The Nerv-Cited Goodbye

Two weeks. No phones. Two heavy duty extra large zippered moving bags and one extra long hug because, well because I’m not going to see my kid for two weeks.

This isn’t a new camp, so the anticipation of the complete unknown isn’t there, but as excited as my kid was to get on the bus, she also shared that she was a little nervous. 

It’s been a whole year since camp. Some of her friends aren’t going to be there, some of the kids she didn’t love from last year will be, she didn’t know what group or cabin she’ll be in until they tag her bags at the bus stop, and she shared she’s worried it wouldn’t live up to the top-notch time she had last year. 

I’ve done this camp drop-off before…many times…for both kids. 

Yet, that same feeling of being nerv-cited is creeping in for me too. Long sigh! I stop to catch my breath before turning on the car and driving away. 

That first night walking past her room, I catch myself standing in the doorway missing her and trying to visualize what she’s doing at camp. 

Camp drop-off, it turns out, is the practice round. College is the real thing. Sleepaway camp will teach you tons about your child leaving for college before you step foot on any college campus.

The Safety Net You Won’t Have Later

Here’s what makes camp such a gentle rehearsal: it hands you scaffolding that college eventually takes away.

At camp, I know exactly when I’ll see my kid again. It’s on the calendar. Circled. I can count down the days, and on the hard nights, that certainty is what gets me to sleep. 

College won’t hand me that. Thanksgiving break, a random weekend home, a FaceTime that may or may not happen, none of it comes with the same guarantee. So this summer, I’m practicing the ache of separation while I still have that safety net, because I know I’ll need the muscle when the net disappears.

And then there’s the letters. My kid can’t fire off a text that says “can you pick be up in 20”; I can’t either, because there’s no phones. There’s only the ancient art of letter writing, mailing it, and waiting or using the camp online letter writing portal. 

Either way, I have to think about what to say and choose my words instead of reacting in real time. That’s not a downgrade from texting, it’s training! It’s teaching me to communicate in fewer, more intentional doses instead of constant check-ins, which is exactly the skill I need when my kid is three time zones away and only half-answering my texts between classes.

The tools of camp, mail day, a pickup date, a landline number for emergencies only, are training wheels. They’ll come off. But the muscle I’m building now, the tolerance for distance and delay, doesn’t disappear with the training wheels. That’s the point!

Camp Skills I’m Picking Up

1.  The silence is the point, not the problem. No news for two weeks isn’t a crisis, it’s the assignment. If I can sit in that unknowing now, without spiraling, I’m building the exact tolerance I’ll need when the quiet stretches from weeks into semesters.

2.  Their independence grows in the space I’m not filling.  Away from my voice, my reminders, my gentle nagging, or my constant hovering, my kid gets to find out who they are without my narration running underneath it. That’s not a loss. That’s the whole assignment of adolescence, playing out in miniature.

3.  My anxiety is not their emergency.  If camp calls, it’s real, and I’ll answer. If camp doesn’t call, that’s not a bad sign, it’s the best sign of all. Learning to read that signal now means I won’t catastrophize every unanswered text once they’re in a dorm.

4.  How I say goodbye is a mini dress rehearsal for how I’ll say goodbye later.  A steady, warm, brief goodbye at camp drop-off is teaching my kid how to feel about leaving. If I fall apart in that parking lot, I’m not just having a moment, I’m modeling one. I want the goodbye I give at college move-in to be the same steady version I’m practicing right now.

5.  Homesickness, mine and theirs, is a feature, not a failure. Missing each other doesn’t mean the distance was a mistake. It means the bond is strong enough to survive it. That ache in my chest on the drive home isn’t proof I’m doing this wrong. It’s proof of how much this connection matters.

6.  We’re both building the “I did hard things without you” file. Every phone-free day my kid survives at camp becomes evidence, for both of us, that they can handle being away from me (and their phone). That evidence bank is what we’ll both be withdrawing from on move-in day.

7.  Reunion is a mirror for what’s coming. The kid who comes home from camp is a little different. Noticing that shift now, in a two-week dose, means I won’t be blindsided by it later when they come home for a college break as someone slightly changed.

Reflection Question: Where in your life right now do you have a “practice round” for a bigger goodbye that’s coming?

The Elephant in the Parking Lot

I’ve written before about watching Swazi, the elephant matriarch at the Safari Park, pull leaves down just low enough for her daughter to reach, then step back and let her do the rest. Camp drop-off is me pulling the leaves down. College will be me stepping back even further.

The letters, the pickup date, the two-week limit, these are the leaves I can still lower. Someday soon, I won’t be able to lower them at all. So this summer, I’m not just dropping my kid off at camp. I’m practicing being the mom I want to be when the training wheels come off for good.

If this transition, at any size, has you feeling more undone than you expected, please know there’s nothing wrong with you! That’s love, getting ready for the long game.

I’m right there with you, not just as a parent coach, but as a fellow mom sitting in the parking lot feeling all the things! 

Whether you’re navigating a two-week camp goodbye or the much bigger one still ahead, you don’t have to carry it alone.

Your first next step is to fill out a simple client questionnaire and we can chat from there.

Cheering you on while I run to wash my kid’s bedding!