Hey, Camp Fans!

Continuing our weekly visit back to the subject of homesickness, I have another excellent piece of advice for all of you anticipating parents: Keep your doubts to yourself. Whatever worries you might have about how your kid’s summer camp stay will go—those thoughts don’t need to be a part of your kid’s world.

In fact, it’s those kinds of thoughts and helpless concerning that produces homesickness. Showing your concerns about your kid’s time away at camp only plants the concept in your kid’s head that camp is something they need to ‘get through’ as opposed to something they can actually ENJOY!

It shouldn’t come as any surprise to learn that worry can be contagious. You’ve seen it happen plenty of times with kids of your own. Maybe you can even remember experiencing it when you were a kid. Psychological research in the late 90’s dubbed it ‘anxiety transmission’. The most common form of anxiety transmission starts with parents and gets passed on to the kid.

It’s very common for kids to suffer anxiety transmission about their school life and the same holds true for summer camp.

Anything even remotely close to a concern is something that your kid should never hear. All they should hear as the summer camp season approaches is how excited they should be and how excited you are for them. Tell them how much they’ll love camp and how you look forward to hearing about all the new experiences they’ll have had.

Now before I go on, let me just say that it’s pretty much impossible for a parent not to worry over their kid’s time away from home. You have to worry! You’re a parent! Just because you have the concern doesn’t mean your kid needs to know about it.

And just because you can’t share your worries with your kid doesn’t mean you need to bottle your feelings up and carry the weight alone. You can confide in your spouse or friend, colleague—anyone who’ll understand your concerns.

Letting your worries be heard by the right person can often leave you feeling calmer for it too which is definitely an emotion you can share with your kid! Thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Camp Fans!

Get excited! Camp is right around the corner and Everything Summer Camp recently added our newest camping lantern to our product lineup. Boy does this little light shine! Collapsible, the Passenger 1 Watt Dynamo Powered LED Lantern from First Gear won’t take up too much space to pack up but it will certainly light up the night!

The Passenger Lantern is the top choice since it can be powered by four different sources: its own built-in, rechargeable battery, a Dynamo-crank, a USB cable (which comes included), or DC cable (also included).

It can throw light over 65 feet and it charges in only four hours by the USB and DC cables. But, if you don’t have access to any electricity, you can use the Dynamo Crank to power the lantern. If you crank for just one minute, this lantern will burn for eight minutes on its high level—and nearly 20 minutes on low.

This way, no matter where you are or how unprepared you may be, as long as you bring your Passenger lantern along with you, you have light. And with an LED bulb lifespan of 6,000 hours, you can rest assured that you’ll get lots of use out of this lantern!

Made of durable ABS material, the Passenger Lantern is waterproof so a little rain won’t do it any harm! More than prepared for the hard-wearing, testing lifestyle of most campers, the Passenger 1 Watt Dynamo Powered LED Lantern was made to see you through not just this season of summer camp, but many, many seasons.

Our hat’s off to the fine people at First Gear, the manufacturers of the Passenger Lantern, for making such a reliable, durable, and affordable product. It’s great to offer a product with such usefulness and practicality.

Thanks for reading!

- John

Hey, Readers!

Standing alongside other national days to salute the defenders of our nation like Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day, today is Armed Forces Day—widely celebrated by honoring the people who serve our nation’s Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Coast Guard.

Celebrated annually on the third Saturday in May, Armed Forces Day brings big parades and local gatherings, military displays in open public areas, airshows, as well as educational activities that teach children all about the armed forces.

Before Armed Forces Day existed, each ‘Armed Force’ had its own separate day. There was Army Day and Air Force Day, Navy Day and so on. It wasn’t until August 31, 1949 (the day my father turned two) when the United States’ Secretary of Defense joined all the separate military days to create Armed Forces Day.

The next year on May 20 of 1950, people nationwide celebrated the first Armed Forces. The idea behind Armed Forces Day is to celebrate the unification among all forces of the American military as they all act under one department of the government, the Department of Defense. “Teamed for Defense” was the theme for the first Armed Forces celebration which became quite a success.

Since its first celebration, Armed Forces Day has always heavily relied on public involvement; it was initially intended as a day to increase public awareness and understanding of the different types of positions that are held in the military forces as well as the part that the military plays in regular, everyday, noncombatant life.

From displaying cutting-edge equipment to hosting open houses, civilian life has always been the most important aspect about Armed Forces Day.

And so, on behalf of every civilian that works here at Everything Summer Camp, I’d like to say thank you to every single one of our nation’s Armed Forces for their service and protection to our country.

- John

Hey, Campers!

Any fan of summer camp already knows that they aren’t the only one who enjoys the summer camp experience. After all, the summer camp experience wouldn’t be what it is if you were the only one enjoying it! ‘A lot’ barely begins to describe the multitude of summer camp lovers. There’s an entire army of summer camp advocates which includes most famous people.

Why are they such big supporters of summer camp? Because the impact it had on THEIR life was so influential, they want the same for every kid these days. Patrick Dempsey, for example, became a part of the Camp Wekeela family.

Located on Little Bear Pond in Hartford, Maine, Camp Wekeela is about much more than just a fun camp stay—it actually provides its campers with an education of life and self-discovery. Patrick (or should I say, McDreamy) will certainly attest to the wonders that summer camp works on the younger generation—look at what it did for him!

You may know him best as Dr. Derek Shepherd from the hit medical drama Grey’s Anatomy but he’s been in much more than that! Aside from some other television appearances, Patrick has been in great movies like ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’ ‘Made of Honor,’ ‘Enchanted,’ ‘Freedom Writers,’ the ‘Transformers’ movie ‘Dark of the Moon,’ and much more.

Not just interested in acting, Pat exercises his passion for race car driving. He’s got more than a pristine collection of exclusive sports cars; he’s actually experienced in public competitions like pro-am events as well as the Tecate SCORE Baja 1000 off-road race, Patrick actually seems to love auto racing even more than acting. He once made the comment that if he only could he would “walk away” from his acting career to focus all his time on motorsports.

Camp showed Patrick Dempsey what he was capable of and he sought out the things he was passionate about to incorporate them into his career. What will camp show you?

- John

Hey Camp Fans!

For today’s Throwback Thursday Blog post, we’re linking back to last year’s post from May 15, written by Dr. Thurber about how a relaxed parent begets a relaxed camper.

This post offers great advice about shaping a positive outlook for your kid in anticipation for his or her camp stay. Kids look to their parents for everything so it’s important that you don’t show any potential worries or fears you might have concerning your kid’s camp stay. Check out the May 15 post and make sure to RELAX!

- John