowed a tape recording that has five options: “Say please,” “Stop fighting!” “If you do that one more time I’m going to …” “Did you ask to be excused?” and, of course, “Go brush your teeth!”

“The struggle is to find the beauty in the daily grind,” a friend of mine with five children said. “It’s hard to find, actually, when it really can be so depressing.”

A mother of two added less poetically: “Deja vu is a preferable experience because then at least you know that it’s just that weird feeling. Unfortunately, with your kids every day, it’s not deja vu. You really are reliving the same interactions, day after day after day after day.”

But then my mother-in-law or friend from high school will come and visit from Los Angeles and in an instant, though their eyes, I am able to see my children anew. Three or four months have passed since they have seen my brood, and they are full of insights into how peacefully my boys are playing, how much my middle child has grown, how confident my daughter has become.

“The second you leave your kids, even for a long weekend, you are able to have a fresh appreciation of how much they have grown,” a father of three middle-schoolers said. “It’s a hard feeling to hold on to, though.”

Weatherman Phil in “Groundhog Day” eventually learns that each day – even if it is identical to the one before it – opens up a world of possibilities. And so it goes with our children.

We can find beauty by doing more than just stepping away from the daily interactions. Each day offers us new opportunities to teach our children and to help them, ever so slowly, develop their greatest potential.

Einstein was right. It is insane to keep doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. I guess that just means that all parents are a little crazy. You don’t need to be a Nobel Prize-winning physicist to figure that out.

sarasberman@aol.com