My daughter, Ava, is twelve, and until this summer, she had given me almost no practice at being suspicious of her.
She was the kid who reminded me when I forgot to sign school forms.
She got straight As without being pushed.
If she accidentally took somebody else’s pencil home, she brought it back the next morning.
She had given me almost no practice at being suspicious of her.
So when she begged me to let her spend a week at scout camp with her troop, my main concern wasn’t whether she’d get into trouble.
It was whether I could handle her being gone.
“Mom, I’m twelve,” she told me for what felt like the hundredth time.
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