A LEGO fiasco...
Summer camp with an anxious child and a failing parent
I walked in to Preschool Room 2 and immediately thought “Oh shit.”
About twenty seven and eight year old boys overwhelmed the six evenly spaced tables. There were maybe three girls sandwiched in there, but the room was already filling with boy energy…loud, playful, intense.
I turned and saw my daughter’s face, predictable in hindsight. Her head started shaking “No…no, no, no” as her eyes filled up with tears. She tugged on my hand, trying to back me in to the hallway with her. As big wet drops spilled over on to her cheeks, she whispered, “I want to go home.”
Summer camp. Glorified child care for working parents and, ideally, structure that feels like school but plays like seven hours of LEGOs and snacks. It should be fun, not terrifying.
I stood in the hallway with her for awhile, holding on to my sanity and patience while she slipped right over the edge of an anxiety meltdown. The tears came faster, even as she violently wiped them away. One hand death gripped my own while the other hand held on to a table in the hallway, a physical tether to a place not in there.
“Bug, you can do this.”
“But, I want to go home. It’s just too much,” she gulped out, eyes still wide and dilated, fear response wracking her little body.
I sighed in my head. There were two choices here. I could leave her, but that would involve convincing Miss Jasmine to hold her while she cried hysterically, and I pried my body from her grasp. Or, I could take her home. We could stand in the hall for an hour, and it wouldn’t change the choices.
I rearranged her hand in mine, loosening the grasp, and bringing the back of her palm to my lips for a gentle kiss. “Mommy and Daddy have to work this week, so if we leave, we will have to find something else for you to do. But, summer camp is supposed to be fun, and this clearly isn’t fun for you. Let’s go home and figure it out.”
Was that the right decision? Hell if I know. What I do know is my kid. Her fear is real. Her anxiety overwhelms her. And there is no coming back from it without changing the inputs that are causing this output.
Even with her home, I can do more work than standing in a hallway, so home we went.
I am defensive about this decision, although it pisses me off that my parental self-esteem is too weak to just say “Fuck off, my kid, my call.” But it’s not. To be fair (to myself) and to answer the questions that you are likely too kind to ask but certainly curious about…
I did not allow her to come home and get on a screen of any sort. And she didn’t ask.
I get that she has to learn how to do things scared, but summer camp didn’t feel like the hill I wanted to die on for that particular lesson. We’ll save that for soccer practice.
Yes, she has a therapist.
I underestimate (and she manipulates) her ability to entertain herself. A set of headphones, her playlist, and paint without supervision (🫣) kept her happily occupied for a solid ninety minutes.
I have a mother-in-law close by who responds to batcalls and steps in to become “Pool Gram” at a moment’s notice.
So, we made it through Monday.
My husband asked if I was going to take her back. “Maybe she’ll be up for it another day?” he suggested, hopefully but not confidently. He’s an eternal optimist, but sans the toxic positivity. She did not look “up for it” upon mention of her returning to LEGO camp. In fact, she immediately left the table to grab her stuffy, and tried to curl inside herself on her chair at the table.
Yeah…no go.
This has happened every summer. There’s been at least one camp that she categorically refuses to attend. The first summer it was because they swam every day, and she wasn’t yet confident in swimming without us. Summer number two it was music camp with kids who were at least four years older than her. And this year…LEGO camp. I try to anticipate when I sign her up for camp in JANUARY (thank you Fairfax County) what will trip the anxiety lever. Each year, I gather new information. Daily swim? No (except now that’s okay). Significantly older kids? No (Except she gets older each year too so how much older is too much older?) Camp likely to have an overwhelming boy majority? How in the hell was I supposed to know that?
If I was smart, I would sign her up for dance, gymnastics, and art, and call it a day. Girl camps, places she’s been before, nobody too old. Done!
Except, that would be easy for me. I could guarantee that she would A) willingly attend, B) actually enjoy it, and C) not have an anxiety attack in the hallway of a rec center in front of like eight million parents. It would also mean my carefully planned work weeks would not turn in to attempting to write while “Pink Pony Club” blares a mere fourteen steps from my office.
No one has ever accused me of doing things the easy way though.
Honestly, as defensive as I am about my decision to pull her from camp this week, knowing I was screwing myself in the process and voiding the $335 already shelled out for said LEGO adventure, I feel zero need to justify this choice. I have to give her a chance. I need to see how she’s grown, matured, conquered her fears from year to year. And she needs that too. If she’s ready to swim every day, in a lake, at a camp that’s completely outdoors despite being terrified to even change clothes in the rec center she learned to swim in the year prior, I want to be here for it!
It’s a gentle nudge. A pointer finger push from a mother’s heart to a daughter’s fear. Sometimes, its enough. And as long as there is a sometimes, I’ll keep taking the gamble. In this case, the joy of sometimes outweighs the certainty of every time.
I don’t understand her anxiety. While I inherently know some of her triggers, I am still awful at predicting her response in the moment. Just a spark of metaphorical glitter can change the entire outcome. A smile from another little girl, an open seat at the same table she sat at last session, an instructor that says just the right thing. Hell, even the perfect cocktail of food and sleep can make the difference between an easy drop off and a solid meltdown. It’s a constant balancing act in our house, and I get it flat out wrong at least 40% of the time. Not quite a coin toss, but not far off.
The emotional toll on me when her anxiety takes hold is profound. Besides just the patience it requires, my sense of abject failure in those moments assaults my insides. It takes everything in me not to dissolve in to rage or sorrow or both. My tears do not help, but sometimes they are unavoidable. There is nothing that works, in as much as trying to get the outcome I am seeking. What “works” is simply time and presence, the two things I find most difficult to provide, particularly on the fly and with no warning.
I come from a “suck it up” culture. My mother would have sat on the floor and cried with me, but she had three jobs, and desperately needed me to get my shit together. I also come from a family of overachievers, where suffering is somewhat lauded, and success is expected. Fear is unfounded in almost any situation that does not involve bodily harm. It’s not like “Do it scared” was our motto or anything. We just never spoke of fear at all.
So maybe I’m a wuss, but staring in to my daughter’s soft intelligent eyes, watching her grip Midnight, the first stuffy we ever bought her, as if the panda could somehow become an invisibility cloak, I cannot be convinced that joy results from ignoring her fear in service of her bravery.
Sometimes, its okay to succumb to fear. To accept it and honor it. To step away with the validation that those feelings are real and to build bravery through trust, not terror.
As I write this, my daughter is at a drop in art camp. She walked in with purpose, head held high, ready to tackle this separation. Yes, its at a place she’s been before, but she did not recognize the teachers nor any of the other kids. And yes, it was all girls and only about eight of them, but they were all deep in a project started earlier in their camp day and none of them looked up when she walked in. She hugged me goodbye before I was even ready to leave, and diligently went to put up her backpack and wash her hands.
She will not go back to LEGO camp. This is the fear she can manage this week. And while some days I guiltily wish I had a child who would sail in to any room with a smile on her face and an introduction on her lips, I can’t help but be proud of the child I do have. One that’s willing to say “I’m scared. It’s too much.” One that trusts me to hear her and to help her. One that is still willing to push herself, even if that looks differently than it does for the rest of us.
I am emotionally exhausted, but I am at peace. I met my daughter where she needed me to the most, and I will fail a thousand times over for the joy of that one right choice.
I continue to be in awe of the way you interact with your daughter, Jess. I especially loved your statement, "I met my daughter where she needed me to the most' - and yes you did!! It is something we can all aspire to with all those in our lives. Thank you for showing the way.
As the daughter of a woman who either never tried to either deal with or understand her daughter’s high-level anxiety or let her be the person that she is, all that you are doing is amazing. My mom would have left me there - and it would have been so awful. It isn’t a way to learn to ‘deal with it’ -
I realize, too, that I was young like your daughter is now in a different era - these things were not addressed and were expected to ‘go away’ as one got older - but it doesn’t and it certainly didn’t give me any ability to cope with it better.
It is so difficult - I never know when it’s going to hit - and thankfully, it’s less often now. When it does, I know it’ll go away in a few hours and I just have to wing it for a little bit - but that isn’t something I really understood for a long time.
Kudos to you for acknowledging and loving her for who she is - it’s something that I am not sure my mom does to this day.