Nobody tells you this part.
You sign them up for the sleep-away camp, the sports program, the art intensive, the all-day-every-day enrichment schedule that is supposed to give them the best summer of their lives. You spend more than you probably should. You tell yourself it’s an investment in their childhood, their memories, their development.
And then they come home, and they are delighted. Genuinely, completely delighted. By the Amazon boxes that arrived while they were gone.
Three days. Three full days of watching my kids build forts, launch packaging peanuts at each other, and use a packing tape dispenser as a prop in what I can only describe as an elaborate theatrical production.
The camp was great. I’m not saying the camp wasn’t great. But there is something humbling about watching your children be more thoroughly entertained by cardboard than by the curated, expensive, intentional experience you planned for them.
I kept waiting to feel annoyed about it. Instead I felt weirdly free.
Because what I remembered is that kids are not actually complicated. Joy doesn’t require an itinerary. The best summer memories aren’t always the ones you purchased.
I’m keeping the boxes next year. And probably scaling back on the itinerary.
