The High Holidays are now behind us for another year, but even as the winds get a little wilder and the nights a little chillier, my thoughts are already turning to summer. I watch my inbox, expecting that at any moment, the first of many camp emails will appear. “Returning families registration dates,” the title will announce and I’ll chuckle as I watch my bank account begin to slowly empty over the course of the next few months.

My 10-year-old son started attending summer camp when he was seven and, while he was tentative at first, he now runs into the arms of his camp family with total abandon. Camp occupies a primary place in his imagination. He dreams of camp. He sings camp songs in the house. He talks about his camp friends all year. Planning the things he’ll do at camp in the coming summer occupies his daydreams throughout the long Canadian winter. We live in Sudbury, Ont., surrounded by trees, rocks and lakes, so it’s not as though camp is the only place he experiences wilderness, but it’s most definitely his favourite.

My own experience of being a summer camp parent began with anxiety. Would a kid from a small town fit in with all the big city kids? Would he be able to make friends? Would he miss us too much to enjoy himself? Would he be on board with how much Jewish content there is, or would he complain about it? All of my worrying has been for naught, as both he, and now our daughter (who had her first brief camp experience this past summer), have been kept so busy and cared for with so much Jewish intention and love that they’ve hardly had time to think about us. (We, on the other hand, think about them constantly, handily enabled by the camp’s social media feeds.)

The most curious part of the camp experience for me has been other parents’ (both Jewish and non) reactions to our decision to send our kids to camp. “So, how was your summer? What did you do?” they ask sociably. “Great!” I reply. “The kids had an amazing time at camp in July and then we spent August doing stuff as a family.” This almost always elicits the same response: “Wow, my kids could never do that.”

It’s a reaction that fascinates me because it implies that somehow my kids possess qualities that most kids don’t, a contention I don’t believe is true. My kids aren’t inherently more independent and self-reliant than other kids. While I am perhaps a more hands-off parent than many of my generation, my kids didn’t set off to camp having been touched by the magic wand of independence – camp made them that way. The experience of having to figure things out on their own, make friends without parental coaching, learn difficult skills without us cheering them on and be responsible for taking care of their own things, has made them more resilient and less dependent on us for motivation and regulation.

When we bemoan the lack of independence and self-reliance we observe among adolescents and young adults, we sometimes forget that these skills, like every other, take practice. In a parenting climate where involvement is equated with attachment, it is hard to give kids enough opportunities to practice thinking and doing for themselves. Camp provides those opportunities, en masse.

READ: BRINGING A LITTLE PIECE OF ISRAEL TO SUDBURY, ONTARIO

So watch your inbox for that camp email. It’s coming, as surely as adulthood is for every child. If independence is the goal, camp can help them get there.