'Kid-sick' parents hate to let go at camp time

updated 1:12 p.m. ET July 9, 2008

CHICAGO - Eve Pidgeon watched the large group of kids, many of them laughing and chatting excitedly as they boarded a bus for summer sleepaway camp last summer.

“They just couldn’t wait,” says Pidgeon, whose 8-year-old daughter Zoe was among the young campers.

Then Pidgeon looked around and noticed something else: “There were no children crying — just parents.”

These days, camp leaders and family counselors say it’s an increasingly common dynamic. It used to be the homesick kid begging to come home from camp. While that still happens, they’ve noticed that it’s often parents who have more trouble letting go.

They call it “kid-sickness,” a condition attributed in large part to today’s more involved style of parenting. Observers also say it’s only being exacerbated by our ability to be in constant contact by cell phone and computer, as well as many parents’ perception that the world is a more dangerous place.

For leaders at many camps, it’s meant that dealing with parents has become a huge part of their jobs.

“The time and energy camp directors put into preparing parents for camp is now equal to the time they prepare children for camp,” says Peg Smith, head of the American Camp Association, which works with about 2,600 camps nationwide.

Pidgeon readily admits she’s one of those parents.

Last summer, the single, working mother of two wiped away her own tears, as Zoe left for 10 days at Camp Maas, about 40 miles northwest of their home in Grosse Pointe Park, Mich. This year, Zoe asked to go for three weeks and her mother said, “yes,” reluctantly.

“It was nothing for our mothers to send us away for two months. We were their jobs 24 hours a day, so perhaps they needed a respite,” Pidgeon says. “They perhaps didn’t ache for their kids on a daily basis, as working parents do.”

Before Zoe went to camp last summer, her mom loaded her daughter’s backpack with stationery and stamps, since the only way she was allowed to contact her family was through handwritten letters. Both her parents, who are divorced, and Zoe’s younger brother Ben wrote to her often.

But as they watched their mailboxes each day, nothing came.

Glued to camp's webcam
The family frantically checked the camp’s Web site, where photos of campers were regularly posted. And her mom took some comfort in that.

“I could see she was immensely happy, her smile so big it must have hurt her cheeks!” Pidgeon says.

But still, no letters, even after she sent a fax to the camp that read “Zoe Pidgeon: Write to Your Mom Right NOW!!!”

Pidgeon later discovered that, when mailing her letters home, Zoe had decided to use stickers with bees on them that came with a letter-writing kit she’d received. She thought they were the same as the “normal stamps” her mom had given her.

Pidgeon laughed until she cried when she figured out what had happened. But even when she eventually got the letters Zoe had sent, something about them struck her.

Carlos Osorio / AP When Zoe Pidgeon wrote to her dad from camp last summer, her letter didn't focus on missing her family, but rather on all her adventures.

“Her letters, when they came, weren’t about missing us — it was all about her amazing adventures,” Pidgeon says.

Zoe had been horseback riding and rock climbing, had taken part in a lip-syncing competition — and tried all kinds of things she never thought she could do.

“They do keep you really busy,” says Zoe, who’s now 9 years old.

“I think you get a half an hour from the time you dry off from your shower after you swim until your next activity. You really don’t have time to miss your parents.”

Bob Ditter, a therapist who works with children, adolescents and families in Boston, has acted as a consultant to camps since the early 1980s and says he hears stories like those all the time.

He says there’s something to be said for a parent who cares, but not to the point of becoming a “helicopter parent,” a term used for parents who constantly hover over their children, stepping in to monitor their choices and solve their problems, even into adult life.

“Parents love their kids a lot,” Ditter says. But they also need to let go sometimes. He is, for instance, absolutely opposed to the idea of Internet webcams that allow parents to monitor their children at camp.

“Would you put a webcam in your child’s bedroom?” Ditter asks. “I think parents need to trust that all the good work they’ve done teaching their kids values and to stand up for themselves, it’s all there.”

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