Topic: Question for parents about children and camp
Topic Posted by: Kitty23
Date Posted: Thu May 1 19:39:04 2008
Additional Comments:
Holden and Carly are very eager to get their children into camp this summer to give them something to do - Holden especially. Carly seems to be more concerned with getting Sage away from her and Jack - a good idea in my opinion.
My question is this: Do children need to be entertained all the time? I went to camp once and it was my idea not my parents. Mostly I stayed home in the summer, went to visit my grandparents and stayed busy playing with another child in the neighborhood. I developed hobbies and games I could play on my own which I believe fostered far more creativity than being in a program. I hung around my parents business and when I was old enough helped out some. My stepdauhters visited us and we took them on outings but they did not go to camp.
It seems to me that ATWT is always promoting children having activities constantly. And one of their sponsors runs an ad that talks about how children need some type of supplement because they are so tired from all their activities. Is this really necessary? And is this really the way it is?
Posted by: Kitty23 Date posted: Fri May 2 11:54:36 2008
Message: Thanks to all who posted responses. It is interesting to hear from real parents and not just those portrayed on a drama or on the evening news.
Posted by: tweety Date posted: Fri May 2 10:31:03 2008
Message: I am a firm believer of kids not being inactive in the summer. As they say, an idle mind is the devil's workshop. I enrolled my daughter in various summer camps and schools every year until her senior year. It not only kept her busy and off the streets in the summer, but she made life-long friendships with a whole new group of kids in addition to those at her school and made her a well-rounded person. Whats not to like.
Posted by: Mary Ellen Date posted: Fri May 2 9:29:03 2008
Message: My daughter went to Girl Scout camp when she was 10, with many girls from her troop. They all balked about it, at first, probably because of anxieties about the food, chores, rituals, and new kids to meet. It WAS an experience! Girls who had been her friends were seen in a different light (the brattiness comes out when you're together 24/7 for a week!). When she got home, she appreciated us alot more! In fact, she didn't fight w/ her brother for almost a week! That's what I call progress.... and she matured quite a bit from her experience. :)
Posted by: maggimae Date posted: Fri May 2 8:18:19 2008
Message:
This is a great topic. I have ten grand kids. Six live in California and four live in the midwest. The California kids go to camp all summer. They are day camps and last one, maybe two weeks. They go to soccer camp, cooking camp, acting camp, quilting camp, etc. They also take swim lessons. The midwest kids get jobs as soon as they are able (usually around fourteen). It isn't that they need to, it's just that there is a strong midwest work ethic, especially in our family. The midwest kids are also heavily into sports.
I do think they are over scheduled, but I realize the world has changed since I was a kid, or for that matter, since my kids were kids. Whoopie Goldberg says it's because of air conditioning. It used to be that all the windows were open and kids played outside with their parents supervising from the open windows. Also, the families in big cities would all sit out on the stoop (love that word) and the everyone looked after everyone else's kids. Now, everyone stays indoors with the doors and windows closed.
Posted by: alwazatwt Date posted: Fri May 2 1:42:09 2008
Message: I do think it's more healthy to keep kids active all the time. If you don't, they could end up becoming couch potatoes. I think that's why there are so many obese kids these days—they just want to watch cable TV and surf the web.
Posted by: happy Date posted: Thu May 1 22:45:59 2008
Message: I think some families are just camp families and others aren't. I attended the same day camp from the time I was 7 through teen-hood and then was a counselor for a few years. I never did overnight camp.
Personally, I can't imagine filling all the hours that school occupies for an entire summer. I am simply not one of those creative moms that can come up with endless fun activities . And staying home to watch ATWT with me is not an option!!
Posted by: Rosebud1 Date posted: Thu May 1 21:40:48 2008
Message: Most camps I've known weren't for the whole summer. Kids were sent there for a couple of weeks, 4-6 weeks at the most. I also think that the experience depends on the camp. Camps have lots of different goals. Some are more about having fun, not so much about being entertained. Others focus on learning new skills or overcoming various challenges.
I went to a camp that had a focus on music. We weren't entertained. We did a lot of hard work! We had classes to attend, both private & group. We usually saw our parents once a week, when we had a performance.
Some camps are all about having fun, being in the outdoors & taking a break from a routine. For some kids, camps in the country are their only experience outside of a big city.
Posted by: Allison Date posted: Thu May 1 21:19:24 2008
Message: Sadly many neighborhoods are like ghost towns in the summer. With so many duel career families most children are in day camps at the very least. And now I'm finding that even stay at home moms are sending their kids to day camps because if they don't there won't be any other children around for their kids to play with.
Some kids love sleep away camps and have great experiences. My oldest went to Girl Scout resident camp starting in the third grade and loved it. My younger daughter had serious separation issues and after a couple of years we finally gave up thinking she was going to get over it.
I have several Jewish friends whose children go to the same camp they grew up going to. When they drop off their kids it's almost like a mini reunion, they run into so many people they went to camp when they were kids.
The idea of camp always sounded better to me than the reality. But then I'm like my youngest, despite all the fun, I didn't want to be away from my family.
Posted by: BessBeau Date posted: Thu May 1 20:51:02 2008
Message: In our case, our daughter was a very pleasant surprise when I was 34...we never *shuttled her off* to go to summer camp..she was exposed to activities that she didn't has access here . She loved her summers at camp.
Posted by: htimage Date posted: Thu May 1 19:59:46 2008
Message: All my summers from age 8 to age 14 were spent at summer camps. They were among the most memorable and most wonderful experiences of my life and I wouldn't have traded those summers at camp for anything! I was a shy child, but thanks to camp I became confident and learned how to be independent. I made lifelong friends. I learned how to shoot a rifle and a bow and arrow, won awards for marksmanship, learned to ride horses and care for them and later bought several horses of my own and became horseback riding director for one of the camps as a young adult. I even met my husband during my last summer at camp when I was 14. I think summer camps are a great alternative to sitting inside in the air conditioning playing video games. Let's face it - we can't just send our kids outside anymore and say 'see ya at supper time'. Kids have a lot less freedom than they used to, but summer camps are usually very safe environments and like Carly said - you get to be a kid 24/7!
Posted by: soaphound Date posted: Thu May 1 19:47:30 2008
Message:
Well, kitty, I agree that too much emphasis is put on extra-curriculars these days, especially IF it's just because parents are too busy to spend time with their kids (no one needs to take this personally; obviously every family's situation is different). I didn't go to camp, either, because my mother had a friend who was molested by a camp counselor (in the 1940s!), and it always frightened her to send her own kids away. So, we stayed home and I never remember being bored. I liked reading, coloring, drawing, playing with neighbors, going to community pools, etc. But, my feeling about Carly's kids was that they want to keep them off the show for a while to save money and so we posters wouldn't bother to ask about them! Call me suspicious!
