More Kidsickness

Oy...here.

“But what do they really want?” Mr. Konigsberg asked. “I think they want to know that their child is being taken care of. That their child isn’t sick. Or homesick. Or lonely.”

“Well, in this situation by definition you are dealing with emotionally needy people,” I said.

“Homesick kids?” he asked.

“No, kid-sick parents,” I said.

Childsickness

Here's an interesting report that follows up on what we mentioned last week about camp and catered parents.

It's not that parents never moped for their mosquito-bound moppets before. But parents today — some of them, anyway — have become so accustomed to constant contact with their children (thank you, Verizon) that a summer hiatus feels less like a break and more like a breakdown.

"I cry for the next three weeks," a father named Syd said as he prepared to put his daughter Jackie on the bus.

"He doesn't," the daughter, 11, reassured me.

"You don't know!" the dad said. "I walk into your empty room. I'm lonely all summer."

More comments in the Times.