When Kids come Home from Camp
As camp directors with a child in our own camp, we have learned first hand over the past few years the enormous benefits an overnight camp like Centauri can have on young lives. So here’s some of what you can expect when you child returns from camp.
- Expect improved social and communication skills. That’s what camp’s about, right? Face to face interactions. Firm friendships. The ability to navigate complex situations with increasing ease. Team spirit, and an understanding of what it means to support others and to be supported.
Expect a lessened reliance on technology, and a greater understanding of the price we pay when we rely on technology too heavily. At camp, there’s no wi fi access. Almost no access to social media and texting. No video games. In the dining hall, and in the dorms, campers talk – actually talk – to one another. They make connections, play real games, share experiences face to face, not across a screen, and they do so while moving their bodies! We encourage our counsellors to talk about the effect this has. We want kids to experience everything our world has lost since we became addicted to our phones, our games, our iPads. It’s not that these things are bad – but when we remove them, we re-learn a new way of living, and our dependency is decreased.
- Expect new skills and a greater sense of self. Kids discover more about themselves at camp – they discover new skills, explore different aspects of their personalities and learn just a little more about the adult they hope to be.
- Expect increased resilience and adaptability. Kids experience new foods at camp. The beds are different and so is the routine. The people around them are unfamiliar, at first. All these things are good! Campers discover they can reach out into the world and be successful, away from family, with the support of others who care. Don’t be surprised if your camper comes home liking foods they claimed to hate, making their own beds, clearing their own plate after meals, thanking you when you cook for them, and generally filled with a new confidence. They will be proud of themselves, particularly if this is their first overnight camp.
- Expect great memories and a new sense of belonging. A good camp is a summer home, after all, where young people build communities of their own. Friends made at camp are often friends for life. A summer camp can be an annual respite from the pressures of school, peer groups, technology and so much else.
- Expect a mourning period in the hours after they return home. Your son or daughter has just spent 14, 28 or 42 days in an intense living experience, around people who inspire them, in a dining hall filled with music and song, actively doing things they love, their minds exploding with new ideas, new experiences. This can be hard to process afterwards. Hard to leave. They will need time.
- Expect them to talk a whole lot about the experience! It’s part of the processing. They will need you to know everything that has happened, every friend they made and had to say goodbye to, every new thing they learned. I’ve lost track of the number of parents who tell me after camp, “my child talked non stop all the way home. They kept saying they wished they were back at camp. Then they slept!”
I write this blog not just as a camp director who has spoken with countless kids and parents at the end of more than 2 decades of summers, but also as a mom. My own daughter ends her camp experience in a few days. I know there will be tears. A mourning for what is lost. A sadness as the summer winds to a close. But I also know she has grown in confidence this summer, and has a greater sense of self, new friends, new skills and hobbies, and more magical memories than a single journal will ever contain.
Julie Hartley
Director, Centauri Arts
416 766 7124