Basically, Kaleb had a terrible time last week at camp. My heart just aches for him and I’ve been pretty bummed out about it. He started crying the minute we picked him up, as he’d been stuffing his feelings all week and could finally let them fly. It’s obvious by his behavior this past week, he missed us terribly. He said he was ready to come home on the second day, so I was pretty proud he lasted all week. He’d never been away at camp before and I was sure he would have as much fun as I did when I was a kid, but our childhoods are/were so different, I guess I should have known better. The biggest problem was that he was bullied relentlessly by his cabin mates, and I just didn’t expect that at a Christian camp.
I take some of the blame for it because I had him get a summer buzz cut before he left, and one of the things they kept calling him was “Gay-leb” because of it. He really didn’t even know what that meant, other than it was a bad name and he didn’t like it. Their counselor told the kids to knock it off, but they didn’t, so the wounds just got deeper and he had no safe place to run each night as he was processing all the pokes, prods and name calling. I also take the blame because he was the lone man out – the other kids knew each other from before the camp, so he was the new guy and prime target for such teasing. They also said everything he did was “retarded” (which he thought was a swear word), so he was distressed by that, too. He’s so innocent, that sweet boy, I hate that he was so emotionally roughed up. He came home saying he is NEVER going to camp again and he just wants to be a loner the rest of his life and not even try to make new friends. That hurt. And he couldn’t understand how in the world I liked camp when I was a kid, but no one ever bullied me, so our experiences were quite different.
On the upside, Kaleb has been very clingy this week, hugging both Kory and I non-stop, sitting on our laps every chance he gets and constantly telling us he loves us. He responds quickly to our requests and has treated us with incredible respect and obedience. I don’t think it’s anything they taught at the camp, necessarily, as much as he just realizes how good he has it at home here, and he seems to be appreciative of that now, so Hallelujah! God promises to work “all things” for good, and that was definitely some good to come out of a bad situation.
To help heal the wounds, I arranged time each day this week for him to be with his friends, hanging out, and just being reminded that not all kids are so horrible. I’ve been indulging him with activities and each night we’ve had family movie or game night. It’s been pretty nice.
I told Kaleb that the things those kids said was a reflection on them, not on him. I also told him he needs to develop some kind of come-back line like Kory uses when people ask him a question he doesn’t want to answer, he responds with, “Why is that important for you to know?” So Kaleb thought about it for a while and said he has a response ready for the next time someone calls him a name. He’ll say, “What’s so bad about your life that you are trying to make mine miserable, too?” We’ll see if it works, but I sure hope it’s a long time before he has to try it out.
We went to the fair on Wednesday and spent more time chatting with people we ran into than looking at the exhibits. I love that small town kind of stuff. Thursday we were in Seattle all day. Kaleb brought his roller blades and rolled around Green Lake while I walked it and talked with a few girlfriends I haven’t seen in a while. It was the kind of day I wish I could have every day – connecting up with people, enjoying the sunshine and being outdoors. Woo hoo.
Kory finished up the work he was doing down at our apartment building this week – reattaching gutters and doing a few other odd things, so that’s a big “to-do” that’s done and off his list. He’s happy with how the roof came out and glad it’s ready for several more years of winters. I’m just thankful he didn’t get hurt in the process. He was pretty wiped out by week’s end, but he’s now recovered and can focus on getting more things done around our house before the weather turns cold.
School starts next week in Norway, and we’ve just begun to think about the Fall schedule and how our weeks will be stacking up with school work and activities. I’ve pretty much decided to keep Kaleb home again this year, rather than put him in school. He wrote me proposal on “own schooling” where he would be in charge of himself, to help take the pressure off Kory and I, so I guess we’ll see how that goes. He made up a weekly chart of all the subjects he wants to study and how he will study them and it convinced me to let him give it a try. Once we get on a routine though, the time just flies by in a fast paced rhythm that ticks off yet another year of events and activities. I like routines on one hand, but on the other hand, having these remaining days in August with nothing on the calendar has been pretty nice. I can’t believe how lucky I am that I don’t have to go to work every day. What a life.
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