The beginning of the new year heralds a rite of passage for parents living in the city — choosing a camp for their child to attend in the summer ahead.
According to author Dr. Michael Thompson, summer camps can play an important role in a child’s social and emotional development. In his 2012 book published by Ballantine Books, “Homesick and Happy: How Time Away from Parents Can Help a Child Grow,” Thompson writes that as parents are now in constant contact with their children via cellphones, there is a greater need for children to leave their families and homes temporarily and establish their own sense of independence.
Besides writing bestselling books about children, Thompson is also a clinical psychologist, lecturer, consultant, and former seventh-grade teacher. To write his book about camp life, he visited about 20 different camps nationwide and interviewed directors, staff members, counselors, and campers as well as former campers and counselors. He had participants fill out questionnaires and observed counselors interacting with campers.
Thompson recounts, “Many people who founded camps in the late 1800s did so because they were worried that urbanized youth lacked the strength, fitness, and practical skills of the early pioneers. If that was a concern 130 years ago, it is — or should be — a far greater worry today. Our children, both from the cities and the suburbs, spend an extraordinary amount of time indoors in front of screens. Too many are growing obese and many no longer feel comfortable outdoors, because they spend so little time there.”
Because parents are so concerned about the safety of their children, only 13 percent of students walk to and from school every day. Several decades ago, playing outside in the woods behind your backyard was an adventure for kids. Contrary to these old traditions, Thompson observes, “We have replaced free time with town sports, and the woods and the backyard with the Wii in the rec room.”
Believing that not all children may be ready for camp, Thompson writes that an extroverted kid who has no problems making friends and staying in after-school programs is “a good bet for overnight camp.” He adds, “Sending a pessimistic child who has struggled in new social situations to camp might be a high-risk proposition, unless, of course, the child really wants to try it.”
The best approach parents can take in choosing a camp is to engage their children in the selection process. Nowadays, there are camps for almost all interests — sports, arts, learning to survive in the wilderness, and even camps for children with physical or learning disabilities.
For example, of all the camps Thompson visited and describes in his book, one of the most fascinating to read about is “Camp for All” (campforall.org) based in Burton, Texas. When a parent has a child with special needs, it is difficult for that caregiver to literally hand his child over to a counselor. Camp for All has a competent staff of doctors and nurses that allay the fears of most of these parents in leaving their child alone for the first time in their lives.
According to Thompson, Camp for All is a dream come true for most campers. A highlight at the camps is the high-ropes course with a “pulley system, so that children with spinal cord injuries can leave their wheelchairs and scale the heights.” Another underserved group at the camp are the HIV-positive campers who contracted the virus at birth from an HIV-infected mother. Living with the constant threat of an early death, these children are never far from their caregivers.
At Camp for All, HIV-positive campers, most of whom have never been on sleepovers or gone away with friends, all share a cabin with counselors who are also HIV-positive. When the counselors disclose to their campers their own HIV-status, each camper slowly reveals their own condition. When these campers see they have a support system, they “come to believe they have a future.”
It is a special bonding process, as most HIV-positive children usually do not disclose their illness for fear of stigma. As Thompson writes, “When the children realize that everyone there is in the same situation as they are, ‘the walls come down.’ The camp develops a feeling of family and community where … the children ‘don’t have to hide.’ ”
Thompson believes the only real drawback to camp is dealing with homesickness, which almost all campers say they experience. Talking about homesickness before camp begins, parents can relate to their children their own experiences of leaving home during the summer as kids and longing to return.
When kids get to camp and start writing letters home about wanting to leave, the best thing parents can do is write a letter back acknowledging their child’s discomfort “to make a mental connection.” Children suffering from homesickness should be able to talk to their counselors for help. Most likely, counselors will help prevent campers from feeling isolated.
Most camps discourage phone calls and visits from parents. A child should only leave camp if she is “clinically depressed or suicidal.” Thompson says, “It is the very challenge of camp that makes it such a life-changing experience for so many children. Children have a lot more courage and resilience than we give them credit for. Less than one percent of children leave camp because of homesickness. Kids want to stick it out. They want to be successful.”
Campers can also empathize with each other about homesickness. Thompson adds that when adults discuss their childhoods, 80 percent respond that their sweetest memories happened when their parents were not present. Many friendships made at camp can last a lifetime. Counselors usually try to set up safe environments for kids to become friends.
Most camps do not allow electronics on site, which “simply opens up a huge amount of space for children to relate to each other, and to adults.” Most of that time is over meals, where food is served cafeteria-style or family-style. As almost 45 percent of family budgets go to restaurants and take-out food, home-cooked meals may be a rare pleasure campers can enjoy.
Another surprising statistic is that 66 percent of Americans eat dinner while watching television, so the camp ritual of eating together and talking to each other without electronics is another experience during which campers and counselors can bond together.
Because children may feel valued by their parents, “a child’s sense of worth may come from the actions and feeling of others, and not flow from much that he or she does,” Thompson explains. If a child is responsible for the safety of a fellow camper, where he is securing another kid to a rope on a rock climb or helping a fellow camper seek medical help out in the wilderness, the child begins to feel “valuable.”
Without the pressures of school or the expectations of their parents, many kids feel relieved to go to camp. When kids are at camp, they make their own choices without any outside influence from their families. Because they choose their own friends and their own activities, it makes their accomplishments “feel like they own them.” Further creating their own independence, adolescents can even learn skills that their parents themselves have never learned.
Some camps allow children to make choices for all their own activities. Campers can even reject all the choices if they want. Accepting and rejecting choices “can be crucial for children who are in the process of creating an identity.” Most adults call this process “finding your identity,” but a camper corrects this phrase, saying, “The self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.”
Allison Plitt is a frequent contributor to NY Parenting and lives in Queens with her 10-year-old daughter.
