IN MY SHOES: Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah. Why Are You Such A Pesterah?
Camp counselors have morphed into “parent liaisons.” The New York Times interviews one of them, Karin Miller - who has a doctorate in psychology and likens her job to a hotel concierge – and several camp consultants to find out what they put up with from demanding, egotistical parents:
A dozen 9-year-old girls in jelly-bean-colored bathing suits were learning the crawl at Lake Bryn Mawr Camp one recent morning as older girls in yellow and green camp uniforms practiced soccer, fused glass in the art studio or tried out the climbing wall.
Their parents, meanwhile, were bombarding the camp with calls: one wanted help arranging private guitar lessons for her daughter, another did not like the sound of her child’s voice during a recent conversation, and a third needed to know - preferably today - which of her daughter’s four varieties of vitamins had run out. All before lunch.
Answering these and other urgent queries was Karin Miller … She counsels parents, spending her days from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. printing out reams of e-mail messages to deliver to Bryn Mawr’s 372 female campers and leaving voice mail messages for their parents that always begin, “Nothing’s wrong, I’m just returning your call.” …
The liaisons are emblematic of what sleep-away camp experts say is an increasing emphasis on catering to increasingly high-maintenance parents, including those who make unsolicited bunk placement requests, flagrantly flout a camp’s ban on cellphones and junk food, and consider summer an ideal time to give their offspring a secret vacation from Ritalin.
One camp psychologist spends 80 percent of her time hand-holding hyperventilating parents.
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