What Two Weeks of Sleep Away Camp Taught me about Parenting

What Two Weeks of Sleepaway Camp Reminded Me About Parenting

Yesterday my boys came home from sleepaway camp. One had been away for four weeks, the other two for two, and within a few hours I'd unpacked eight loads of laundry, directed everyone to take real showers to remove what appeared to be a semi-permanent shell of dirt and grass from their hair, and celebrated what may have been one child's first green vegetable in a month. (Although, judging by the state of produce this summer, maybe he's onto something.)

It was also the first time in 11 years that my husband and I had been home without kids. We've squeezed in weekends away and solo trips here and there since they've gotten older, but never an entirely kid-free house. Not since I was discharged from the hospital a few days before my twins came home from the NICU has it been that quiet. And thankfully, this time there was no soundtrack of an overzealous breast pump in the background.

As I unpacked duffel bags, checked for lice, and stared down Mount Laundry, it struck me that while my boys are now old enough for sleepaway camp, almost everything these two weeks taught me applies just as much to the parents of newborns, babies, and toddlers I spend my days working with. The details look different, but the themes- mental load, guilt, identity, learning to let go, and remembering that parents need care too- felt remarkably familiar.

Sleepaway camp isn't for everyone. I never went myself and am mostly living vicariously through my kids. My husband, on the other hand, went to this very camp, worked there through college, and stayed until medical school. Whether your child is living 10 for 2, spending a few extra hours at daycare, or the whole idea of sleepaway camp feels completely foreign, I think the lessons are surprisingly similar.

You don't have to be next to your child to be parenting.

One afternoon, one of our sons emailed us because he thought one of his brothers was struggling with a friend situation at camp.

Can I just say how proud I was? Yes, they fight what feels like constantly. But underneath all of that, they genuinely look out for one another.

So we parented from several states away.

I wrote them letters. I emailed the division director in record time.

In the end, everything turned out to be a complete non-issue.

The experience reminded me that parenting has never really been about clocking hours. It's about the invisible work of supporting your child: researching, planning, advocating, worrying, and perhaps most importantly, knowing your child well enough to understand what excites them, what overwhelms them, what friendships matter, and what kind of environment helps them thrive.

It also made me think about how much guilt I hear from parents of babies and toddlers whenever they have to be away from their children. Picking your child up late from daycare because work ran over, taking a girls' weekend, going on a business trip, or leaving your baby with a trusted caregiver so you can do something that's just for you often comes with an apology attached. Healthy separations teach children something important:

The people I love leave.

The people I love come back.

That's one of the building blocks of secure attachment.

And maybe they teach parents something too: that I can be apart from my child and still be a good parent.

We're not raising children forever. We're raising future adults.

One son didn't read a single book I packed. One lost his deodorant and proudly solved the problem by getting another one from the camp nurse.

The child who never wants to play baseball at home played baseball.

Another came home talking nonstop about woodworking.

Someone else discovered a love of archery.

Watching them come home with a wealth of new and unanticipated experiences reminded me how quickly kids can surprise us when we stop deciding who we think they are.

It also reminded me that so many of the things we obsess over when our children are little aren't actually the end of the story.

Yes, we should offer vegetables.

Yes, we should brush teeth.

Yes, routines matter.

But eventually our children become the ones making those decisions, whether it's overnight camp, college, or simply the first morning they have to get themselves out the door without us. Our job isn't to control every outcome. It's to slowly prepare them for the day we're no longer making every decision for them.

Whether your child is two months old or twelve years old, that's really what parenting has always been about.

It wasn't just the date nights.

My husband and I had a lot of fun.  For two weeks, my husband didn't really annoy me. And, if he's being honest, I don't think I annoyed him much either. Sure, we did fun things. We went out to dinner, saw a Broadway show, saw live music, and went to a few places where we somehow managed to feel both young and cool and pretty old at the exact same time. (Like I always say in session, you really can feel two things at once.) We met friends without having to coordinate babysitters or bedtimes and even sat on the beach reading actual books at the same time.

But it wasn't really the date nights that created all that connection. They were simply what became possible when our brains weren't running in the background like thirty browser tabs nobody had closed.

For two weeks, the dishwasher wasn't running three times a day. Laundry wasn't multiplying overnight. Nobody needed permission slips signed, missing sneakers located, Spirit Day outfits remembered, or a water bottle found that was somehow "missing" while sitting directly in front of them. And when my son didn't have enough green clothes for Color War, I noticed in pictures, but there was nothing I could do about it.

It reminded me of something I talk about with clients all the time: sometimes what feels like a relationship problem is, at least in part, a nervous system problem. When your brain is constantly tracking hundreds of invisible tasks, everyone around you becomes just a little more irritating. That doesn't necessarily mean your relationship is struggling. Sometimes it simply means you're overloaded.

One thing these two weeks reinforced for me is that if you can lighten the load. even a little, it's often worth it. Maybe that's outsourcing laundry instead of childcare because that's actually the task draining you most. Maybe it's grocery delivery, ordering DoorDash without apologizing for it, or hiring a babysitter simply so you can finish a conversation with your partner.

 I know this sounds a little like the social media trend of "things worth spending money on," and I also know everyone's financial reality is different. The point isn't to spend more money. It's to figure out where you can buy back a little breathing room.

And if you're reading this while holding a newborn or chasing a toddler, I know two weeks away sounds laughable. The interesting thing is that I felt noticeably lighter after about two days. Parenting can feel a little like driving with the gas light on. You can keep going for quite a while and even convince yourself you're fine, but every unexpected detour feels like a crisis. Eventually, you have to stop and refill the tank.

I realized that not everything has to happen today.

Since having three kids, I've done a load of laundry almost every day because seeing it pile up makes me anxious. Somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that staying ahead of it was essential. Between yesterday afternoon and this morning, I did six or seven loads of laundry back-to-back, and it wasn’t the disaster my brain had spent years convincing me it would be. It made me realize how many of the deadlines I live under are ones I've quietly created for myself.

When parents tell me they're drowning, we often spend time sorting through what actually has to happen today and what can realistically wait. Somewhere along the way, many of us started believing every task was equally urgent when, in reality, some of the healthiest decisions we make are the ones that lower the bar. Sometimes paper plates are the healthiest thing on the menu, and pretty much always, buying a second or third daycare bento box is worth every penny because it removes one tiny stressor from every evening.

Sometimes your child wears their second-choice shirt because the favorite one is still sitting in a pile of dirty laundry. None of those things make you lazy.

They make you someone who's recognizing that your bandwidth is finite.

For the last few weeks, I knew it was time to send my monthly newsletter, but nothing felt particularly inspiring. I promised myself when I started writing these that I wasn't going to send one simply to check a box.

Then I woke up the morning after the boys came home, and suddenly I knew what I wanted to say.

This wasn't really about sleepaway camp.

It was about getting just enough distance from the day-to-day logistics of parenting to remember what actually matters.

As parents, especially during pregnancy, postpartum, and those beautifully exhausting early years, we spend so much time trying to get every detail right that we can lose sight of the bigger picture.

The goal was never to perfectly manage childhood.

The goal is to raise children who know they're deeply loved, feel safe enough to grow, and eventually become adults who can thrive without us.

And maybe that's what those two quiet weeks reminded me of: not how much gets done when my children aren't home, but how much of parenting has never really been about checking things off a list in the first place. That made the big pile of laundry feel a lot less daunting 

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