Care Package Care

Receiving a package is a fun tradition at summer camp. When it comes to camp care packages here are a few things to keep in mind. Care packages themselves grab children’s attention; what’s inside matters less than the fact that they are receiving a package. The package itself says, “I’ve been thinking about you and I love you.” They are part of a summertime ritual in which millions of families participate.

I said “matters less” not “doesn’t matter.” Remember that camps have rules against contraband. Most camps don’t allow food care packages because they attract ants and critters, some of which are large, like sweets, and rhyme with share. Cookies, cakes, and candies also spoil children’s appetites for healthy camp food, so save it all for the first day home. Most camps also don’t allow dangerous items or electronics. (Yes, parents have tried to ship fillet knives for tackle boxes, fireworks for the Fourth of July, and even cell phones for late-night check-ins.) Camps are ethical environments where following community rules is highly valued. Parents would be wise to set a good example by following care package guidelines.

So, what’s fun to include in a safe, legal, and healthy care package? Keep in mind that camp is about connection. Your son or daughter will be making lifelong friends, so send gear that facilitates connection. Solitary electronic games are about the worst thing to send, but non-electronic games that help young people play together include:

• Frisbees® and other flying disks
• Camp Talk Cards (for terrific conversation starters)
• Checkers, Chess, Go, Mastermind, and other portable board games
• Mad-Libs® and other group word games
• Wildlife identification books (great for nature walks)
• Paper airplane and origami how-to books
• Uno® and other card games (as long as there is no betting involved)

Send age-appropriate sports and hobby magazines, literary and science publications, and newspaper clippings. Interesting printed media get shared and traded at camp, but steer clear of magazines and comics with sketchy, sexualized, or violent content.

You also might include an item or two that your child doesn’t have to share, such as:

• A Novel
• A T-shirt
• A Puzzle
• A Baseball Cap
• Photos of the Family
• A Small Stuffed Animal
• Colored Pencils and Paper for Drawing
• A Blank Scrapbook or Journal to Start at Camp

Just remember: Providing the camp experience for your son or daughter already shows how much you care. You care about their growth and development. You care about their happiness. And you care about their out-of-classroom learning. Seen in this light, care packages are completely unnecessary. In fact, most overnight campers don’t receive care packages. Feel free not to send one. Instead, tell your children how much you love them in a newsy, upbeat, handwritten letter. A couple letters a week is plenty enough to sustain a meaningful connection with home. And if you can’t resist the temptation to send something more, keep it modest.

Enjoy the summer!

Dr. Christopher Thurber

On Not Documenting Every Moment

I had a surreal moment last summer. I’d been attending camps for 39 years, working at the same camp for 30 years, and writing about camps for nearly 20 years when I finally got the chance to drop off my own son at camp. The summer of 2011 was Dacha’s first two-week stay at overnight camp. The moment I had been looking forward to since a decade before I even had children had finally arrived.

My camp director friends had made all kinds of predictions about that day. “Your kid’s gonna flip out,” some of them guessed, “because there’s been so much build-up to this moment.” “You’re gonna lose your junk,” others speculated, “because you’ll be over-analyzing every second of what Dacha does.” A few also suggested, “You and Dacha are going to be fine. It’s the cabin leader I’m worried about. It’s not every day that the author of The Summer Camp Handbook drops his son off at camp.” Sheesh.

In reality, none of that came true. Dacha was exited to be a camper, having grown up on the property but not having been allowed to participate in anything except waterfront activities. And I stepped through the entire day as if I’d done it a million times (which I kinda had, at least from the point of view of the cabin leader). Surprisingly (or perhaps not), we had remembered to pack everything. Heck, I didn’t even linger to chat up Dacha’s cabin leader. Why should I have? I trained the guy myself.

But I did make one huge mistake. I busted out my flash video recorder and tried to capture the whole experience with megapixel fidelity. The result: I was a step removed from actually savoring the moment. I knew what was going on, but I was so intent on memorializing that half hour from main-lodge check-in to our final goodbye hug that I missed the experience of dropping my son off at camp. And watching the video is completely unsatisfactory. It’s like trying to enjoy a sunset on Skype.

I realize that only a few parents reading this month’s column are youth development professionals who will be dropping off their own flesh and blood at camp this summer. And even fewer of you reading this have written advice columns for parents about creating a successful camp experience for your children. But that doesn’t matter. We all have one thing in common: We love our children and we enjoy being part of their lives. ‘Nuf said.

For this reason, I urge you to keep your smart phone and all other electronics at home on opening day. I’ll allow you one posed photo with the counselor in front of the cabin, but that’s it. Honestly. Plan to spend opening day breathing in the fresh air, listening carefully to your son or daughter’s tone, observing the subtleties in his or her behavior, and interacting face-to-face, not through a lens. The emotional memory you will create that day by being present in the moment will be higher def than any flash video. On opening day, be a parent, not a producer.

Have a wonderful summer!

Dr. Christopher Thurber

Hey, Water Fans!

Get informative tips about the importance of keeping hydrated as you go about your highly active and scorching hot camp days. Learn the tell-tale signs of severe dehydration that our bodies put out to warn ourselves when we’re at dangerously low hydration levels. Read the straight facts about how water fuels our bodies and come across interesting information and helpful tips for keeping water on your person at summer camp. This post from the Everything Summer Camp company writer has been removed from our Blog site and moved to our main site’s Camp 101 feature. Click here to read this helpful Blog post.

Hey, Camp Fans!

It’s the last day of May; and you know what that means! It’s most-likely time for many of you to actively prepare for your camper’s summer camp stay. While completing a packing list, making sure that your camper is completely packed, and eventually getting them to camp with all of their camp gear may sound like an overwhelming impossibility—I swear—Everything Summer Camp can help make everything much simpler than it sounds.

It’s true! Everything Summer Camp can really take away all the stress that goes into getting everything ready for your child’s summer camp stay.

Issues start to arise when you have multiple places from which you need to buy your gear. It can easily become much harder to keep track of all your things when you purchased nine items online from five separate Web sites and the rest you decide to hunt and gather at your local retail stores! Yes, you will save some money this way, but the products you’re going to purchase will not be of the same quality as what we can offer.

We’re Everything Summer Camp! We’re your one stop shop for all your summer camp needs! Our Web site can save you tons of time and we don’t make our customers pay through the nose for it, either. In fact, we hope that you involve your camper in the experience of preparing for summer camp—have fun on our Web site and really get into the summer camp spirit.

Our number one concern is our customers and getting your children to camp fully prepared and on time. Don’t let stressful camp prepping lead to a stressful camp experience for your camper—leave the work to us and simply enjoy your summer!

That’s all for today, Camp Fans! And, as always, thanks for reading!

- John

Packing Ends and Odds

What to pack isn’t half as interesting as how to pack. As you read this, millions of parents are doing it the wrong way. They’re packing for their children, instead of with their children. In a prior Everything Summer Camp e-mail, I discussed how important it is to involve your child in all of the big and small decisions regarding camp. Parents and children should shop together, choose a footlocker or trunk together, and, of course, pack together. “C’mon,” you protest, “my kid wouldn’t know how to pack a trunk if his life depended on it.” Not unless you let him help.

I laugh thinking about my days as a cabin leader, chastising a camper for wearing only a T-shirt on a cold rainy day, only to have him reply, “But I don’t have a raincoat!” Odd, I think to myself. So we’d open up his footlocker together and lift up the top tray. Lo and behold! Stacks of neatly folded clothes, including—you guessed it—a raincoat. Cue the dreamy harp music. “Oh, I had no idea. My mom packed this all for me.” I think you get the picture. Indeed, there are benefits to packing together that extend far beyond the joys of spending casual time with your son or daughter.

And now a few insider tips on what to pack that most camps won’t tell you.

• Label everything. Admit it. Even though you’ve read this recommendation from me before, you’ve already set aside a few things for camp that don’t have your son or daughter’s name on them. Baseball glove? Toothbrush? Sunglasses? Underwear? Shampoo? Between iron-on labels, laundry markers, and a commercial tape labeler, you can slap a name on anything.

• Label the footlocker or trunk. No, I don’t have a raging case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Believe it or not, you do need to label the container in which you and your child are packing all of this beautifully labeled gear. Good quality footlockers, for example, get used as ladders, card tables, and even wind up outside from time to time. So yes, it has to have a name on it or in it.

• Pack the packing list. Next thing you know I’m going to be asking you to label the laundry marker you send with your child, right? (Come to think of it, that’s not such a bad idea.) Anyway, placing the list of everything you’ve packed inside the trunk itself serves as an excellent checklist at the end of the season. It’s the guideline for repacking, so be sure it’s complete.

• Avoid sprays. Most bug sprays, deodorant sprays, and even perfume atomizers create flammable vapors. Better to pack stick or lotion forms of bug spray and toiletries. (And leave the perfume at home.) Not convinced? Imagine a bunch of eight-year-olds with a half dozen cans of spray repellent dousing themselves around a roaring campfire. Got that image? Now delete.

• Enlist support. Social support is important and helps promote adjustment. But the kind of support I’m talking about here is more…intimate. Let’s just say that some activities for young men and women and more comfortable with bras and jock straps on. That’s right. Excessive bouncing during horseback riding, mountain biking, and plain old running can be uncomfortable. Almost as uncomfortable as asking your parents to buy these undergarments. So, if your child is hitting puberty, assume they need this support and shop for it (with them, of course) matter-of-factly. Hey, they can always elect not to wear it. Kind of like the raincoat they discover at the bottom of their trunk.

Enjoy the summer!

Dr. Christopher Thurber