Last summer, my 11-year-old daughter packed her bags and I drove her a few miles away to a beautiful school campus in Northern Baltimore County for a summer drama camp. It would be her very first experience with a sleepaway camp, and I felt pretty clueless about what to expect.
While my daughter tends to be a pretty social being, I just wasn't sure how she'd fare away from home for an entire week. A week feels long for your 11-year-old to be gone! I knew she'd have to really embrace her independence. I worried she'd be homesick. And even though she'd expressed an interest in acting, I honestly had no idea if theater would prove to be her thing. Basically, my list of concerns was not small.
My daughter definitely had nerves, but she seemed mostly excited as we drove through the school's gates. Because the school is both a day school and a boarding school, it looked far more like a college campus than I had imagined. There were lakes, swimming pools, horses — you name it. I almost felt a twinge of jealousy that I didn't get to hang out there for a week. But I definitely felt more like I was dropping my kid off at college than for a weeklong sleepaway camp.
That became even more true when we entered the dorms. That's right! Dorms. It was all so college. Luckily, there was a familiar face already in the room. My daughter's friend was also taking part in the camp, and they had requested to room together. Their sheets were barely on their beds before they were ready to kick us all out. We left our tweens to their adventures, and off we went.
I imagined I'd get a goodnight phone call later … maybe even a homesick, crying call. That turned out not to be the case. After a day or two of distracted callbacks, I decided to just leave her alone completely. She didn't seem to want or need to hear from me, even in the evening.
The couple of times we did talk, she was busy — usually chatting, or laughing, and not really talking to me anyway. Oh, tweens. But that was good! For a worried mom, her happy vibe provided a lot of relief. And I was glad she had a lot on her agenda — like, of course, rehearsing for the end-of-the-week performance and eating dining hall meals. But she was also swimming, having campfires, and making a ton of new friends.
I knew my kid was having a great time. But I couldn't wait for the week to be over. I was excited to see the end-of-the-week performance and hear all about this amazing adventure. Finally, I got to sit in the audience and watch the skits my daughter had been practicing all week. It's not that watching a play isn't fun, but the series of creative skits the audience was treated to allowed the kids to express themselves so fully. They were funny, sad, weird, or downright rebellious. I instantly knew, when watching my daughter's onstage confidence, that the creative freedom had meant a lot to her. She appeared in five different skits and slayed them all.
After the performance, there was a farewell lunch. My daughter's father and I had been so excited to see and talk to our kid, but she basically couldn't get enough of her new friends. She had an extra pep in her step. I could tell she felt incredibly grown up after a week on her own. The mom in me wanted to rein her back in. The person who remembered how great that freedom felt as a tween, then teen, myself knew better.
On the way back home, my daughter cried. She didn't want to leave camp and her new friends. She was text-chatting with so many of the girls she had met. As the time for drama camp approaches once again, she's still talking to several of them. One of the girls she met last summer will be her roommate for the experience (which is now two weeks!) this year.
There are a lot of reasons why the experience was so powerful for my kid. For one, it seems like acting is something she really enjoys. She's been on a mission to go to auditions and find new opportunities to immerse herself in the world of drama since last summer. I even had her taken to get headshots because she feels so sure that this is her path.
But the sleepaway camp part — the being away from home, from me, and just doing her own thing — also came at a really pivotal point in her life. While at the time, 11 felt young to be without my kid for a week, she was so clearly ready for the taste of independence. She has genuinely been looking forward to having it once again since.
As a mom of a now 12-year-old, I'm so happy that my daughter got to have this experience, because she undoubtedly came back more self-assured. In a world where confidence is everything, it was the best thing ever for a mom to see. While I always knew my kid thrived on independence, watching how much she seemed to learn about herself from being out in the world made it so much clearer.
With a two-week-long camp around the corner, I can't say that I don't have the same fears all over again. What if two weeks is too long? What if she's homesick? What if it's not as much fun as last year?
The truth is, those two weeks are likely going to fly by. She will probably tell me they were the best two weeks of her life. But no matter what happens, even if there are hard moments, the growth will be worth it. And not just for my kid, but for me.
The truth about parenting tweens and teens is, they show you what they are capable of all the time. If you let them, they will teach you how to let them go just enough so they can find what's meant for them.
For more info on Garrison Forest school camps, visit their site or find them on social media.
