Everything you might want to know about our first summer of sleepaway camp
Including my biggest fear
As many of you know, our oldest daughter, age 8, went to sleepaway camp for the first time this summer — for two weeks! This was a long time coming, as you’ll see below, and so we’ve been fielding questions about camp and our choice to send her there for over a year. I’ve done my best to answer them along the way, but now that she officially has a session under her belt — and is already signed up for next summer — I thought we could do a deep dive today.
Let’s go!
Why sleepaway camp?
First, something you must know: I did not grow up going to sleepaway camp. In fact, I was notorious for signing up for Girl Scout camp multiple times… and then refusing to get on the bus to go. (I remember my parents, bless them, being very sanguine about this. I’m not sure I would have been the same.)
I did, eventually, make it to two years of overnight camp in middle school — only because my three best friends were attending, too — but though it was enjoyable, it wasn’t a particularly life-changing or beloved part of my childhood. John’s background is roughly the same, minus the refusal to get on the bus.
So why, then, sleepaway camp?
In many ways, camp feels like the apex of the kind of life we’re trying to create for our kids: a place where they can grow in confidence and independence, explore and have adventures, feel tightly connected to a community where they are loved and known, and live fully-engaged in the messy, glorious, awe-inspiring world.
And of course, camp is a place where can they leave the pull of screens and the complications of social media behind, which we appreciate now but imagine will be a lifeline when they’re older.