Elizabeth is home from camp! I’m so relieved! I am also so annoyed:
1. The camp assured me that the section I should put her in (after her first choice didn’t work out) would be for grades 3-6, not grades 5-6 as in the camp description. But it WAS 5-6, with her the only 3rd grader. Some of the other girls were going through puberty and were as tall as the counselors. Fortunately most of the girls were nice to her, though of course they preferred to spend time mostly with their peers. And one girl was mean to her: every time Elizabeth mentioned liking/doing something, the girl said it was babyish to like/do that; she also made fun of Elizabeth for being less competent at tasks.
2. The camp said that since groups were being combined because of low enrollment, the section she was signing up for would include the pottery lessons from the section that was her first choice. It did not.
3. The camp said there would be letter-writing time every day. There was not.
4. The camp said we could bring a week’s worth of letters on drop-off day (each letter labeled with the day it should be delivered), and they’d hand them out on those days; this would ensure our daughters would get daily reassurance from us, especially on the first few days. They gave her the entire week’s packet on Thursday.
5. The pick-up was just as badly organized as the drop-off: no indication of where we should go or what we should be doing or where we should park or when we should leave, and no one seemed to know. Everyone’s stuff was jumbled together in a big pile, so that if I hadn’t been compulsively re-checking the heap, I would have missed a whole bag of her laundry and also one single shoe lying on its own.
6. They gave us a letter on the way out saying, “You know how we checked everyone for lice when they got here, but we were so badly organized that lots of people didn’t even know they were supposed to get checked? Well, to our shock, there was a lice break-out! So you might want to check your daughter and launder/trash/bag all her stuff when you get home!”
But all these things that have me in a big agitated fit were total shrug-offs to Elizabeth. I asked if she thought she’d have had more fun if the campers had been her age, and she shrugged and said she didn’t think so. I asked if the mean girl had been upsetting, and she said yes, but that she knew those things weren’t true, and anyway that girl was mean to everyone. She also had a satisfying story where she (Elizabeth) said she liked the show My Little Pony, and the mean girl said that was a baby show, and several of the other girls chimed in saying NO that show was AWESOME, making the mean girl feel uncool for not knowing about it.
She wasn’t sad when I left, and she didn’t feel homesick even early in the week. She said they did one fun thing after another all day every day. When I said, “Are you happy to be going home, or do you wish you were staying another week?,” she said “Both!” I asked if she’d want to go back next year, and she said yes in a voice that implied she thought it was weird I’d even ask. She liked her counselors, and she wants to write a letter to the awesome lifeguard who was so funny and cool. The swimming was organized very safely: everyone was tested, and then they had to wear bathing caps color-coded to indicate their swim level (which is probably how she got to know the lifeguard so well, since she tested as a beginner and had to stay right near the lifeguard).
She didn’t come home badly sunburned or badly bug-bitten—just the unavoidable light tan and scattered bites. She came home with most of her belongings (that is, if anything’s missing, I haven’t noticed yet), and only one small item belonging to someone else (looks like a bag for a shower cap or bath pouf—nothing I need to fret about trying to return). Both pairs of sneakers were ruined, but I’d assumed they would be and had sent ones she was about to outgrow. Several items of clothing are probably not salvageable (two with mildew stains, several with very ground-in dirt that then sat for days in a damp laundry bag), but we expected and planned for that. The stamped envelopes I sent with her all got sealed shut from the dampness, but that’s okay. She almost lost her new raincoat, but didn’t. Her hair was reasonably combed. She had a great time.
Haha, i read this just after i tweeted at you. I am so glad she had fun and I love that you were all annoyed but she had a great time! (I mean i don’t love that you’re annoyed and I totally understand why you are….but I am really happy that E had a nice adventure and it sounds like everything that seems like it sucked for you was either kind of fun or a nonevent for her. Yay!
I’m so glad! I read these posts with interest as I went to Girl Scout camp for YEARS as a kid, and had many mixed results, although I never had anything…unforgivable…happen to me (although one girl I went with one year went home mid-week she was so miserable; I always went with a “buddy”; the time my friend went home was a fluke, and after that, I found a better camp buddy who always stayed the whole time with me).
I’m glad she had fun & there were only minor losses. Good for her!
Yay! Welcome home Elizabeth. :) I always wanted to go to sleepaway camp.
I want to go to camp. I mean, I did MANY TIMES as a kid, but now kinda really want to revisit. Thanks, Elizabeth. :)
I LOVED camp as a kid, and I’m so glad it was a great experience for your daughter! I’d be livid about the lice thing though, and I really hope she didn’t bring any home.
I’m so glad she had a good time! I’ve been fretting all week about her.
It kind of sounds like it was fantastic for her and I am so glad. SO GLAD!! it also sounds like she’s a rather resilient girl. So good on you and Paul for that.
I am really glad it worked out and she wants to go back. :)
Kids are so resilient. Good for her (and you) to try this new experience!
So just curious, do you plan to report all this back to the camp? It’s actually why I do nothing with a parental involvement requirement. I would be so livid about this list if I witnessed it first-hand that I would have interfered with my kid’s ability to enjoy herself by trying to fix it for her. I have to remove myself from the situation (and therefore remain in the dark about what I assume are MANY more issues than I actually know about) in order to allow my kid to find her way in the world. It drives me less nuts to just not know.
Oh, but boy I would be mad. And would assume the same poor organizational process will still exist next year if I didn’t say anything….
If they do a parent survey or something, I will; otherwise, I’m not planning to. I assume the same poor organizational process will still exist next year even if I DO say something—and then I would be EVEN MORE furious.
I would have been LIVID about the age difference thing.
But I am so, so glad that Elizabeth had a good time at camp despite the problems you noted. It seems like you’ve raised a kid that is able to go with the flow, which is a quality that will take her far in life.
Oh I am so glad to hear that she had a good time! And am also annoyed with you at all the… Camp disorganization.
(I went to only one sleepaway camp as a kid and it was AWFUL so I couldn’t reply to your request for “everything is okay” stories. I mean, everything WAS okay, but still not particularly comforting.)
I went to and worked at camps for many years. Was this, by chance, their first session? From all of the dis-organization it sounds like it may have been. That’s not an excuse, but maybe explains some of it. I’ve seen all kinds of dis-organization over the years, but never, ever at the waterfront/pool–there’s just no room for error there, and the staff at the waterfront is highly trained. Fortunately, kids are resilient, counselors are awesome, and camp is one of the best things you can do for your kids in terms of independence and responsibility, personal growth, character-building, etc. Yeah for Elizabeth!
What a cool, level-headed girl you raised. Excellent.
Oh, I’m so glad she had fun!! But I share your annoyance (could we call it anger?), and think that #1 and #4 are unacceptable. Boo. Hope you’ll be sent an eval form.
This sounds great! I mean, not the annoying parts, but Elizabeth did well and had a great time, so yay! Next year hopefully you can hit a week that is not the first week of camp and they’ll be a bit more organized.
Very glad she is home in one piece, and hopefully sans creepy-crawlies. I’m hoping she learned lots of new songs–that was always my favorite part of camp.
YAY! Sounds like mission accomplished.
YAY! I am so glad she had so much fun. The mean girl-well, there would probably have been one of those in her age appropriate cabin, so what can you do. I love her response to you about that girl, I wish I could be more like that! Oh, and by the way, my 19 yr old daughter LOVES Little Pony, and it is definitely what the “cool” kids watch!!
This reminds me of something I talked about with my mom: how, as a kid, I loved going out in the rain and playing with water and everything to do with water really. And my mom was always fretting about dirt and wet clothes and colds etc. I didn’t even mind the wet clothes.
It shows how differently mother and child can see things :)
I never went to camp, and I’m a little mystified when my kid seems to want to go – which is unlikely to happen. (And her good friend went for 4 weeks and came home homesick after 2…)
The My Little Pony thing is weird. Do you know that there are teenaged boys and grown men who like MLP and call themselves Bronies? I found an “I Love Ponies” t-shirt in the men’s department at Target.
So glad she had fun and I think the thing that would be the worst for me after reading everything is the lice because- YIKES- that’s a gift that could continue after camp is over…ugh! HOpe it is all clear in your household :)
I thought I was the only one who keeps checking the weather at the camp location! My 8 year old son is at camp (4 hours away) for 2 weeks for the first time. After some bad weather here, I considered sending an email to the camp requesting a copy of their severe weather policy, then realizing that they probably don’t even have one, or would think I was crazy. I was just anxious after hearing about a tornado that hit a campground last week. I mean, do the camp people keep track of weather reports or are they just busy with camp stuff?