Kids these days

Day camp has been going really well. I'm working from 6:45 - 7pm every day so I apologize for the lack of posts. We've had our hiccups, but overall the kids are having fun, the staff is doing well and we haven't lost any kids! I'm finding that usually we have parents that are much harder to deal with than any kid in our program. I was kind of expecting this to be true, but it doesn't make it any less frustrating. It hit me just today exactly what is going on that is making parents really hard to deal with...

When I was growing up if there was an issue between me and another adult I would tell my mom and she would talk with me about it from the adult's perspective. For example, "I didn't get to take a turn on the slide because miss percy said it was time to go!" My mom's response, "well, maybe you'll get to next time. Sometimes there's just not enough time for everybody to do something." End of discussion.

Now I'm getting this response from parents:
"Janie really wanted to do the zipline yesterday and she didn't get to"
"I'm sorry, sometimes there's not enough time for every child to do it"
"Well I just don't think that's fair, my Janie was very upset"
"Janie never said anything to me about it, she told me she had fun yesterday"
"Well it's your job to make sure the kids are happy. Sometimes they don't tell you things, you have to ask them" See Natalie with no proper response possible other than I'm very sorry.

Each week there are one or two kids who are fine while they're with us and then when mom comes they suddenly are upset about something and it's all my fault. The adults are no longer thinking about our position in the mix, now it's only the kids' position and their side of the story. We have 49 kids we are responsible for. We do our absolute best to make sure everyone gets a chance to do everything they want at least once, but sometimes it just can't physically happen due to numbers and the amount of time we have.

There are definitely a lot of great parents out there and I definitely recieve far more compliments in a week than I do criticisms. However, I can't help feeling like I've failed when I'm listening to a parent telling me I made her child feel left out or unspecial - especially when I know that I can't say anything to defend myself or explain my position. It just isn't recieved.

I just had to get that out there to vent my frustration. I know that I have no clue what it's like to be a parent and face the challenges it brings. Now I'm just taking notes on things I really don't want to do when I am one.