A revolution began in Seattle this summer. One by one, the children of people in my friend group informed their parents that they were not going to camp today, or ever. Their individual reasons varied, but they were resolute: they were not going to camp. It was kind of amazing, considering they didn’t communicate with each other. It was like it spread amongst this tiny population through some kind of psychic vibes network. For a while, my daughter was a holdout, until, inevitably, it all came crashing down last week.
For us, it was not really about her not wanting to go, though. She has special needs and it became more clear that typical camps can't accommodate her. They have tried, and I appreciate it! But they simply can't. Rather than continue to brute force our way through a situation that was not working for any of us, we withdrew her with a month to go in the summer.
During July, we were privileged enough to be enrolled in an expensive university-related camp specialized for her needs. But it's over now, which leaves a big childcare gap until the fall.
I'm a divorced co-parent without a partner, which makes this even harder. However, I'm privileged in many other ways, including having a flexible work schedule and working from home. It's all very frustrating. I do what I can locally to connect and support other special needs families. (I can share more about starting a group for this at your public school in its own post.) But, sincerely, what would a less privileged family do here??
I'd say "the system is broken," but there is no system.
My coping mechanism of choice during unpredictable times like this is attempting to assert control. In this case, that cope is in the form of an interactive kids’ summer schedule manager that I made with the help of Claude (Fable). My first instinct was to call this little endeavor Camp Mama, but that was vetoed immediately and replaced with Camp Kawaii by my daughter—a much better name. I have to be honest: the likelihood of Camp Kawaii and this app working for us for more than a couple of days is very low. But it is at least something for us (read: me) to grasp onto.
I first gave Claude an overview of how I’d ideally like her to spend her time across various categories. I then gave it examples of specific activities within those. I also shared some of her current interests and told it that I’d like the app to have an interactive element. Fable came up with the idea for the boba tea cup that fills up with pearls as items are checked off, which is cute and spot-on for her. I showed it to my daughter as I went to get her input, too. Believe it or not, the “Camp Jobs” section was my daughter’s idea. She has shown a new and wonderful fondness for chores that I expect will last for about two more days until she gets bored of it. The whole process took about 30 minutes.
The idea here is that this will just be an artifact open on my iPad that’s on a stand in the kitchen. We’ll pick some activities and fill up our boba cup and hopefully I will not go insane trying to make this work while staying employed. Maybe sometime over the next four weeks I’ll also finally learn how to start a lanyard box stitch, who knows.
