Too Little Cuddling, Too Much Coddling

Katie Allison Granju has an interesting article on the upsidedown-ness too little parental attachment to babies and too much parental attachment to older children.

I've been wondering about this issue a bit lately, as I've noticed that, in talking to parents about Camp Indecon, they are often quite hesitant about sending their 9-12 year old kids to a single-week-long sleepover camp. (The older-than-12 kids don't seem to be so much of an issue.) This surprises me, given my own childhood of semi-dangerous activities often unsupervised by adults, as well as routine sleepovers at the houses of friends. When I was twelve, I flew as an unaccompanied minor from Baltimore to Ft. Lauderdale to spend a month with a close friend and her family. So at 9, a week of sleepover camp would have been a cinch.

Some parents say that their kids "aren't ready," but, well, I wonder why not. They certainly should be at that age. Then again... based upon what I saw at camp, the kids are very much ready... it's the parents who aren't.