10 Reasons to Send Your Child to Summer Camp
By: Christine Hammond, LMHC
I’ll never forget the first time that my husband and I
suggested to our kids that they go away to a summer camp for a week. As parents, we had discussed the benefits of
a good summer camp program and spoken with many of our friends who recommended
several camps around the country. We
took great pride in presenting the idea with enthusiasm to our kids. Their response shocked us; instead of being
excited they were mortified. By their
reaction, you would have thought that we were sending them away to a chain gang
to be beaten and tortured.
So we gave them a year to get used to the idea and talk to
some of their friends who already went to summer camp. By the next year they
were a bit more open to the idea but still openly told us that we were
“abandoning” them. Fast forward to the
day we picked them up from the summer camp and the unanimous reaction was “how
come we only came for a week? I want to come for a month!”
Lesson learned:
Sometimes parents do know best.
So here are ten good reasons to send your child away to a summer camp:
1. Provides
your child with new experiences, people, ideas, and environments without your
parental influence.
2. Expands
the scope of friends that your child hangs out with over the summer so that
there are hopefully new and healthy friendships being added.
3. For
your child at camp, there are no parents to nag them, ask them to clean rooms
or do chores, etc.
4. Improves
your child’s social skills as they will need to get along with new people in
new environments without your input.
5. Gives
your child a break from you and you a break from them. If you are fighting with your child, this
break is long overdue.
6. Invites
new things to talk about so you can get out of the rut of the same
conversations over and over again.
7. Keeps
your child from getting into trouble at home and watching too much TV or
playing too many video games.
8. There
are many camps which specialize in one specific area of interest such as
surfing, horseback riding, space project, dance, photography, science, hiking,
rock climbing and many more. This
provides an opportunity for your child to get some advance skills in an area of
interest which may even lead to a profession someday.
9. The
camp puts your child on a schedule that is dictated by them and not you; the
new routine which will be met with resistance at first will later become a
source of comfort.
10. No
electronics! This is a bonus benefit for
your electronic-addicted kid.
With all this in mind, here is a list of some of the summer camps
available in the Orlando
My personal favorite camps:
·
Girl Scout Summer Camps: http://www.citrus-gs.org/girl-program/program-activities/summer-overnight-camps-day-camps/
