By Douglas Belkin, Globe Staff  |  August 3, 2006

AMHERST, N.H. -- The mother was from Sharon, Mass., and her crying was so hysterical that Ken Kornreich thought she might pass out. Tears, runny nose, heaving sobs. The works. Both arms were wrapped around a blue pillar when the fight went out of her body and she slowly, theatrically, slumped to the floor.

``She said she couldn't leave her baby," Kornreich said. ``She wouldn't abandon her. I looked at her husband and he just sort of shrugged."

The tragic setting for this wrenching good-bye? Hospital ward, adoption center, war zone? None of the above. It was a summer camp. Seven weeks of swimming, sing-alongs, and s'mores.

A melodramatic good-bye? Perhaps. Unusual? No longer.

Levels of separation anxiety between parents and their camp-bound children have reached epic heights this summer, according to camping experts around the country. The result: a new phenomenon of contraband cellphones, secret hand signals, and a budding industry of camp psychologists employed to help ease the transition -- for the parents.

``She finally left," Kornreich said of the tear-stained mother. ``But we had to talk to her for a while before she could pull herself off the floor."

Stories of helicopter parents -- so called because they hover ever so close to their children -- abound among baby boomers. Competitive, overbearing, and unwilling to let go, they have changed the flavor of kindergarten enrollment, Little League cheering sections, and college admissions. Now, 140 years after the first privileged boys trekked out of grimy Northeastern cities and into the woods for a season of fresh air and exercise, those parents are redefining the way summer camps are run, too.

At the center of all this tension: the cutting of the ``digital umbilical," a term coined by child psychologist Christopher Thurber in a paper for the American Camping Association last year.

Parents are used to communicating with their kids on their cellphones or through text messages or e-mail several times a day, Thurber said. But central to most summer camps is the idea of creating an enclosed community separate from the outside world. Translation: no phones, no text messaging, no instant anything.

``All of a sudden, the parents have to go cold turkey," Thurber said. ``It's digital detox."

At Camp Young Judaea, where Kornreich and his wife, Marcy, have been fixtures as campers, counselors, and now directors for 30 years, the only contact children have with their parents is through the written word -- one-way e-mails from parents to children, or old-fashioned handwritten letters.

``This is a place for kids to be kids, to not have to worry about their parents," said Ken Kornreich. ``If they're talking to Mom and Dad every day, that's not going to happen."

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