Kids Are Crazy

I have always been thankful for my mom and dad, but after being in charge of six young boys for seven days while at camp, I am even more appreciative for my parents.

I knew that parenting wasn’t easy but I don’t think I ever realized how tough it is until now. Having spent just one week responsible for a few 7-9 year olds, I now have a true awareness of the difficulty of being in charge of another person’s life.

Kids are crazy.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely loved camp and had a blast with my kids, but those little guys were crazy. They were constantly screaming, spilling, and starting fights. If they weren’t running around wildly, they were falling down and scraping their legs.

It was physically and mentally exhausting to try and keep track of them and make sure they were safe. If I turned my back for one second, I was afraid they would race off into the forest never to be found again.

That might seem like an exaggeration, but I was actually afraid that they would run away and get eaten by wolves and I would have to explain to their parents what happened. “Mrs. Smith, I am very sorry. Jimmy was right there, then I had to sneeze and next thing I knew, the wolves got him.”

Even though they were out of control, they were also amazing. I got to tuck them in at night, assist the tooth fairy when one lost a tooth, and give about 100 piggyback rides.

I came to learn that those are the things that make dealing with the crazy worth it.

Seeing the look on their face when they caught a fish was well worth the hour I spent being afraid that they would drown in the lake.

Like I said earlier, this experience has made me even more thankful for my own parents.

I like to think that I was an angel and not nearly the handful that my six campers were, but I’ll admit that there was maybe a time or two that my parents wanted to write a blog post about how crazy I was (actually blogs weren’t around back then, so my parents probably wanted to Ask Jeeves how to make your kid less crazy).  Somehow my parents dealt with all that and helped me turn out pretty good.

So today I would like to say thank you to my parents. Thank you for dealing with my crazy and making sure I did not run off into the woods and get eaten by wolves.