Jul

13

Once more, with feeling




Ok, I know I have written about my son going to camp ad nauseam lately. I promise, just a few more thoughts on that subject and I won’t bring it up again.

My son is home now, from band camp. This camp was at the University of Arkansas, he stayed in the dorms and had a great time. He came home absolutely exhausted though. For whatever reason, the child had been getting up at 4 or 5 am every morning. Now he’s a teenager, he needs at least 8 or 10 hours of sleep a night. So he’s extremely sleep deprived. I could tell when he finally got home, yes he was happy to see us and happy to be home, but he was so tired he could barely hold it together. Finally, after 2 days of sleeping 12 hours a night, he’s starting to be back to normal.

I was concerned about this camp because they were camping with older kids, and they were expected to be pretty independent as far as getting to their music lessons and rehearsals on time, on their own. It’s alot, but he did fine.

Remember going off to college, or moving away from home for the first time? With all that new freedom, it was hard to come home and all of a sudden be subject to rules again. This is what I’m seeing with him. For a week he’s been going to bed whenever he wants, ordering pizza with his friends if he didn’t like the cafeteria food, having lots of unstructured free time to just hang out. And no chores. What a great week! But coming back to reality has been a bit of an adjustment.

We realized he’d be cranky for awhile, until he got some rest. But this has been a little beyond cranky and tired. He said something rude to his brother at the dinner table, so I scolded him. He gave me the look, you remember the look we all used to give our parents when they were being completely  unreasonable. He said “See, at camp I could say what I felt without getting in trouble. It was so much better than this”.

I’ve also been told a couple time that his friends have the same “problems” with their moms that my son has with me. Meaning, their moms must expect them to be respectful and help out around the house, too. How dare we.

We’re all glad he’s home, but it’s time to face the music (pun intended). LIFE IS NOT LIKE CAMP.

We’ve been letting him take it easy all weekend, but the vacation ends tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll get more of “the look” and eye rolling, but that’s ok. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be doing my job.

When is summer camp for moms, anyway? I think I deserve a week of no rules and no chores. Really, I think we all deserve a little of that.

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