Future butt bombs to come

You always try to find new things for your kids. Things they might like, things you think will be good for them, things that you think they will love. Sometimes you are spot on and it works out great. While other times it does a total butt bomb and you wish that your kid had liked it instead of thinking of it negatively.

Well, the butt bombing is what happened to my son on his first overnight camp. According to him, the only fun part of camp was the swimming and the BB guns. He said the rest was horrible. He told me he cried every night and every morning that he wanted to go home, most of the food sucked (extremely picky eater), and that he just didn't enjoy himself. If makes me feel bad because I had hoped he would love it so much that he would want to stay or go back every year. I am not sure I am going to be able to get him to go back next year.

I know I am going to send him back next year. This is something he needs. Maybe next year he will enjoy it better since he will be a year older. It will be a great experience for him, it will teach him new things, and it will help in advance faster in scouts. It is hard to make that decision to have your child keep doing something you know they do not like. In the end it is the absolute best thing for them. We have to make those hard choices as a parent. I just wish they weren't so hard.

I mean, I HATED camp when I was younger. Well, I should rephrase that. I hate my fellow campers but loved camp. I dreaded going because of my fellow campers. At least my son didn't "hate" camp for the same reasons I did. I first started going to overnight camps when I was going into 5th grade, a full 2 years older than my son is now. I was shy, quiet, and scared to meet new people. The girls in my cabin seemed to pinpoint me as the person to antagonize. The entire week I was there I was accused of being a lesbian, the girls would tell our cabin leader that I would stare at them while they were changing and that they didn't feel safe showering with me (2 person shower). That seemed to follow suit for every single camp I went to after that. I am not sure why they treated me like that or taunted me like that. Yet, I still kept going to camp because my mom made me. As a kid I hated it, but looking back at it I am so happy that I was forced to go. It gave me a thicker skin and taught me how to meet new people.