To pick my daughter up from holiday camp 150 odd miles away

@CaptainMyCaptain most medications on a camp would be locked away. DS always had to hand his over on school residentials and scouting camps

Is Ritalin something you take when needed rather than all the time?

Have you asked the camp leaders what they recommend? They have a duty if care to her. What’s their view? Leaders would surely be best placed to see how she is throughout the day. She may’ve been emotional when talking to you as a way to let the stress out. If she seems very unhappy, the leaders would surely recommend she should leave.

If you go to get her, it may help to have a chat with her and see if you can support her to stay, rather than go with the purpose of bringing her home. However, if she’s clearly not enjoying any aspect and feels she doesn’t want to keep giving it a go, then you should bring her home.

This ☝️☝️☝️. Part of growing up is learning to navigate difficult social situations and manage upset. This could be a growth opportunity. It could be dealt with by talking it over and with camp staff? If it's really awful I would possibly step in, but encourage my child to lean into difficulties, try and deal with and encourage some personal resilience first 👌👌

Resilience is a great thing, but it is easy to accidentally teach the wrong lesson. When I was sent to boarding school at 11, I was expected to manage all aspects of my life by myself. I asked my parents for help about some of the worst aspects of a fairly miserable experience, but over the 5 years I was there, I never once got any actual help or even emotional support. It had always suited my parents to cast me as "the independent one" because it meant that they only needed to deal with me when I had to be punished.

My parents would say that it taught be to be independent. Actually, it taught me that there was no point in asking for help, because nobody cared.

OP, I think you have hit the right balance. Rushing over to take her home at the first sign of a problem wouldn't have really helped her, but allowing her to make the decision to leave early once she has given it a good try is fair.

They confiscated prescribed medication? That's appalling, I have mixed feeling about the question in the OP but the staff at a summer camp have no right to decide whether children get to take their medication.

There are different ways to teach a child 'coping skills' and leaving your 12 year old to 'cope' when they've cried to you asking for your help isn't one of them. it's setting them up for mental health issues and my children's well being will come before any so called coping lessons.

You can dress it up whatever way you like but I say not going to get them is absolutely shit parenting.

I think you've made the right call asking her to stick it until Thursday when you're free from work.
You might find that he knowing she's only got 2 more sleeps there might help her rally.
After all, she's 12, and yes that's young still, but she's by no means a baby or a very young child. She's in secondary school. Okay, so she's not enjoying it very much, but she's not in any danger. You hear what she's saying, and will come to get her early. But I think doing as you have done, and not immediately leaping into the car is the right thing to do.

There are different ways to teach a child 'coping skills' and leaving your 12 year old to 'cope' when they've cried to you asking for your help isn't one of them. it's setting them up for mental health issues and my children's well being will come before any so called coping lessons.

You can dress it up whatever way you like but I say not going to get them is absolutely shit parenting.

Yes. I would.

I'd want my children to be confident from a young age that if they ever call and ask for help that I'd be there every single time.

Go and get her, @ShatnerssBasoon. As a child I used to get terrifyingly, disablingly homesick - it's horrible. So I told my DC that I would always come and get them without question, no matter where they were and what they are doing, if they needed me to. My DD did suffer from homesickness and we would often go and bring her home. Now she's in her twenties, really confident and independent, no problems with travelling or going away. I'm so glad I was there for her when she needed it.

Son at the end of his A levels did six weeks camp America as a junior. Was on the USA Canadian border. Parents would leave children of this age for up to three weeks.

These pallid nervous kids would arrive rattling with ritalin. Those in charge would take all the prescriptions and lock them away safely to be administered as required.

The days would start early. It was breakfast, say canoeing all morning, packed lunch, then afternoon activities, also full on. Back to camp, BBQ, smores, camp stories, they were curled up asleep by 8.30 pm absolutely knackered.

He said that the kids didn't take the ritalin, they just didn't want or need it. They went home, brown, happy and full of stories of adventures.

Reminds me of an old song. Hello mother, hello father. Probably on YouTube.

What’s going to happen if she has bitchy coworkers?

She'll be an adult. I'm sure you can appreciate she won't still think and act like a 12-year old, she will be different in lots of ways by then. Resilience can be learned in small, everyday ways it doesn't all hinge on one monumental summer camp when she was 12 and needed her mum. Luckily for us all.

I'm another one for go and get her. She's a kid - not everything has to be a try-or-die virtue lesson.

Call the camp if you want, but in my experience if it's run by 'she'll be fine, we'll tell her to put her big girl pants on' people (as some are on here) you won't get the real story anyway. If you speak to someone and you feel they are actually on your wavelength, empathy-wise, then maybe see how it goes, if your DD agrees. I'd be warming up the car though.

She's in a communal tent with other girls but not hanging out with her. She has one local friend who's there but it's snubbing her now they are there.

I wonder if there are some mismatched expectations? Maybe DD thought she and the one girl she knows would stick together and do everything together, but the other girl wants to mix with the wider group?

I think we might be twins. Sending solidarity. It’s hard.

A week of social ostracism and misery is not going to instil good humour. Quite the reverse.

Think of how it feels to be at a party or a wedding where you don't know anyone, and don't enjoy the activity. Even two hours is hard going. At a camp, there's no escape; there's nowhere to retreat to.

All that my awful camp experience (details above) taught me, at 11, was that I was an unlikable, possibly even disgusting person.

It looks to me like a typo for is.

I get told how strong I am all the time, and I hate it. I hate being strong, I'm tired of being strong, yes I'm resilient but honestly I would just like to break for once, and to stop carrying everything.

I also get told how confident I am all the time, how outgoing, how good I am with people - I'm a petrified introvert, social events absolutely exhaust me, but the mask gets worn and I hate every second of it. If I try and tell people, they think I'm exaggerating.

'Bloozie' is a skin I wear based on the expectations that other people placed on me when I was 12, and honestly, I am sick of wearing it.

By the time it got to going abroad with school, you’d hope that children had experienced being away before. Sleepovers, school trips closer to home. If you then knew your child couldn’t cope being away, you’d be pretty daft to send them abroad, and then, they would have their own preference on going anyway.

And school trips, where they are going with staff and children they know well and are with everyday, are very different to camps.

Probably!

How do parents cope if said child is abroad. Do they arrange flights for them to collect a 12 year old?

😘

This thread took me back nearly 50 years to when I was the unhappy child at Guide camp. I'd been once with our own company and absolutely loved it so when our leader told us all that another company in our town had two spaces on their camp I was first in line. It was awful. The other girls ranged from just unfriendly/disinterested to those who seemed intent on bullying me and the other girl from our company. They made it plain that they didn't want us there and the leaders weren't much better. Of course it was pre mobile phone days and the leaders wouldn't phone our parents so the two of us sneaked off and found a pay phone and asked our parents to come and get us. Both our dads arrived together at the camp that night. I was expecting mine to be livid but he just said "I know you wouldn't have called if it wasn't important and I'm not leaving you somewhere where you're being bullied." And that was it. We went home and it was never spoken of again. But knowing that my Dad believed me, without question and had my back meant the world to me.
A similar thing happened to my DD on a dancing Summer school once. She's never been one to give up at the first sign of trouble so I knew that when she called it was serious. I remembered how much my Dad's response had meant to me and did the same. We do sometimes have to put up with things that make us unhappy, but not, in my opinion, when it's a completely optional activity and the child has given it a good try.

You have summed up my feelings so well.

I’ve had some awful things happen in life and I am always told how resilient (HATE that word) and strong I am.

No, I am not. I was forced to cope alone and to be independent from a young age “stick it out! Don’t over react!” from a young age. As you say, you learn no one is coming to save you. So while I look calm on the outside, inside I am screaming and panicking, and I have spend the majority of my life hiding at home.

Thank god, I chose to raise my children the opposite way and they are completely different.