As a parent, we don't simply want our children to recreate our lives. We want the best for our kids and to give them a better life than we were afforded as kids. The ultimate goal is to give them everything needed to thrive and be good, kind, functional adults. The problem that arises is that we are living in an ever-changing landscape and the same tools used to shape you (the parent) as an adolescent have changed drastically.
Teens today do nearly everything differently. They obtain their information in a different way, interact with each other in a different way, they consume different foods, they learn differently, etc... So there is simply no way to even attempt to carbon copy how you were raised onto your child. It's simply apples to oranges.
So how does camp play a role in this ever changing frontier? Well, camp itself has evolved too, but it retains human elements that have been stripped away from so many aspects of a normal teen's life. The peer to peer interaction at camp is face to face and without the presence of technology. There's nowhere to hide and problems have to be solved through verbalizing issues and finding solutions. Instead of having issues stew and build to a point where two people despise each other and say mean things about each other in various social media spaces. Campers
The way friendships are built and hardened at camp is different than nearly every relationship they have back home. At home campers may befriend people at school in a setting that allows them to interact an hour or two per day. At camp these relationships are harden through a camaraderie and the ability to spend 16 hours per day together. Essentially a two week relationship at camp, might have the same exposure time as that of a yearlong friendship at home. Again, though it's that face to face interaction without technology that makes the relationship a different breed.
Teens today are straddled with the pressures of being their own social media managers and constantly worried about their personal brand perception and how that affects social hierarchy. At camp, those pressures completely disappear as you are who you are and you get to present yourself everyday. This makes for not only a more equal playing field, but it requires that each camper put their best foot forward each and every day.
Does this mean that camp is some utopia where problems never arise? Absolutely, not. What it does though is help campers grow socially and emotionally in a controlled environment where they have the ability to work on interpersonal skills and conflict resolution. While this seems rather easy to do, the current environments in which our campers occupy outside of the camp have many ways to circumvent these essential skills. At camp they are forced to have these growth moments, because there is no route to avoid the problems that they may have with someone else. The ability to reach fair and equitable solutions to problems and come to a place where a camper and their peers can coexist is an essential life skill in social, work, and school environments.
Camp is more important than ever because it's a grounding agent. It brings back the elements to life that make us human. While camp has an overall mission of helping campers learn about healthy weight loss, exercise, nutrition, physiology, etc... Ultimately, we want campers to leave camp stronger in mind, body, and soul. We strive to help every camper reach their goals, but also grow as a person and hopefully leave camp as a more mature, independent, and generally good person.
Kids and teens today are extremely fortunate to have a wealth of information at their fingertips and their ceiling for intellectual growth is most likely much higher than that of previous generations. That being said, the weight and pressures placed on today's kids and teens is immense. Camp provides not only an escape from those daily pressures, but it serves as a platform for exponential personal growth that would be nearly unfathomable outside of the camp environment. Whether it be our camp or somewhere else, camp should be a rite of passage for kids and teens. Attending a summer camp has far more benefits than any program can list or advertise.
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