School’s back in session this week and family vacations are on ice for the next few months while the school year creeps to an end, relegated to 4 X 6 snapshots that double as Technicolor testimony of time spent splashing in the warmth of the Caribbean or zooming down wintry slopes.

Older kids will surely remember the cruise to Mexico or the trip to New York to see tall buildings of the type that just don’t grace the Raleigh skyline. Younger kids? Not so much.

But does that really matter?

More than 100 years ago, a psychological journal introduced the concept of “childhood amnesia” in which adults have a hard time summoning up verbally accessible memories from early childhood. A decade ago, little had changed. A 1999 study of adults in Western cultures found that most people’s earliest memory dates to around age 3..

Although young kids can theoretically remember experiences from years past, the younger a child is, the greater the potential to forget. That science bears out what we already know is hardly surprising.

But it does beg the question of what role memory should play, if any, when planning a family vacation. Vacations build family bonds, creating moments in time that transcend time itself. Even before the last suitcase is unpacked, they become an instant reference point for family bonding.

Should we care that the youngest among us can’t participate in the reminiscing?

Not at all, I say. My parents might not agree.

A couple months before his fifth birthday, my son played hooky from preschool and jetted off to Disney World with my mom and dad. At the time, there was some discussion about whether my daughter, then close to 3, would accompany them. I’m all for pawning off my children on doting relatives, but my parents quickly decided that Shira would stay home. The reason was obvious: She wouldn’t remember the majestic spires of Cinderella’s castle or the tinkly strains of It’s A Small World as she skimmed the water in a gondola, watching dancing dolls from around the world.

Much is made of the significance of memory. If a tree falls in the forest but no one hears it, goes the classic conundrum, did it really fall? If you don’t remember something, did it really happen?

Memory is a multi-laned street. Years after a pivotal experience, different people retain different images. Even if our babies and toddlers don’t remember a trip, we -- their parents – do. In 2007, right before Shira turned 2, our family hopped a plane to Tel Aviv to visit relatives and show our kids where we’d met. My son, Aviv, was 4 then and clearly recalls traipsing through the Old City of Jerusalem, visiting a cacophonous outdoor market and spending time with his great-grandmother.

Shira has but a hazy recollection of being on an airplane for a long, long time. But my recollection of a nippy January afternoon when she ditched her diaper and ran alongside her brother into the Mediterranean Sea are anything but hazy.

And isn’t that all that really matters?

Bonnie appears Saturdays on TriangleMom2Mom.