Grey Choices:  Making decisions when grey is the color of the moment, is tough for all of us. Our daughter is at a crossroads of such a situation.

Summer Planning is Obtuse: Eluding us is a concrete aged out plan for the summer due to funding delays. Question: should our daughter return to her school for their summer camp after graduation in June, or remain at home while programming and residential planning is taking shape?

Pressure Pushed Action, Prematurely Perhaps: A call to the school revealed that summer camp was filling up quickly.  Under pressure, and with the advice from service providers, I sent the deposit check to secure her spot.

Yesterday when she called, I told her the news.  What we thought would be welcomed news, was just confusing news. “But what about Pegasus?” a hour week program she would resume this summer after a five year hiatus. Oops!

Whoosh: Mini melt down on the phone as  confusion settled in on top of a “rotten day”, a verbal skirmish with a classmate, and a bit of “burn out” from sheer exhaustion.

Shades of Melt Downs Past: What mom doesn’t feel like a rotten egg when her child takes a dive from something mom has said or done? But we did regroup beautifully. And over the years, “mini meltdowns” have shrunk in magnitude, are very short lived and usually followed by constructive ideas and apologies on both our parts.

A Plan In Place to Make a Plan: Always quick to search out support for a challenging process affecting our daughter, I put a call in to her advisor and by the next morning the three of us had a conference call focused on assembling a list of pros and cons for summer camp or summer home.

The Third Option: In addition to option 1 and option 2,  camp vs home, I offered a third option:  “Hey you know, this is a complicated one. It is also OK to decide to let mom and dad make this decision for you this time, if you want.”

Diplomacy in The Daughter: “I’ll think about it on Saturday and let you know.”

©Jill Edelman, M.S.W., L.C.S.W. 2011