Bruce Cameron

Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2010.

Most parents of teenage daughters, hearing that Los Angeles parents Laurence and Marianne Sunderland stuck their 16-year-old daughter on a boat to sail around the world on a year-long voyage, thought to themselves: “A whole year without having my teenager screaming at me? Where can I get a boat?!”

Typical parents are unable to afford the kind of yacht the Sunderlands used — you can’t just stick your kid on a rowboat and shove her out into the bay, as tempting as it may sound at times. For those parents, there is summer camp....