Pater Familias … because I'm your FATHER!

Seven-Year-Old Still Undecided On Sleep-Away Camp

May 21, 2010 · Activities | Behavior | Help Pater | Influences

How do you and yours work out big-deal decisions?

This One We Need Her To Weigh In On

Yup, there goes my daughter.

Now and again Girl Child shows some little tiny bit of recognizable me. No idea how she picks it up – DNA, my mindful parenting and shining example, osmosis, accident, whatever – but there it is.

Recognition isn’t always joyful. Like, I see unmistakable signs of my pitiful hand-eye and suckiness at ball sports. Minerva wasn’t much of an athlete, either, so our poor kid got double-whammied.

Looks like she took another double hit on making major decisions with an impossible dual legacy of…

• Minerva’s tendency to deliberate, in fantastic detail, before getting to Yes or No or – this makes me crazy – Yes And No.
• My tendency to not to think at all. Don't mind the details, but I sort of groove on them and then act on a fast hunch.

Our kid, like me, likes the gut more than brainwork. But, like her Mama, it can take her forever to decide. To whit, this weeks-old thing about going, or not, to sleep-away camp.

There’s still a place for her, if she wants it, at what would seem to be an ideal first sleep-away experience. It’s not capital-C Camp but a week in a special summer program of GC’s beloved Genoa Academy of Classical Ballet, directed by strict but loving  Ballet Mistress Ludmilla, with an enrollment of only about 15 girls from the school. Girl Child knows everybody, or at least their faces. The daily schedule goes from one absolute favorite thing of GC’s to another -- swimming in a lake, dancing, artsy-craftsyness, movies, cookouts, goofing around with a mob of girls. Basically it sounds like a six-day aquatic/ballet/outdoor vacationlike mass playdate and slumber party. Accommodations aren’t so shabby, either. They use a great big lakeside vacation house.

I can see why GC can’t say No to Ballet Camp, but also why she’s nervous about sleeping away from home and us for more than a night, which she’s never done. In a shorter-term deal, like her friend’s ice-rink party that she was nervous about because she can’t skate, we’d just bigfoot her and tell her she’s going. But this is way bigger and more $$$, and we want her on board.

GC doesn’t like it, but I’ve been telling her we have to decide in a week or so. Other day, I started a Minerva-style list of pluses and minuses. I wrote on a couple index cards, from a stack on the kitchen table. Team Plus blew out Minus, whose only point was scared to sleep away.

But then GC yelled, “Daddy stop!” She took six cards of her own, wrote Yes on three, No on three, flipped them over, shuffled, and started picking.

Cool for a kid her age, am I right? Then and there I had a powerful That’s my girl moment, super-proud of my girl’s cleverness but mildly horrified at the lengths she went to, to avoid thinking it through.

The first two cards came up Yes, which seemed to settle things for about 10 seconds. Then she changed the rules and started re-picking.

Last time I asked about camp, in the car, she yelled, “Daddy, I just don’t know!”

Talk to me, brothers and sisters. Is seven too young for sleep-away? If we're sure she’s going to love it, should we push her? Want to hear from veteran camp dads and moms  about their kids’ first sleep-aways.

CHECK OUT ANSWERS to same Qs at Pater’s post about camp conundrum on the Parenting Channel of Yahoo’s wondrous Shine online mag. Shine Mamas never, ever let me down. Love ‘em a lot.

MORE MAMAS WEIGH IN on Pater’s Shine post Is Having Enemies Actually Good For Kids? Inspired by breath of fresh air on kid-to-kid conflict in New York Times. Without making light, the Times piece puts hype about bullying, etc., in perspective. Could it be relevant that a dad, not a mama wrote it?

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