"These people are so used to control of their kids that, when they send them off to camp, they have to deal with their own intense anxiety about their own helplessness," says Michael Thompson, a Boston-area psychologist-author specializing in children and families. "That's what's disorienting for them."

Thompson, whose latest book is "It's a Boy: Understanding Your Son's Development from Birth to Age 18," noticed the phenomenon in his work as a consultant to private schools, which he does all over the world. But it was in this country that he heard from teachers bombarded with e-mail and phone calls from parents worrying about how Johnny's classwork is going; whether Susie is making enough friends.

Stuff that normally gets covered in a quarterly or semester meeting is now happening daily. Sort of parent-teacher conferences on demand.

"That's completely right," Thompson says. "Teachers in all situations are having more contact with parents."

And it bleeds into other areas of family life. Calling or e-mailing the coach to ask why Mary didn't have more time on the field during the soccer game. Contacting the director of the youth theater or choir or whatever to see if Billy's going to get a part in the production.

So why would camp be any different? It isn't, Thompson says.

Darlene Daley laughs and admits that while she's never gone to those extremes, she has been a helicopter parent. She and her husband, Norm, are naturally devoted to their only child.

But when daughter Daryl was young, Daley sent her to summer sleep-away camp. It wasn't easy for Daley, but it was good for Daryl.

"When I went to pick her up on the last day of camp, and I saw her striding confidently toward me, I was so proud of her," Daley recalls.

That's the point of summer camp, says Kirsten Kessler, resident-camp specialist for the San Diego-Imperial (Calif.) Council of Girl Scouts.

"It's important for a parent to think about when you were a kid and you went to camp," she says.

She acknowledges that, yes, the world is different now, a little scarier, but camp is the same.

"It's a place to grow," she says. "Kids do all sorts of things at camp on their own. They seem so inconsequential, but they're huge when it comes to developing into a fully functioning and independent person."

Some parents are so concerned about being out of touch with their kids at camp that they take unusual steps.

"I've heard about kids who came to camp with two cell phones, one that could be taken away and one to hide," Thompson says.

Kessler laughs at that.

"I have not run across it myself, but I've heard about it," she says. The way they handle it at Girl Scout camp: We put a tub out, and call it 'cell phone amnesty.' They get their phones back when camp is over."

Daley says, when daughter Daryl, now a college junior, first went to camp, cell phones weren't an issue. Kids didn't have them. And she's glad. She couldn't call and check on Daryl. And Daryl couldn't call her.

"She had to learn to deal with issues without me," Daley says.

Kessler says she just has to tell some parents, "If you're not ready to let go of your daughter, we can't force you to do it.

"They want to come visit," she says of some parents, even when Scouts are attending a weekend camp, when only the troop leader and one volunteer parent supervise the girls.

"I had one mom who wanted to go and we didn't have room for her," Kessler recalls. "I told her, 'We don't have enough beds,' and she said, 'That's OK. I'll sleep with my daughter.' I had to tell her we don't allow that."

Not only is it part of the protocol that each girl get her own cot, but camp experience is all about the girls being on their own. It's that "being on their own" that can make some parents frantic, Thompson says.

In response, camps today have Web sites to feed parents information, and newsletters keep them up to date about the day's activities. Camps hold open houses so parents can walk through cabins and bathrooms and see where their child is going to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom. And they upload tons of photos so mom and dad can get a fix, and not be so afraid.

"These parents need to talk to another parent whose child has been at the camp for two or three years," Thompson suggests. "Run your anxieties by another parent who likely will say, 'Oh, yes, I went through that,' which helps."

But he's not surprised that they feel that way.

"These are parents who started monitoring their children as infants with little radio receivers in their bedrooms," he says. "The parent who wants to be a great parent and tried to be a friend and playmate to his or her child may be in a lot of conflict about sending that child to camp."

And things can get worse.

"They may think of all the things they could have done together, which leaves them in a brew of longing and guilt," he says. "They think maybe they shouldn't have sent the child, because camp was an elective decision. So they've given themselves a wound."

Add to that the burden of the "right" camp.

"That's thinking that there is the perfect camp for your child and if you learn everything and pick the right one, it'll be a perfect experience," Thompson says.

That often backfires.

"A parent starts thinking, 'Maybe she should have gone to the one with this or the one with that," Thompson says. "Or parents start sending them to three different camps" to raise the odds of a good time at least at one of them. In other words, the more parents know about their child's school or camp, the more they can help the child.

Uh-huh, Thompson says.

In order for camp to be a good experience, he says, "kids need to settle in at a camp, feel safe. You can't do that rushing from one camp to the next."

The point, Thompson says, is to let a child pick a camp that offers the things he or she likes to do and, more importantly, wants to try. Parents can pick what they think is the best camp in the world, but it's the child who is going to attend and will decide if the place was perfect for him or her.

"A great camp experience is never the result of great parental effort," he wrote in the current issue of the American Camp Association's magazine for parents.

"Allow me to repeat that: A great camp experience is never the result of great parental effort. A great summer camp experience occurs when a child is ready to be away from his or her family, goes to a well-run camp, meets a friend on the first day, meets a counselor he or she really likes, takes on some challenges, and succeeds in mastering many of them."

Daryl Daley went to a YMCA horseback-riding camp for weeklong sessions several years in a row. Daley says she never missed Daryl any less, but it did get easier to send her off, knowing how much her daughter would benefit.

"Camp is a time for them to be away from us, a time to learn to deal with the counselors and the other kids," Daley says. "Your whole thing as a parent is to see them develop, so you have to let go. You just have to let go."