A wide body of child development research has demonstrated the significant benefits kids summer camps provide children of all ages. Kids gain self-confidence, independence, social skills, and problem-solving skills simply by engaging all that camp offers. Camp is fun, and it's really good for them as well!
Camp Teaches Resilience
Everyone experiences setbacks now and then, the occasional failed effort or unexpected misfortune. But what happens when you kids trip up or get knocked down? Do they stay down? Sink lower, and let that moment of failure defeat them? Or, do they bounce back, maybe learn from the experience, and gain a new dimension of confidence to face the next challenge? Put differently, how resilient are your kids?
Dr. Michael Ungar, a Social Worker, Family Therapist, and University Research Professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada has thought about this question a lot. He is a co-director of the Resilience Research Centre, an organization coordinating experts from around the world in sociology, psychiatry, education and medicine in a broad project to understand the cross-cultural similarities and differences in how resilience is understood, and to explore ways we can help children and young people be more resilient.
Several times before we’ve discussed how summer camp helps kids grow and how becoming more resilient is one of the clear benefits of camp. Now Dr. Ungar weighs in with a nice Psychology Today article entitled, “Summer Camps Make Kids Resilient.”
I encourage you to go read the article, but I wanted to summarize his main points here as well. Perhaps most importantly, Ungar identifies summer camp as a place where kids learn to do things for themselves without the kind of careful orchestration parents ordinarily provide. It’s a place where, instead, they can try challenging activities and take manageable risks, but also be provided encouragement and positive role models to help them learn to cope with disappointments.
Speaking from his research on resilience, Ungar pinpoints 7 important components of the summer camp experience children need to develop these coping strategies. These are seven things camp provides that help kids when they experience setbacks later in their lives.
- New friendly relationships
- Regular moments of pride and self-confidence
- Experiences of competency and self-efficacy
- Relief from unfair social treatment
- Healthy physical activity and nutrition habits
- Belonging to a meaningful community
- Opportunities to reflect on cultural values
There’s so much more to each of these, and I suspect interesting mechanisms that make them effective. What’s important to realize is that all of them are core ingredients of the camp experience here at Rockbrook. The program activities, staff training, and overall camp philosophy here work together to insure that our campers enjoy these beneficial experiences. Of course, we’re having a really great time together as well, just as we strengthen our powers of resilience.
Teens Seeking Sensations
If you spend time around teenagers, it’s easy to see them exhibit “sensation seeking” behaviors. They thrive on new experiences and stimuli of all kinds, and tend to take surprising risks. In fact it’s widely accepted within psychology that this personality trait is a dominant force in the lives of teen girls and boys. This sensation seeking is thought to be an evolutionary skill, something that helps teens learn new things, become more independent from their parents and to increase their social competence. Overall, it’s a good thing.
On the other hand, chasing novelty like this, even if they’re unaware of it, can sometimes get teenagers into trouble. As a young teen girl or boy is bombarded by urges to experience new things and to be included in their peer group, they may lack the cognitive development to temper risky behaviors, or blindly hold the perceived benefits of that behavior supremely important over everything else. For example, a girl may experiment with drugs at the urging of her friends, effectively ignoring the personal, legal and health consequences of that decision, because she values the approval of her peer group more. Put differently, it’s thought that risky teenage behavior can be understood as “sensation seeking” run amok.
It’s a dilemma; we want our teenagers to experience new things and meet new people, and thereby to learn and grow from that novelty, but we also want them to choose less risky behaviors and seek out positive experiences and peer influences. How to land on the right side of that equation?
Summer camp is well suited to provide this kind of positive sensation seeking for teens. Everyday at sleepaway camp, girls can enjoy new experiences, whether they be climbing a rock, the excitement of shooting a gun, or just making friends with new and different people.
Camp is a pool of positive peer pressure. Chock full of excellent role models, it promises to help teens channel their urge for novelty and their desire to connect with friends. Camp is also a place where teens can take acceptable risks, challenging themselves in exciting new ways, even as parents can be assured their children are kept safe, encouraged and supported. It’s just an ideal environment for teens seeking sensations. It’s no wonder they love it so much!
Healthy Kids Get Outdoors
There’s a new bill introduced in the US Senate that authorizes “the Secretary of the Interior to carry out [state and local] programs and activities that connect Americans, especially children, youth, and families, with the outdoors.” It’s called the Healthy Kids Outdoors Act of 2011 and was introduced by Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, and co-sponsored in the House of Representatives by Rep. Ron Kind of Wisconsin.
Prompting this legislation is a growing concern that American children are increasingly sedentary, spending most of their time indoors, and overweight. A wide range of studies show our kids are addicted to electronic media, watching on average 7.5 hours per day. Obesity and its related health problems are closely related to this. And now, seeing that kids are spending on average less than 10 minutes a day in unstructured outdoor play, an alarming trend is appearing. There’s even some worry that an unhealthy American population would be a national security threat given how many overweight people would be disqualified from military service.
The Healthy Kids Outdoors Act would combat these trends by funding state and local organizations in their efforts to get kids outdoors, to encourage active outdoor experiences. Here too, studies show outdoor activity yielding incredible public health, local economic and national conservation benefits. Seeking these benefits, this legislation would provide up to $15 million dollars of matching funds to sponsor programs and infrastructure that effectively connect Americans, especially kids, with outdoor experiences.
Of course, we are cheering this legislation! At an outdoor summer camp like Rockbrook, we know and celebrate the wonders of outdoor experience everyday. We spend most of our time (not just 10 minutes!) outside, actively engaged in dozens of activities.
At camp, we know all about the benefits to kids of outdoor activity. It’s nice to see those same benefits being championed nationally.
Kids Going Outside
There’s a fun article in the March 28th issue of the New Yorker Magazine that lists the “features” of “going outside.” It’s by Ellis Weiner and is entitled “Just in Time for Spring” (here’s a summary) In the tradition of a radio commercial for a new product, the article suggests that “going outside” is an “astounding multipurpose activity platform that will revolutionize the way you spend your time.” Of course the humor here is that going outside is not new at all; though, it has been too often forgotten as we spend more of our day interacting with electronic media and filtering our experience through technology.
So what does going outside promise? Here are a few highlights.
1. real-time experience through a seamless mind-body interface.
2. authentic 3-D, real-motion visuals.
3. true surround sound.
4. complete interactivity with inanimate objects, animals and Nature.
5. the opportunity to experience actual weather.
Rockbrook is the kind of outdoor camp where all of this is so easily true. Kids love being outside at camp. They love all the chances to actually do things, to use all their senses, and to experience the wonders of Nature. Of course, we’ve mentioned before just how good this is for kids as well. If you think about it, it’s good for all of us!
Interrupt the Race to Nowhere
After discussing the rigorous, driven parenting style recounted by Amy Chua, the recent documentary film Race to Nowhere adds fuel to the fire. In their desire to do “what’s best” for their kids, to provide them “every opportunity,” and to cheer them on to “work hard” toward their goals, the film shows parents pushing their kids to the brink. It’s heartbreaking to see in the film the anxiety both school kids and their parents are dealing with as they race between school work, team practice, and other responsibilities. The quality of what they eat and the amount of sleep they get are the first to be sacrificed in this pressure to excel, but kids are also, I would say, giving up important parts of their childhood. In the name of “getting into a good college” and later, “getting a good job” they have hopped on a treadmill that’s speeding past valuable opportunities to develop as healthy, happy human beings.
Here again, we have to applaud the power of a traditional sleepaway summer camp to act as a welcome relief from these pressures. Rockbrook is a down-to-earth community of people who simply love to relax, be themselves, make good solid friendships, and enjoy the pure freedom of summer. We’re a zany bunch, always in motion, and always ready to try something new for the fun of it. Camp, like the best moments of childhood, is full of unexpected pleasures. Surrounded by equally enthusiastic people, it’s easy to be excited about everything!
The lasting benefits of a camp experience are very well documented, but here’s another. It’s simply wonderful for kids to take a break from the pressures of school. Interrupting the “race to nowhere” with camp is a very good idea.
Amy Chua and Summer Camp
Have you run into Amy Chua’s book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, or heard any of the controversy surrounding it? The book is mostly a memoir of Chua’s own childhood and her Chinese mother’s parenting style, but it’s also an account of how she is raising her own children with similarly strict, high standards, as opposed to what she sees as the overly indulgent, coddling, and soft ways of western parenting. Some of the anecdotes are shocking… demanding thousands of math problems be completed in training for a competition, threatening to burn her daughter’s stuffed animals if a music composition wasn’t played flawlessly, and refusing to allow her daughters to attend a sleepovers because they are a waste of time. It’s not too hard to see why American mothers were so quick to denounce the book as horrible parenting advice.
After hearing about this, you have to wonder if Amy Chua ever sent her kids to summer camp. I kind of doubt it. We can only speculate, but for parents that value intellectual, musical or athletic achievement over everything else, spending weeks at summer camp to “just play” doesn’t make much sense. Calls for a longer school year, and thereby a greater opportunity for classroom learning, are akin to this attitude. The idea is that if you really want to be good at something, even the best at it, then you have to give up other things. Superior achievement requires sacrifice! While it is true, this approach can yield highly trained, skilled people, you have to wonder “at what cost?” Sure you might be a top-notch pianist, but what did you miss out on when you were doing all that practicing? Yes, we can all be a lot better at math and science if we study all year round and you might even be a world-class athlete, but with all that training, do you have any time for other parts of yourself? Your creativity, your friends, your undiscovered talents? Sadly, the answer in most of these cases is “no.”
Amy Chua’s book reminds us that training our kids too rigorously, at the expense of the “whole child,” can have serious consequences. Like a blind devotion to academic achievement, we risk narrowing educational experience and perspective to the point of debility.
Fortunately (and I would include Chua here), most parents understand the value of providing their children diverse educational opportunities because they want them to grow up with a wide range of personal skills that can serve them later in life.
That’s why parents send their children to Rockbrook. They want more for their girls than just what school provides. They understand the tremendous benefits of a summer camp experience. They know camp is fun, but more importantly, is a break from all the “practices” of the school year, where girls can relax and explore all the other sides of who they are.
Kids Grow Better Outside
Spotted this bumper sticker the other day in Asheville, NC. Isn’t it awesome!? It’s put out by the Buncombe county partnership of the Smart Start Program, an “early childhood initiative designed to ensure that young children enter school healthy and ready to succeed.” The sticker shows that, like we have claimed many times before, playing outside is really good for kids. Here are some of the benefits the Buncombe County web site recognizes.
- Kids are better able to play with other kids and work problems out with them.
- Kids benefit from physical activity by experiencing healthier weights.
- Kids have fewer problems with hyperactivity and are better able to pay attention.
- Kids experience less stress than other kids their age.
- Kids score higher on standardized tests.
It’s not too hard to see how “children will be smarter, better able to get along with others, healthier and happier when they have regular opportunities for free and unstructured play in the out of doors?” And it’s a simple step to realize how important summer vacation from school, and summer camps like Rockbrook, are for kids. All children really benefit from time outside, away from school, and certainly at camp.
Are your kids getting outside?
Kids and Granny Bingo!
When was the last time you dressed up like a Granny? OK, when was the last time you played bingo for some fabulous fun prizes? And best yet… when was the last time you did both at the same time!!?
It’s granny bingo! …one of the summer programs for kids at Rockbrook. It’s so much fun to dig through your stuff and create a costume. Powder, a bathrobe, maybe a wig, pillow for stuffing, little glasses, a head scarf, big fuzzy slippers: this will make a great granny.
This is one of those times at camp when you’ll probably be laughing your head off. When you’re there, you just can’t help it.
