Sending Your Kid to Sleepaway Camp Is Harder on You. That's Normal.

A mom on a call with me this spring was talking about sending her son to sleepaway camp. She said this:

"The only thing I'd be nervous about is the lack of phone calls."

Then she caught herself.

"I feel like that's more of my issue than his issue."

They talk all day, every day. Of course she's nervous.

Feeling that is normal. It means you love your kid and you pay attention to their life.

Full disclosure: I own a sleepaway camp in New Hampshire. I'll tell you about it at the end. I've done 28 summers at camp and been to more than 500 camps across 47 states.

The Short Answer

Yes, sending your kid to sleepaway camp is usually harder on you than on them. Your kid gets a whole new world on day one. You get a quiet house and a life you can't see.

Camp people have a name for what parents feel. They call it kidsickness, and almost every camp parent gets it.

We wrote this to our camp families a couple of years ago, and I still think it's true:

Now you are at the bus stop with that internal dialogue that remains unspoken: "What if I miss you too much?" ... It's almost always tougher for the parents than for the kids.

The Quiet House

Every bus day, I watch parents do the same thing. They smile big, wave through the window, and hold it together until the bus pulls away.

Then the kids get to camp. They walk through the archway, meet their bunk, and by night one most of them are singing with the whole staff.

Parents go home to a quiet house.

And some nights at camp aren't easy. One first night, an 8-year-old I'll call Joey didn't want to go to dinner. His counselor flagged me down, and we sat with him at the health center. Then I stepped aside and texted his mom.

She wrote back that he'd been worried about camp. He hadn't eaten lunch. Now he wasn't eating dinner.

Picture being her in that moment.

She's hours away, and the only thing she can do is trust us. Her kid gets a whole new world, and she gets an empty seat at dinner and a text from the camp director. There is nothing wrong with her for feeling that, and there's nothing wrong with you.

Is It Normal to Miss Your Kid at Camp?

Yes. Think about how much you know about your kid's day right now. Where they are, who they sat with at lunch, how the math test went. Most of us carry that window around in our pocket.

A lot of parents haven't gone a full day without it since their kid was born. I can't remember the last time I went 24 hours without a screen myself.

Camp closes the window. For three and a half weeks or more, your kid has a life you can't see.

They'll have a rough night you can't fix. They'll have a great day you won't hear about until a letter shows up a week later. They'll make a friend whose name you don't know yet.

That's a big deal.

Anyone who tells you to just relax hasn't done it. On our new family Zoom, a parent put words to it:

"She has to do it away from me, and that makes me nervous, just like it makes everyone nervous."

Everyone. You're in good company.

What Joey's Mom Missed

We listened to Joey, and he got excited and got into the program. It wasn't perfect after that. He's eight.

Partway through the session, he showed up to a big all-camp formation in a slightly different color t-shirt than his team, had kind of a meltdown, and decided to sit out. I said okay. He sat out and watched the rest of his team do it, and he realized in that moment that he'd missed out on something.

That choice changed everything.

By the last week, at Color War song and cheer, Joey was front and center with a special part. Beaming. This was a place he understood now, a place he called home.

His mom wasn't there for any of it. She sent us a kid who wouldn't eat dinner on night one, and she got a different kid back.

That life you can't see is the reason they go. When a kid gets through a hard night without you fixing it, they come home knowing they can. None of us grow if things don't get a little bit hard.

If you're still asking whether your kid is ready at all, I wrote about that too: Is my kid ready for camp?

How Do I Prepare My Kid for Sleepaway Camp?

Start by knowing homesickness is normal. The world's leading expert on it is Michael Thompson, the psychologist who wrote Homesick and Happy. His point, in a lot of words, is that it's a feature, not a bug. It's a kid having a hard time figuring out what to do in a new place.

Then three things.

Don't make a pickup deal. I know it's tempting to say, "If you don't love it after 24 hours, I'll come get you." It feels kind. What it really tells your kid is, "I don't like it here, and I'm not going to move." They spend the first day waiting for the exit instead of finding their footing.

Have the homesick talk before camp starts. Tell them they'll probably miss home a little, and that's okay. Then tell them what to do about it. Go talk to your counselor. Go talk to the camp director. "I don't know what to do in the dining hall. Normally I'd ask my mom."

Tell them you'll miss them, but keep it light. Kids worry that they're hurting you, and they don't need to carry that onto the bus.

I made a short video on this:

How Much Will I Hear From Camp?

More than you think, and less than you're used to.

We're a phone-free camp. Kids write letters home, a lot of them at rest hour. You send one-way emails that get printed and handed to your kid. We post photos twice a day. Kids call home around weeks 1, 3, and 5.

Camp is small on purpose, and every kid is known by name, so when something is off, someone notices. If your kid is homesick in the first couple of days, you're going to get a text from me or from one of our division leaders. You get the real story. It's not a black box.

And if you're the one having the hard night, call me. I mean it.

5 Questions to Ask a Camp Before Bus Day

Every camp handles parents differently. Ask these on your next call.

Full Disclosure

I own Camps Kenwood & Evergreen, a brother-sister sleepaway camp in New Hampshire. We're small on purpose, and we're phone-free.

We're not the only good camp out there. Ask every camp you're looking at these five questions. Ask us too.

The quiet house is temporary. The kid who steps off that bus at the end is what you keep.

You got this,

Jack

P.S. If the quiet house is the part you're dreading, I want to hear about it. Text me at 585-451-5141.

See Camps Kenwood & Evergreen