Are You Sabotaging Your Child’s Summer Camp Experience?

Are you sabotaging your child’s summer camp experience?

“Of course not,” you laugh. “What parent does that?”

You throw your head back and laugh off the ridiculousness of that premise. You are, after all, a hip, more in-touch parent. You talk to your child about everything—drugs, peer pressure, STDs, and bullying. You’ve read the latest parenting books—Smart Parenting for Smart Kids: Nurturing Your Child’s True Potential and NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children. Your kids have sophisticated palates and eagerly sample a wide range of organic fruits and vegetables, kimchi, sushi, and veggie meat. They’re sensitive to animals and to the carbon footprint they leave on the planet.

But are you in touch with yourself? Are you in touch with your “inner child?” According to pop psychology, the “inner child” is a subconscious collection of all childhood experiences from conception to puberty. If something traumatic happens in your childhood and you don’t feel at peace with it, the emotions of that event can play out into adulthood. For example, if your parents left home without you, you might have felt abandoned. If left unresolved, those feelings of abandonment can surface at any significant life event, like when you send your child away to summer camp.

For example, you might feel a sense of abandonment when the camp rules say, “No cell phones, iPads, computers, or technology of any type…” To feel better, you covertly pack up two iPhones—one that’s a decoy to be taken away by camp officials and one that works so your child can secretly call you.

If the camp rules explicitly say “Do not send candy or food care packages,” you might hide a stash of candy in a box of maxi pads and send it to your child to make your feel better.

If your child complains about a counselor who reprimands her for leaving the bunk at midnight to raid the mess hall’s pantry, you might make irate phone calls to the camp director, the division head, and the camp social worker.

Overnight camp is an ideal opportunity for your child to build life-long character traits. By conquering homesickness and other fears, your child develops self-confidence. By learning how to overcome failure without fear of disappointing you, your child can learn resiliency. And, by developing close attachments to other campers and adults, your child learns interpersonal and communication skills that can benefit them in the adult world.

All these well-intentioned expressions of motherhood, could be sabotaging your child’s summer camp experience. Which is a shame because overnight summer camp is an ideal opportunity for personal growth for your child.

So what can YOU do to ensure that you don’t stand in the way of that?

According to Teresa Aubele, Ph.D. and coauthor of Train Your Brain to Get Happy, your brain is impressionable and can form new neuron pathways and you can train your brain to “bury the unproductive, depressing thoughts and habits that drag you (and your brain) down.” By reinforcing productive, cheerful thoughts and activities, you can become a happier and healthier parent. Aubele recommends tools such as journaling, meditation, visualization, and nurturance.

Journaling: Keep a daily chronicle of your day-to-day activities. If you ate a pizza, write down how you felt. If you sent your child to camp, note specific feelings. By journaling, you can look for patterns in your moods. When are you happy? What makes you angry, stressed, or depressed?

Meditation:  If the Dalai Lama meditates daily, why don’t you. When you meditate, you tune out extraneous thoughts and focus on a single point. Sometimes a single word, phrase, or mantra can help you to focus. Combined with deep breathing, it can produce a state of deep relaxation.

Visualization: High-powered executives visualize themselves reaching goals. When you visualize, you focus on a mental image. Like meditation, it can help you to tune out negative thoughts.

If the behaviors are increasingly hurtful, see a therapist. A therapist can help you deal with underlying emotions and can teach you constructive ways to deal with life events that dredge up old fears.

You are the most important mentor for your child. If you demonstrate positive, productive ways to deal with fears, you will be raising a happier, more empowered child.

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