Hi-ho, Hi-ho, I Can't Wait for My Little Campers to Go!

Now I get it.

More than once during summers past, I bemoaned the rise of the increasingly
“camped”? child. Especially when I lived on the East Coast, it seemed virtually
every little one I knew was permanently encamped at math camp, baseball camp,
computer camp, “my parents really need me to go to Harvard”? camp you name it.
It was as if no one sat around the neighborhood pool, read books, ate popsicles
and chilled-out over those long summer months with mom and dad or, more likely, mom.

I noted that, except for a few "odds and ends" morning day camps here and there,
that's exactly what my kids and I did all summer.

Flash forward, I live in the midwest now. I'm a single mom. Life is more than
a little different. I'm not sure if it's because my kids are older (12, 10, 7
and 5) or, more likely, because I'm now raising the four on my own but . . .
summer is around the corner and my kids' calendars are so full, I literally
can't get it all onto my Palm Pilot. There's too much overlap. (Not sure how
I'm going to handle that.)

There's tennis class, Blue Moose sports camp, golf camp, Kannakuk sports camp - two weeks
with my oldest two gone - Yeah!!(shhhh - I didn't say that), Tower Camp,
Scampers Camp, the Pony Tail soft ball league, vacation Bible School and Arts
Camp.

I'm looking for a few more. Technically, I could have sent my 7-year-old to a
two week sleepaway camp, but I decided that just wouldn't look good on my
“parenting”? resume. (But boy I was close. . .)

So, to all those parents to whom I gave a hard time about camp - I'm sorry!
It's HARD to be faced with four young kids telling you “I'm bored”? especially if
the parent on duty has to work ( a lot.) I get it.

Would that it could be like it was when I was little. (Yeah yeah, cue the
violens.) “Camp”? was almost unheard of. So was including our mothers in our
play. My friends and I went to the park, the pool, the 5-and-dime, each other's
homes, and we never ever expected our parents to be part of the mix.

Not so today. For a lot of reasons, many of which I don't "get," organized activities are the norm. Okay - when you can't beat 'em join 'em some wise person once said.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reported, more and more camps that have always
operated for 8 weeks a summer - the norm on the East Coast for nearly a century
the NYT noted - are finally if reluctantly allowing 2 and 4 week camp options.
Why? Because more and more parents have summer homes and/or they can't bear to be away from their kids for that long anymore. The days of “seen and not
heard”? when it comes to kids are, apparently, over. The days of the
“helicopter parents”? are in.

Okay, here's what I want to know - just where are those 8-week camps?