Summer Camp Blues

Gretchen has a bad track record with her things.  I know this and she knows this.  Last summer we went through countless containers of lost sun block, bug spray, bathing suits, etc.  It drove me insane.  I promised myself this summer I would be more relaxed about it!  And that lasted about a week.....  She has been in summer camp for two weeks.  The first week she lost the new can of sun block and found it but when it came back home on day 4 it was completely empty.  So I put in a tube of lotion sun block and a half full can.  The tube is gone.  She can home with a tick last week which Steve quickly removed but it freaked her out so know she is using the bug repellent.  I already had a can of Off in her bag and Steve added a tube of Repel which is now gone.  Monday she went to camp with a hoodie.  It has yet to come back.  When we ask her to look for it, her response is outrage.  "How am I supposed to remember all that?"  I offered a reward if we could go 5 days in a row without losing anything but that did not garner a lot of excitement.  Today I told her the next tube of bug repellent or sun block will be paid for out of her piggy bank.  She was not happy which made me happy - maybe, just maybe, I can get her attention.  I think that makes me a bad parent but I am at a loss on how to handle....

Summer Work

We made the decision to not send Gretchen to summer school this year.  She gets services right now and should probably go to school for three more weeks if not the whole summer.  So it's a difficult decision for us to say no to summer school.  Until I had children with learning disabilities, I subscribed to the belief that summer should be fun.  As an adult, I pine for the days when I got up in the summer and wonder just what the day would bring me.  I wasn't a summer camp kid so I was on my own a lot.  The first summer after my parents separated, I used to go to the library in the morning and looks for books to read.  I would read there for awhile and then come home.  I remember feeling lonely though I don't know if I could have explained that to anyone at 9 years old.  The main reason we don't go to summer school is that we send Gretchen to an outdoor day camp that doesn't bus from the school she would have to go to.  Last year we promised ourselves we would do summer homework but we did not get very far.  This year, we are doing better with it.  Gretchen is on the second day of activities.  We're trying to do something four days a week with two activities per day (choices - math, reading and/or writing).  We joined the summer reading club at the library and signed up for some library programs.  I'm trying to balance my view that summer is for fun with what Gretchen really needs.  The truth is she needs both:  she needs to keep doing school activities and she needs to do physical activities to bolster her self confidence.  It's hard to know how much more we should be doing.  It's probably not enough but we are doing something this time.