Two Weeks at Big Girl Camp

What do you learn at Big Girl Camp?  What’s the essence of being a big girl?

My younger granddaughter has been having a hard time being 6.  She complains that all the grown-ups treat her like a baby.  She often encourages this by bursting into tears if a fly lands on her leg or if someone moves her bunny.  “I can’t do this,” is her constant refrain, giving up on new tasks after thirty seconds of trying.  A sturdy customer until this summer, her shrieks – especially coming from the backseat of the car while we’re hurtling down the freeway – can be unnerving and irksome.  Sometimes, the adults in the front seat blurt out, “Stop being a baby!” which, of course, fuels the flame and confirms her view of grown-ups as being out of touch and unsympathetic.

So when the opportunity came to bring her with us for two weeks at our cabin on Lake Superior, I thought, ‘Ah, time for Big Girl Camp.’

Because all my life I’ve associated maturity with the ability to do things, I focused on giving her lots of things to do.  Jobs.

So she helped me paint.

She hammered nails that were sticking up on our deck.

She helped set up camp, ate her cereal with no milk, and never cried once about a bug when we went camping.

All of these things were nice but I knew we’d gotten somewhere when I saw this.

From I can’t to I can.  On my own. Because I want to. Blow up my own duck. I can figure it out, thank you very much.

The essence of Big Girl Camp. Don’t you think?