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

Water Safety Alert

How a conversation at home could save your child’s life at camp

Drowning is a leading cause of accidental death among young people. So whether your son or daughter is headed to day camp or overnight camp this summer, you’ll want to teach them basic water safety at home, before opening day.

Yes, high-quality camps should train all of their staff in emergency water rescue. They should categorize swimmers and place them in appropriate instructional groups and water depths. They should insist that children swim in buddy pairs…and follow other essential safety practices. They should. But they don’t. Not always. They’re human, so their attention wanes and their judgment falters.

I’ve been a camp waterfront director for nearly 25 years, so I’ve seen or made just about every aquatic mistake well-trained lifeguards make. And that experience has taught me the importance of redundancy. Safety systems need back-up safety systems. And that’s where you, as a parent, come in.

When moms and dads participate in basic water safety preparation at home, campers behave more safely at camp. At a minimum, these are the steps you should take prior to opening day:

• Teach your child that playing in the water is fun, but should never be enjoyed alone. There must always be a properly-trained adult lifeguard present.

• Teach your child to enjoy the water in buddy pairs, never as singletons. This might be a parent-child buddy pair at the beach, under the watchful eye of a trained lifeguard. Or, it might be a pool party in the backyard, where every young guest has a swimming buddy.

• Teach your child to swim. Even the youngest day campers can learn to swim. Before the camp season starts, bring your child to some lessons at the local municipal pool, YMCA or club. Sure, children will become better swimmers at camp, but learning the basics prior to camp is a plus.

• Teach your child to swim only during daylight hours. Accidents are more likely when campers cannot judge depth, direction or bottom conditions in the darkness.

• Teach your child to tread water and perform the survival float, as well as to respond to a distressed swimmer with a reaching assist or a throwing assist. Even a kindergartener can save a life with a working knowledge of basic rescue techniques.

• Reinforce your expectation that your son or daughter will follow all of the camp’s aquatic rules, such as: No Diving in Shallow Water, No Running on the Dock or Deck, Always Wear a Life Jacket in Boats, etc.

Like wearing a seatbelt in the car or donning a helmet when riding a bicycle, following waterfront safety rules makes an exciting—but potentially dangerous—activity safer. What you start in your own bathtub, backyard pool or nearby shore can then be reinforced by your child’s counselor or cabin leader. Or, if a distracted staff member fails to remind your child to don a life preserver before he or she launches out in a canoe, it won’t matter. A properly-sized preserver will already be buckled on, thanks to you.

Enjoy the summer!

Dr. Christopher Thurber

Bullying has received a lot of recent press, especially as more and more schools adopt anti-bullying programs in their curriculum. Witnessing school shootings that were, in part, retaliation for relentless bullying may have increased our empathy toward both bullies and their targets, as well as our motivation to change. But tragic events, additions to curricula and press coverage have all made it seem as if bullying is new. It might surprise you to learn that camping professionals have been taking a systematic, proactive role in preventing bullying since 1929. That year marked the publication of Camping and Character: A Camp Experiment in Character Education.

In Camping and Character, authors Hedley Dimock and Charles Hendry reported on the results of a multi-year study conducted at Camp Ahmek in Ontario. The study sought to uncover the changes evidenced in campers’ behavior during six weeks at camp and to understand the mechanisms behind those changes. Among the more than 50 behaviors the authors tracked was bullying. Dimock and Hendry recognized that even small increases in bullying behavior needed to be addressed by the camp leadership. They were also encouraged by huge increases in many prosocial behaviors, such as “Making a friendly approach to [an] unlikable boy.”

Nearly 80 years later, what are the most important things we’ve learned about bullying? The answer has three parts. First, bullying itself is only half the picture. For every bully, there is at least one target. Second, bullying is cyclic. A recent study by the Center for Disease Control confirmed that about three quarters of bullies are also targets and about three quarters of targets turn around to bully another child. Third, bullying is social. Antisocial, to be sure, but it represents a dynamic, complex, interaction whose origins lie in unhealthy relationships. Therefore, the solutions lie not in simple punishment, but in the formation of healthy relationships.

Summer camps are uniquely suited to deal with bullying because they are such healthy social environments. At camp, leaders supervise children and have opportunities to educate bullies and targets. Leaders can teach the kinds of prosocial behaviors Dimock, Hendry and their pioneering predecessors saw so often at camps. This is easier to do than most people think, partly because bullying is so often a misguided attempt to make a social connection. If you can teach a bully how to make a social connection without using coercion, threats or violence, you have actually met that child’s needs instead of simply punishing his or her misbehavior.

Specifically, camps help children in the following ways:

• By having the camp staff set a sterling interpersonal example for all children to follow.

• By seeing beyond the bully alone and including his or her target in an intervention.

• By strengthening bullies’ fragile sense of themselves by providing opportunities for authentic achievement and human connection in various athletic or artistic domains.

• By teaching bullies to make social connections through healthy interaction.

• By teaching targets to stand up to bullies in ways that makes bullying unrewarding.

• By setting, early and often in the camp session, strict guidelines for kindness and generosity…and then heaping on the praise when staff witness prosocial behaviors.

• By providing the kind of close supervision that allows both bullies and targets to replay unacceptable or unassertive interactions under the guidance of experienced adult staff.

• By deliberately creating a culture of caring that is perhaps different from school or the neighborhood at home…and then immersing children in that culture.

• By allowing positive peer pressure to exert itself such that children feel appreciated and rewarded for gentleness, honesty, kindness and unselfishness.

Camps are not a bullying panacea. Outside of camp, there are powerful forces, such as violent media, that infuse children with the notion that violent, even lethal solutions to vexing social problems are both effective and glorious. Nevertheless, camp is a powerful, positive force for change. Educating bullies and their targets is just one of the many ways camp enriches lives and changes the world.

So next time you’re talking with your child’s camp director, don’t ask whether they have a bullying prevention program. If all your camp is doing is trying to prevent bullying, that’s not enough. Instead, ask, “When instances of bullying occur, what are the ways your camp’s leaders teach bullies and their targets alternative, prosocial behaviors?” and “How does your camp create a culture that exerts positive peer pressure?”

Enjoy the summer!

Dr. Christopher Thurber

How to Ensure Success by Taking Care of Your Own Stress

It’s normal to be anxious about how your son or daughter will do at camp. Yes. That’s right. So relax. It’s normal. And if you’ve read my blogs on homesickness prevention and followed my advice, then chances are your child will thrive at camp. (Behind on your prep? No time to read more? Check out this anti-homesickness DVD: EverythingSummerCamp.com.)

I know you. You’re still worried. Will Sam make friends? Will Pat pass his swim check? Will Robin change his underwear? Will Francis take his medication? I’m a parent, too. I know what it’s like to fret about your kiddo’s future. I also know that fretting openly generally ramps up my kids’ angst.

If you’d perused clinical psychology journals in the late 1990’s, you’d have read Lisa Capps’s research on anxiety transmission from parent to child. Her studies showed that when parents spoke nervously to their elementary school children about things that could go wrong on the walk to and from school, the kids developed school phobias of varying intensity. Worry, as it turns out, can be contagious.

The key for parents who may be worrying about what might go wrong at camp (and that’s all of you reading this) is to share those concerns with another adult. Your son or daughter needs to hear a consistently positive message of confidence and optimism, such as: “You’ll love camp” and “I know you’ll do great” and “It’s gonna be a terrific experience” and “I can’t wait to hear about your new friends and the new things you try.”

With your spouse, partner, colleague or best friend, you can say, “I won’t sleep soundly until I get his first letter” or “I’ll be checking the camp’s website every hour” or “I don’t know what I’ll do without him” or “I’m not ready for her to go away this year…I should have waited until next summer.” But beware of sharing those thoughts—and other nervous notions—with your child. You’ll create worry where there wasn’t any.

If I’ve convinced you to keep your public pronouncements positive, I’m pleased. But now you’re wondering, “What if—after all I’ve done to keep my concerns among trusted peers—it’s actually my child who rings the alarm bells?” I’ve already told you the answer: Express confidence, optimism and positivity. The trick is being ready to respond.

Almost every child headed to summer camp for the first time will ask, “What if I feel homesick?” Well-intentioned parents will sometimes make the monumental mistake of saying, “If you feel homesick, I’ll come and get you.” But think about the subtext of that remark. What you’re really saying is, “I have so little confidence in your ability to cope with this normal feeling, that I think the only solution is for me to come and rescue you.”

That shaky message is not what any youngster needs to hear, directly or indirectly. So be ready with: “There are many things you love about home, and I’m sure you’ll miss some of them. You’ll probably be having so much fun, that you’ll barely notice any homesick feelings. But if anything starts to bother you, I’m sure you’ll know what to do. And remember, your counselor or cabin leader is also there to help.”

Still have a few unanswered questions? You’ll feel better if you had the answers. So now is the time to read everything the camp has sent you. And check out the website one more times. Then call the camp director if there are still lingering pre-season queries. Remember, information is the best antidote to your own anxiety. And when that’s under control, your child will sense your calm. That, too, is contagious.

Enjoy the summer!