The Kid I Gave A Second Chance
This summer I got a handwritten note from a camp parent. She thanked me for the hard work, and then she wrote something I keep coming back to: “thank you for your ceaseless presence, even at the last minute, even in the worst moments.”
I read that note and I thought about Ethan.
Five summers ago, a mom emailed me about her thirteen-year-old son. She wanted him to come be a CIT for a couple of weeks. I said yes. I had never met him.
That's how it worked then. This was the beginning of the CIT program, and there was nothing refined about it. No goal sheets. No daily task sheets. No point system. No grounding conversation before the first day. You signed up and then we asked you to help out and hoped it went well.
It did not go especially well.
Ethan kept an AirPod in his ear after we asked him to take it out. He kept his phone under the table, in a camp room where the rule is no phones unless you're using one for a camp project. He didn't engage with the campers. His sister was a camper that summer, and she told their mom what she was seeing. He was, to be honest about it, not doing a great job.
The next summer, his mom reached back out and asked if he could come back.
I wanted to say no. But, that’s not who I am in the world.
Here is what I said instead: I'll consider it, but first he and I are going to have a serious conversation.
That conversation with me and Ethan was not gentle. I told him exactly what I saw the summer before. I told him exactly what I needed to see if he came back. I was clear and I was firm, and I did not soften any part of it, because a fourteen-year-old who is given a vague second chance learns nothing except that expectations are negotiable.
He came back for what was supposed to be two weeks. He stayed six.
It was a complete one-eighty. He asked questions. He took feedback — actually took it, not the nodding version. He grew in front of me over the course of a summer.
The next year he came back as a junior counselor. Like everyone in that role, he volunteered his first four weeks before moving into the paid position, because we want people to learn what the job actually is before they're being paid to do it. He was a leader that summer. I trusted him with campers who needed the most support, which is not a thing I hand out casually.
This summer, Ethan was on the team that launched our new McDonogh location. And I asked him to lead the CIT program.
Every morning he met with this year's CITs. He set goals with them. He walked through their tasks. He helped them set an intention for the day. At the end of the day he brought them back together to reflect on how it went.
He also stepped in as a substitute camp lead for an entire week when one of our leads was unexpectedly out sick.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, he told the CITs about his first summer. He told them he hadn't done a good job. He told them he wanted to help them be their best.
Nobody asked him to do that. Nobody asked him to be vulnerable.
I want to be precise about something, because it would be easy to tell this story wrong.
The structure we have now — the grounding conversation with me or our camp coordinator, the daily goal sheets, the task sheets, the point system — none of it is a screen. It doesn't keep anyone out. The conversation isn't an interview where we decide if you're worthy; it's where we make sure you know what the role is, what we're looking for, and what we're trying to build together. The sheets aren't a test. They exist so that a young person walking into a room full of kids has something to hold onto.
We built that structure because we watched who needed it. Some of our CITs came in and jumped straight into the work with almost no direction. Others needed the shape of the day made visible before they could find their place in it. So we built the shape, and now everyone gets it.
Which means the honest version of this story is not "we got better at spotting the wrong kids." It's the opposite.
Ethan is why the scaffolding exists. That first summer showed us that a young person can be willing and still be lost, and that the answer to a lost kid is not a better filter. It's better support. Every tool he now uses to run the CIT program is a tool that did not exist when he needed it.
If I had said no thank you after that first summer — and I came close — I would have been completely justified. He didn't meet expectations. The record was right there.
And I would never have met the Ethan of this summer. The one leading the program. The one covering a week as camp lead. The one telling a room of middle schoolers that he started off badly and turned it around, so they know it's possible.
That's the ceaseless presence that parent was writing about. It isn't only about the hard days with campers. It's about the hard days with the young people we're raising into leaders, and it's about who you decide to stay with.
That's what Perfectly Me is about.
That's why this isn't just camp.
Comments