Eva's home!

[conuly]

The bus was originally scheduled for 11:30. Last week we got an email saying all buses were rescheduled due to problems for lateness, our new time was 12. Guess what time it showed up?

2:23

So Eva was starving, Ana and I had quite run out of patience, and it's amazing we didn't all lose it. As it was, I got home at 5, fell into bed, and didn't wake up until 10am. And I didn't even do anything yesterday besides wait around, eat fried chicken, and buy four pounds of sugar.

Eva told us all about camp. We got a refund from her rafting which was canceled due to rain. She did get to ride a horse. She disliked one girl and felt bad because that girl was so nice, and disliked another and didn't feel bad because she was such a pain. (Midway through her telling me what a pain this girl was, something about how that girl said her mother always packed all her bags and so she wouldn't even try packing hers to leave and her mother wrote her essays for her, I said that really, I feel sorry for this child. If this is true, then her mother isn't doing her any favors.) She didn't get a single one of my letters, and I mailed them one a day starting on Friday before she went! So I don't know what happened there. She ran out of books, but luckily there was a book shack. Unluckily, she thought they said "boat shack" and avoided it like the plague for the first few days because she didn't want to get roped into some boating-related activity in the rain. She made three friends. Yes, she wants to go back next year.

Comments

[lilysea]

She ran out of books, but luckily there was a book shack. Unluckily, she thought they said "boat shack" and avoided it like the plague for the first few days because she didn't want to get roped into some boating-related activity in the rain.

Oh, dear.

Does she have auditory processing issues?

(I do, and I make this kind of mistake.)

[conuly]

She's dyslexic. The very very long report we have doesn't say auditory processing specifically, but, I mean....

[hudebnik]

If you're at summer camp, "boat shack" makes more sense than "book shack" (for which the more obvious word would be "library"); I can easily imagine making that sort of mistake just on grounds of plausibility.

[conuly]

True, although they're right - given Eva's history of dyslexia and mild speech impediment, plus the family history of autism/adhd with probable auditory processing issues (both my mom and I suffer from "autistic accent syndrome", as I've heard it called) it's entirely possible that this was a factor. Not one I'm interested in chasing down right now, thoguh.

[spikethemuffin]

Oh, God, I'm not alone on the auditory processing boat. The people who diagnosed me made me think I was. (Or maybe I just misheard them.)

[conuly]

It's pretty common with certain other diagnoses.

[jesse_the_k]

Excellent camp experience!

(Rafting in the rain is so much fun. Among other things, the water you're on is higher, so the landscape changes.)

[conuly]

It was a little torrential.

[monanotlisa]

Aw, this is such a sweet post. I enjoyed hearing about Eva's Camp Adventures.

[conuly]

:)

[spikethemuffin]

This is what I was coming here to say. Adorable!

[wpadmirer]

Well, at least she had a good enough time to want to go back. It could have been worse.

[conuly]

I dunno if having to pay for her to do it next year isn't worse.

[adafrog]

Glad she had a good time.

[conuly]

Likewise! I did worry.

[wendelah1]

It sounds like it went about as well as these things usually do. At least she wants to go back.

[conuly]

Yup, and I guess that's what matters.

[gwydion]

I'm so glad it went well.

I remember talking to one of those mothers at a Faculty Party for Skye's work in the early oughts, and kindly, gently, convincing her that she was not doing her children any favors. It took more than an hour and a lot of patience.

I always felt bad for kids raised like that even though they were often little assholes. Much better to be raised for inependance like we were.

[conuly]

I always felt bad for kids raised like that even though they were often little assholes.

Well, sure. Their parents almost encourage this, and they aren't given productive ways to assert themselves.

[halfshellvenus]

I'm glad she had such a good time!

Our daughter went to Girl Scout camp for at least a week every summer from age 7 to 13 (after which she bailed on Girl Scouts). She had a wonderful time each year, even though she wasn't an especially outdoorsy kid, and I always envied her. I WANTED to go to camp every summer, and never got to-- because none of my older sibs had gone. I don't know if they wanted to, but my dad had been married before and was adamant about not offering any new opportunities to the younger kids so as not to foster resentment.

The fact that the older kids' mother let them do more things was irrelevant. ;)

The "boat shack" mixup cracks me up. And I would totally be the kid who ran out of books at camp. Geez, we used to have to pack about 5-7 books in the backseat tote-bag for our son when we went on 8-9 hour trips, and he would invariably get through all of them on the first day. So we had to put a second bag of books in the trunk. And then let him read some of the books we'd brought for ourselves...

This is how he wound up reading The Silmarillion at age 9 on a trip to Disneyland, and the first Thursday Next book on a trip to Oregon...

[conuly]

my dad had been married before and was adamant about not offering any new opportunities to the younger kids so as not to foster resentment.

...

That's some interesting reasoning there.

[halfshellvenus]

He worried a lot about sibling rivalry, though most of that was between my younger sister and me (second marriage). I can understand him wanting to avoid a situation where the kids form the first marriage never got to do X, and the second-marriage kids did. But the real question would be, did the older kids just not choose to do X?

My mother was more of the "do for each kid what that kid wants and needs" philosophy, but she got overruled.

It wasn't until later on that I discovered the reason none of us had a car to drive was because the oldest had run hers into a tree-- so we were all punished for her poor judgment. In actuality, the other two kids from his first marriage had a beater car they had to share-- because their mother bought it for them. But it was easier for my dad to be black and white about those things...