By Michal Lloyd

When I was a kid, summers meant being packed off to wherever my grandparents happened to be—Effie, Minnesota, or Sunburst, Montana. The summer I turned ten, they were in Effie, a town of 99 people tucked deep in the north woods, where my grandpa had grown up.

As the only child and first grandchild, I was far younger than my two aunts and uncle. That age gap created a kind of silence—not unkind, just isolating. I was adored by my grandparents and mostly ignored by the older kids.

My grandma didn’t believe in “structured activities.” She didn’t grow up with television and couldn’t stand noise. “Turn off that blank-blank TV!” she’d yell. So I passed the hours with cardboard boxes, glue, and the Sears & Roebuck catalog. I listened quietly to the Dinah Shore Show or flipped through my aunt’s Archie comics.

There wasn’t much to do in Effie—just a post office my great-uncle ran, one store, a gas station, and the occasional visit from the Fuller Brush man. But one day, lying on the floor reading Archie, I spotted a small ad: WIN FREE PRIZES!

There it was—banana-seat bikes, tassels, walkie-talkies. A greeting card company had launched a brilliant scheme: recruit kids to sell cards for prizes. I was all in. My grandma, thrilled to have me busy, ordered the sample booklet. I hit the streets.

“Hi, I’m Jean and Al’s granddaughter,” I’d say, notebook in hand, collecting orders.

That experience felt like magic—reading something in fine print and living it out. My grandparents, children of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, never set out to create “learning opportunities.” They just wanted peace and quiet. And yet, that summer taught me more than any camp ever could.

Risk and Reward: Why We Need to Let Kids Try

Think of a kid’s fort with a handmade sign that says KEEP OUT! There’s something powerful about kids carving out space, taking initiative, and trying something that might not work.

It’s tempting to keep children “safe” by keeping them indoors, on screens, in structured environments. But are they really safe if they’re not learning how to manage failure or take initiative?

My husband tells a story about his 16 year old son asking for $400 in the ’80s to buy a used car. Money was tight, but the boy promised to flip it and split the profits. Reluctantly, he said yes. Days later, his son handed him $600. A huge win—but more importantly, a life lesson.

Not every risk pays off. Another son was asked to pick fruit by a vendor, who drove him to an orchard and told him to fill crates. He eagerly got to work, dreaming of a new skateboard—until a farmer pulled up, furious. Wrong orchard. Wrong trees. Wrong lesson—but a lesson, nonetheless.

These weren’t carefully constructed “learning modules.” They were organic experiences. And they worked.

Parent Light, Kid Heavy

Children learn best through interaction—with people, problems, and the world. That’s how they discover what works and what doesn’t. College students call it internships. Kids just call it life.

They need to learn to get up on their own, to cook a meal, to manage money, to understand that Skittles are not a major food group. They need to know that if their crush doesn’t like them back, they’ll survive. Life gets hard, and then it gets better. That’s resilience.

For what it’s worth, the greeting cards didn’t arrive in Effie until fall, long after I’d gone home to Idaho. My grandpa delivered them all for me. I don’t know what the lesson is there—except maybe that he was my hero.

Research:

Adolescent Resilience to Addiction – Social environments shape resilience, reducing substance use risk
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30169197

Experiential Learning & Youth Well-being – Hands-on programs improve empathy, protective traits
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.709699/full

Adventure Therapy Outcomes – Real-world challenge-based therapy lowers substance use in teens
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340065017