I vacillated for weeks before we went to family camp about whether we would take the nine year old with us or use respite care for her that week. I am always willing to provide respite care for the children of other families, but rarely am I able to convince myself to use it. I struggle with good parent versus bad parent syndrome whenever I consider not taking one of my children on a family outing.

This was supposed to be my week of vacation and I really needed time to relax whether on the beach or in our rented cottage. The children had various activities to keep them busy like climbing a rock wall, soaring on a zip line, swimming, boating, and hours each day with their counselors. Therefore, I should have had ample alone time.

Only it didn’t work out quite that way. The bad parent argument won the debate through guilt, so we took our nine year old with us. Her behavior did not earn her the vacation, but grace did.

You may remember that during the school year she received an in-school suspension for sneaking off with a friend. Various school personnel spent nearly an hour searching for her. The story is in an article I wrote called, Power Struggles – It’s About Control, if you’d like to read it.

The reason I am referencing that particular article is because that’s the problem we had all week with her. We would be at the beach and suddenly she would be gone. She would have slipped off to the craft cabin, two blocks away, or the zip line, nearly half a mile away.

The first day of camp, I had the safety talk with both she and Lyn after they had disappeared a couple of times. Family camp is located on a large lake crowded with beach homes, people from all over the United States vacation there, and other people own homes surrounding the camp. Therefore, we felt it imperative to know their whereabouts.

Ironically, our daughter with an IQ in the 60s only had to be told a couple of times, and only kept in the cabin once from activities, before she caught on and checked in with me the rest of the week. She ended up having a great time. The nine-year-old on the other hand, was told on a daily basis, and kept in the cabin everyday, from at least one activity.

The last day of camp, she and I spent the entire evening after supper in the cabin together. We missed the video of the week preview, the field party, and the root beer floats. I asked her why she continued to not check-in, after hearing it from the school and from me as well as losing activities. In the end she said, “I guess I don’t understand why it’s a problem, or why I need to do it.” She’s nine, I wonder what it will be like when she is 16?

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Cheap Respite Care or Reward?
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