The climax of a busy summer was Camp Jewell. They are back from their 2 week adventure and we are coming down from our 2 week parenting vacation!
Brent and I are very busy feeling proud of ourselves for sending the kids off to camp and trusting that this would be a great experience for them. It was hard when the camp social worker started calling the 2nd day of camp saying Liam was struggling so much he was ‘hallucinating’ and that the kids had taken to speaking French in front of her so she couldn’t understand what they were saying. We stood firm in not taking evening phone calls even when a beehive was knocked over and Ellie was having a self-diagnosed panic attack. The first couple of letters were painful to read as Liam told us Ellie is homesick and that he was convinced we were in a financial crisis because of the cost of camp. He went as far as to convince the social worker that we had to ‘sell our house to pay for this camp’. Sheesh….where do they get this dramatic flair? Must be their father right Mr. Reader?
As always, the darkest part of the night led to the brightest skies. Ellie and Liam both stepped up and decided to make camp fun! Ellie became a leader in her LIT program and came home with stories of fun missteps and wild adventures. Even the beehive story became a highlighted adventure she couldn’t wait to share. She made great friends who are already busy planning how to get back together again. She put herself out there and heard her leadership voice which was full of confidence and kindness. We could see the transition in her just from the pictures as she jumped into camp life, let her hair go crazy (literally) and let go of some of her anxieties.
Liam carried around the letter I wrote to him full of tough love reminders that this will either be fun or awful and that is up to him. He took those words to heart and started taking big risks! He went for the challenges of the giant water slide, the treetop swing and even kayaking. He made new friends and wrote to us about how proud of himself he was for just going for it! When we picked him up he gathered his friends together for final good-bye photos and then told us stories all the way home. Although he didn’t always know how to handle some of the 14 year old boy shenanigans, he learned the concept of laughing with people instead of assuming they were laughing at him.
When we first had our kids, Brent and I named their independence as a priority goal. While they were gone it was hard to have to sit back and search for pictures to see how they were doing. We would scour the photos daily for evidence of who they were sitting by, what they were wearing and the activities they were doing. The mom inside me wanted to rescue them so badly. Instead they reminded me they didn’t need rescuing and they had everything they needed. They had each other and ate dinner together to check-in on one another each evening. They know how to make friends and found a voice of courage and leadership through their two weeks. This was an incredible opportunity and I am so grateful that we were all able to pull it off. I am so proud! I’d sell any house for this moment!