I first went to a week of summer camp the summer I was 10 or 11. If your children have never gone to camp, I hope you can find a way to let them experience the many opportunities of venturing out on their own at a tender age. Perhaps it is not too late to still include this in their summer plans, or begin thinking about it for them down the line.
Gong to camp can be very expensive but if you check around, prices vary and many church groups or organizations offer scholarships or assistance in getting there. We belong to a fraternal life insurance society that offers free camp to all children of members. If you are looking ahead to next summer, putting away money all year towards this goalby child and parentcan make it happen.
Camps, in my mind, are synonymous with not just the more obvious experiences of poison ivy, cabin clean up, long hikes with mosquitoes and passing swimming tests, but taking maturation to a new level socially, emotionally, physically and spiritually.
My first experience at camp wasnt exactly great: a weeklong ordeal with homesickness. Not mine, but an extremely homesick cabinmate who attached herself to me as one who was not in the popular group either. This was at an all-girls camp, so at least we were spared the turmoil of boy/girl relationships. But my friends missing her parents and family was so acute she almost spoiled my week as well. So thats one negative. She pleaded to call her parents, to be taken home, she cried, she clung. Wise counselors tried everything in their book of tricks to coax her into trying to enjoy the new experience of camping. I think they finally did allow her to go home because I have pleasant memories of that week as well. But the lesson for me was a deep desire to raise my children in such a way that at the right age they would be expected to have the confidence to know they could survive a week on their own.
Some of the highlights of camping experiences for my kids were sleeping outside at a special campout, making tinfoil dinners, swimming every day in a pool, playing tricks on fun counselors, canoeing the Potomac River for several days and then backpacking the rest of the week, going to music, art and drama camps, learning new silly camp songs, but most of all making new friends and building deeper ties with church friends while experiencing that first taste of independence from Mom and Dad.
The things they didnt quite know they were learning were:
Managing a budget: how to ensure $10 or $15 of canteen money lasted all week
Managing their own health and daily care needs: keeping up with all toiletries, soap, clean underwear and towels without Moms help
Making their bed every day
Cleaning up the cabin and wash room, including toilets
Giving up habits or working to achieve new goals like giving up thumb sucking in order to go to camp; or conquering bed wetting or fear of staying overnight without Mom and Dad
Passing a swimming test or other physical feat
Learning about faith in a new context, intensive Bible study
Learning a new skill like basket weaving or canoeing
Appreciating the splendor of nature in hikes or solitary morning devotions or quiet time.
Today I would add as a benefit: going a week without video games, cell phones, texting and Facebook.
All this from a week of camp? Yes, and probably more. Yes, we got homesick letters too and I still have one that says Come and get me, and it was followed the next day by a much more upbeat letter, easing my motherly worry.
Many of us tend to spoil and coddle our kids. Yes, me. Camp can be as important for parents as for kids. It is also nice to have one less kid at home for awhile! Other siblings get more attention and if you luck out and have all the children away at once, parents get a real vacation/honeymoon too. I hope youll be able to plan for such an experience for your children.
Share you or your childs favorite or worst camp memory for a possible future column. Post at www.thirdway.com/aw or e-mail me at melodied@thirdwaymedia.com (Please include your papers name in your response.)
Melodie Davis is the author of seven books and has written Another Way since 1987. She and her husband have three adult daughters.
