Reconnecting after camp requires mom’s deft touch

The questions crashing around in my head while my daughter, 9, spent her fifirst week ever at sleepaway camp: Is she warm enough? Is she too warm? Is she eating enough? Is she eating too much? Will it be the worst week of her life? Is it possible that would be good for her?

Will she survive? The same questions I asked myself when she was a newborn, in other words.

I cried at the drop-offff. She did not. It’s harder on you than it is on her,” people kept telling me.

As if that were a new development. Isn’t everything harder on the parents? You’re feeling and fearing and loving with two hearts — yours and theirs. It’s terrifying.

She survived. So did I. Mostly by imagining her giggling after lights out and singing around a campfifire and stomping in creeks. (And by giving silent thanks that no one in my house wanted to watch “Dance Moms” for a week, a horrendous show that my daughter adores.)

I also spent a lot of time strategizing about the ride home. I would pick her up on a Friday evening for a two-hour drive home. She would be exhausted. But I wanted to maximize my chances of getting her to spill every last detail about the friends she made and the adventures she had and the parts she loved and the parts she hated.

I don’t have great luck on our rides home from school, which, most days, go roughly like this: Me: How was your day? Her: I don’t remember. Me: Who did you sit by at lunch? Her: My friends. Me: Did your spelling test go OK?

Her: Probably. I don’t remember.

We tend to do our best catching up around 9:30 p. m., when her brother is asleep and her defenses are down and we’re lying in her room. That’s when the stories and questions and details pour out. But I couldn’t put her to bed at camp. I missed my window, for fifive nights.

So I had high hopes for the ride home.

I approached it with the wise words of Wendy Mogel echoing in my brain. Mogel is a clinical psychologist and author whose book “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee” (Scribner) does a lovely job coaching parents to raise self-reliant kids. I call on her here and there for advice, which is always a variation on the same question: How do I raise my kids into kind, respon- sible people without blocking the light and heat they need to grow?

Mogel once told me to approach end- of-the-day conversations as though my kids are college roommates I haven’t seen in decades.

Anyway, she said if you want a good, invested, open- ended conversation, you have to stop what you’re doing. Have a seat, put down your devices, quiet the noise in your head and listen.

Hang on to their every word as you would with an old friend, and resist the urge to correct or guide or point out valuable lessons. Say things like, “Really! And then what?”

If my college roommate called to say she’d booked a trip to Belize, I would not tell her to wear sunscreen. I would not email her a list of poisonous spiders found in Belize, nor would I ask her if she’s done enough research.

The ride home was a thing of beauty. She sang every song she learned and listed the names of all her new friends and even counted her mosquito bites aloud. All of it was music to my ears.

Because six days apart, without so much as a phone call, felt a little like decades. And it was no problem to hang on her every word.