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Dear Miriam,
My middle school daughter just left for camp, and while I’m glad she’s in her happy place, I’m already dreading when she returns at the end of the summer. Last year, she was just so sad for days after she got home. It’s been years since she was homesick at camp, but she describes this as being camp-sick at home. Is there anything I can do to ease this particular pain?
Signed,
There’s no place like camp
Dear Camp,
For most parenting advice, I offer some version of planning ahead and working in partnership with your kids to come to solutions that work for everyone. In your case, though, I won’t. For one thing, your daughter has already left for camp, so you’ve missed the window on any pre-camp conversations. For another, talking about the end of camp before camp has even started is kind of awful for everyone and likely won’t lead to a better conclusion than just waiting for her to come home to see what happens this year.
When we send our kids to camp, we want them to love it. We want them to feel at home there. For those parents sending our kids to Jewish camp, we want to feel like our money has been well-spent on ensuring a Jewish future for our children. So, when our children are bereft to be home with us after an idyllic summer, we should feel like it’s an appropriate reflection on our investment.
That’s what we wanted, right? So why does it feel so bad? Obviously, it’s hard to see her sad, and you may feel your own feelings of rejection if you sense that your daughter doesn’t want to be home. But remember that she’s sad because she misses a thing that you’ve provided for her. I think most parents want their kids to be extremely happy at camp and then also perfectly content to be back home. We want them to like camp the right amount, the amount that’s convenient for us. But when we send our kids out into the world, often admittedly to have experiences that we’ve chosen for them, we don’t get to determine all that much of what happens once they’re there, or once they’re back.
When your daughter gets home, give her love and compassion and, most importantly, space. Make her favorite foods and provide plentiful comforts of home, but don’t expect praise or gratitude. Consider your thanks to be the fact that she loves the place that you send her for the summer. After a couple of days of sleeping and reentry, plan some activities for her to look forward to but don’t take it personally if she’s not excited about them or declines to participate.
Be available for hugs and walks and looking at pictures and hearing stories, but don’t expect or ask for any of those things. If you usually have limits on phone use or texting, consider taking those limits away for a couple of weeks to allow her to keep in close contact with friends after she returns. Even the worst case of campsickness is eventually taken over by going back to school and getting into the groove of the year. Missing camp may come back in waves over the next 10 months, but at some point, it will transition from missing camp to looking forward to camp. Providing a safe space to navigate that rhythm of emotions is also part of the gift of camp, and part of the responsibility of parenting.
Be well,
Miriam
