to the parking lot. She spent her first four hours at camp with the nurse, who french-braided her hair and gave her cold cloths for her forehead until she was feeling better. She looks back on that time and mostly remembers being bored; the nurse needed to be sure she didn’t have a flu or something, and so even once Fiona felt fine, she had to stay in the Wellness Center for a while. I didn’t know until she got home that Fiona had thrown up (thank goodness I didn’t know that; who knows what I would have done if I knew). Once I got back to my car, two weeks of profound discomfort began for me. I spent those two weeks obsessively checking the camp website for photos and my mailbox for postcards, looking for evidence that my girls were happy. I answered dozens of emails and comments on my blog, defending my decision to send my kids to camp, and to leave Fiona there in the Wellness Center, terrified. After what seemed like two years, the kids came home on the GAC bus, wearing t-shirts that said, “Happy Camper.” And, in fact, that is what they were: so, so happy.
challenges, and learned to accept their discomfort as a part of their growth. Both kids made friends that they kept in touch with all year, and hope to return to GAC every year with “forever.”
“Two weeks
Still, sending kids to camp is not for wimps. It requires a leap of faith that the difficulty (and, l’ll just say it, that the cost) will be worth it. It requires an ability to manage the emotional discomfort that comes with not-knowing, not-controlling, not-checking—it requires just trusting. But I’m comfortable with that discomfort.
unplugged
Christine Carter, Ph.D., is a parent coach and the author of RAISING HAPPINESS: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents. She coaches and teaches online classes in order to help parents bring more joy into their own lives and the lives of their children, and she writes an award-winning blog for parents and couples. She is also a sociologist and happiness expert at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. Sign up for her short weekly Happiness Tips at www. christinecarter.com.
in a way they
of being helped them tune into nature don’t anywhere else.”
Two weeks of being unplugged helped them tune into nature in a way they don’t anywhere else. Though both reported missing home, they found comfort in knowing that they could cope with homesickness. They each tried dozens of new activities and sports, took on new goldarrowcamp.com
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