“Mom, I’m bored.”

As a parent of two school-age boys, those are three words I dread. I know trouble is headed my way.

Most parent of school-age children agree that school breaks, especially long ones, are a challenge. If you’re working in an office, you need to figure out a good place for your kid to be on the summer break or track-out period. If you’re working at home, you’ll still want to find them a creative outlet, both for your sanity and theirs. Having them hang around the house gets old quickly.

I’ve discovered the joy of camps. “Joy” for me, as I can get my work done. “Joy” for them, as they spend time doing their favorite things. Having them out of the house for a week or two makes me feel like a better mother. It’s true that absence can make the heart grow fonder! Plus, we have more things to discuss.

From 4th to 8th grade, my older son attended golf track-out camps. I’d drop him early in the morning and pick him up mid-afternoon. He’d return gloriously tired from a day on the golf course with his friends. He’d collapse into a chair, shower, eat dinner and fall into bed. No fights there! My younger son has a flair for art, so over the years, I’ve signed him up for art camps, where he’s done everything from create in clay and sketch to make me earrings and clocks. He, too, returns home calm and content.

On Sunday, I was again picking up more information on camps, shopping among the 100 national and local camp exhibitors at Carolina Parent’s annual Camp & Education Fair. I came home with an armful of choices: camps for surfers; budding comedians and actors; movie makers; chefs; basketball, football, soccer and golf players; and day and residential camps for nature lovers. It’s amazing what’s out there! (If you missed the fair, you can still find camps listed on Carolina Parent's Web site. From the home page, go to Resources, then Directories.)

When I got home, I spread the brochures out in my living room, and my third-grader dived in. He found several he liked and can’t quite make up his mind yet. My teenage son was coaxed into watching a DVD about an outdoors camp. Now that he’s changed from a middle-schooler to a blasé high-schooler, it’s hard to get him excited about doing anything over the summer but sleeping and playing computer games. He deserves a break from a grueling academic year, I agree, but I can tell you that he’ll be bored out of his mind after a week or two. So if he can’t make up his mind on a camp, guess who will?