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It’s July, and that means for some people that it’s time for sleepaway camp.
It is difficult to overstate how attached some people get to their sleepaway camp experiences. A friend of mine so loved his all-boys sleepaway camp that when he got married, he made his wife promise that, if they had a son, the son would go to the camp. Even if you’re not especially attached, the experiences can be formative. My husband did not precisely enjoy the camp he went to, but it has definitely produced a lot of stories.
Right now, camp is having a moment in our popular culture as we debate what Jon Haidt has deemed the “phone-based childhood.” Camp is one of the last screen-free zones for kids, and that’s both exciting and, as a parent, a little scary.
Today on the podcast, I talk to Steve Baskin, a camp director and incoming president of the American Camp Association. I met Steve during the pandemic, when we talked about what precautions they could put in place to run camp safely (which they did in summer 2020). Steve makes a strong case for camp — for the value of free play, the need for phone-free time, and why homesickness is a good thing. Enjoy!
Here are three highlights from the conversation:
On the value of unsupervised free play:
And I can’t remember exact stats, but I seem to recall that schools are twice as safe as homes and camps are five times safer than homes. I joke that I will let my kids play unsupervised, but I won’t let yours. But again, who’s supervising? Supervising these super-cool 19-year-olds that see you. So it does not feel like a judging parent.
And also they’re watching 10 kids, not one. So they let the kids spread their wings a little bit. They let them go a little further and disagree about the rules of a game without marching in and saying, “No, here’s how we’re going to do it.” So the kids can adjudicate their own issues. And the supervisors only step in when you’re beyond the bounded range of what is actually safe. Does that make sense?
On spending the summer without a phone:
But now we get a small number of first-time campers for whom the phone is a social crutch. When they’re not quite sure what to do, they look at it as if something really important’s happening. It is something that when they’re bored, they could stay entertained.
By the way, I’m a big fan of boredom. I won’t bore you with all my theories there, but I really want kids to daydream some. But they’re used to every moment being able to have music or a distraction or something that keeps them from sort of sitting with themselves.
Those first-time campers break up into two different groups. One, there’s a day where they’re not quite sure, and then they go, “Wait a second. This talking to people face to face and having them laugh at my jokes is awesome. And wow, I actually get to put my arm around a friend or give them a hug.” So most of the kids fall in that category. There are some kids that I would put into the “they’re actually kind of addicted” category, and you just have to love them through it.
Now, the returners, this is entirely different. They’re like, “OMG. I love this.” Because for most teens, the phones have gone from a liberating element to almost a burden. If you do not respond quickly to your friends’ Instagram posts with glowing praise as rapidly as possible, you’re not a good friend. And suddenly they go, “Oh, I could tell all my friends that my camp director’s a jerk and doesn’t let me have a phone. But secretly I’m delighted to not have to deal with it anymore.” I had a discussion yesterday with 30 high schoolers and they’re like, “I love this. I just don’t know how to re-create it back home.”
On homesickness at summer camp:
Home is a wonderful place, but it’s a place that doesn’t enable you to grow as much as environments that stretch you. So I would suggest that homesickness is a feature, not a bug. Or put differently, there’s some parents that go, “Hey, other kids could do this, but mine can’t.” Well, how old is she? “She’s 12.” Okay. Most kids could do three, four weeks when they’re 8, okay? That’s about 95% are going to be totally okay at age 8 to go several weeks.
If you tell your 12-year-old, they can’t do it. And then you ask them, “When do you want to do it?” Well, when they’re 13, “While other people can do it, maybe I can’t.” When are they ever going to know they can do that? By the way, they’re going to be going to college at some point. You think suddenly it’s going to snap and go, “Oh, I couldn’t go to camp for two weeks, but now I could go for nine months.”
Yes, they will have moments when they’re a little bit sad, and they’ll be around other people having the same experience with two counselors who have been trained on how to deal with homesickness. And there’s a whole array of techniques. But just know this is one of the things that you have to do well if you’re a camp professional.
And then what happens on the other side is, “Wait, I’m now the kind of kid that can be away from home and make friends and accomplish new skills and be spectacular without being in the shadow of my mom and dad. I still love them as much. In fact, I might love them a little bit more because they had enough confidence in me to take this risk.”
So I absolutely believe that homesickness, well, it’s an exercise in anti-fragility. It’s one of those things that puts us outside of our comfort zone that then gives us evidence that we’re more capable than we thought.
Full transcript
This transcript was automatically generated and may contain small errors.
Underwear.
How I itch from my woolen underwear.
Oh, how I wish I had gotten, some made of cotton.
So I wouldn’t itch the way I do.
From my gosh darn, gosh darn woolen underwear.
Hey!
Steve loves camp, that will come across in this interview, and we’re also going to talk about why he loves camp and why he thinks it’s so important for kids. We’ll talk about interpersonal skills, about camp as exposure therapy, about the importance of homesickness and of teaching resilience to kids and teaching them to be alone together.
And we’ll talk about phones and camp as one of the last places where kids don’t have them. And how kids react when you take away their phone. Spoiler, it goes fine.
Okay. Well, I’ve been a camp professional for a little more than 30 years. I did an actually starting camp. I went to investment banking and consulting and business school before I alighted into summer camp. I run a camp in Texas as well as a camp in North Carolina. And I’m associated with a day camp outside of Boston as well. So I’m a full-time camp geek.
When I was eight years old, I was the younger brother of the local football star in Midland, Texas, and that’s where Friday Night Lights was written about. Football is religion. Only two sports that matter are football and spring football. He was 5’8 and 140 lbs, which was nothing. And he was the all district center in the middle of the line. He blocked against the guys twice his weight, kept the football team. Everyone called him Mighty Mouse. The winning parade float had a Mighty Mouse with his jersey on it.
Well, everyone wanted me to follow in his footsteps regardless of the fact that I was a chronic asthmatic who’s allergic to Bermuda grass. So I developed a image of myself as a failure, as somebody who couldn’t meet other people’s expectations. And of course my parents told me, “You’re not a failure. You’re different for your brother. You’re okay.” But everyone else was giving me that look like, “Oh, bless his heart.” And I really just felt like I was never going to measure up.
And I went to camp. And at camp I did not have an older brother. At camp, I had a 19-year-old that made me feel like his life was somehow made complete because the skinny asthmatic 8-year-old was in it. And he met me, he listened to me, and I felt fully seen. And I went back and never worried about playing football again.
So let me also posit that I had as good appearance as someone could possibly hope to have, but they couldn’t give me this third party validation. They couldn’t give me the knowledge that I was okay even if I wasn’t a football player. So somewhere in the back of my 8-year-old mind, I saw camp as a place for transition. My mom used to say it’s a place you can try on new versions of yourself.
I won’t bore you with another story, but when I was 15, I got the equivalent of an Eagle Scout and became convinced I could do anything on my own, not with the help of my parents. So those two things informed me of my view that camp was a place for massive transformation.
I went to a camp that involved doing math all day. So it was just like you did math all day. And for me, that was what I wanted. I really liked doing math. And the first time in my whole life I was around other people who also wanted to do that and for whom I could recreate as someone who was cool. I mean, I still remember I got invited to this, like at the end, some of the people I thought were cool at camp had a final circle. And I was there and I was like, “That’s it. This is my people.” And then it was almost like it’s going to be okay because I know these people are in the world and one day I’m going to find them again. It’s not going to be the eighth grade, but it will happen.
And I can’t remember exact stats, but I seem to recall that schools are twice as safe as homes and camps are five times safer than homes. I joke that I will let my kids play unsupervised, but I won’t let yours. But again, who’s supervising? Supervising by these super cool 19 year olds that see you. So it does not feel like a judging parent. And also they’re watching 10 kids, not one. So they let the kids spread their wings a little bit. They let them go a little further and disagree about the rules of a game of gaga without marching in and say, “No, here’s how we’re going to do it.” So the kids can adjudicate their own issues. And the supervisors only step in when you’re beyond the bounded range of what is actually safe. Does that make sense?
I won’t bore you with all my theories there, but I really want kids to daydream some. But they’re used to every moment being able to have music or a distraction or something that keeps them from sort of sitting with themselves. Those first time campers break up into two different groups. One, there’s a day where they’re not quite sure, and then they go, “Wait a second. This kind of talking to people face to face and having them laugh at, my jokes is awesome. And wow, actually to put my arm around a friend or give them a hug.” I don’t know all the neurology about this, but there’s an importance of physical contact that just knowing that other person’s there. So most of the kids fall in that category.
There are some kids that I would put into the, they’re actually kind of addicted category and you just have to love them through it. Now, the returners, this is entirely different. They’re like, “OMG. I love this.” Because for most teens, the phones have gone from a liberating element to almost a burden. If you do not respond quickly to your friends” Instagram posts with glowing praise as rapidly as possible, you’re not a good friend. So now you have this call on your time in the pocket that texts and messages and Instagrams and all the stuff that you have to respond to to be a good friend. And suddenly they go, “Oh, I could tell all my friends that my camp director’s a jerk and doesn’t let me have a phone. But secretly I’m delighted to not have to deal with it anymore.”
I had a toughy discussion yesterday with 30 high schoolers and they’re like, “I just love this. I just don’t know how to recreate it back home.”
We together need to have a frame where we will not be slaves to our phones. So what are we, I’m talking now a group of 16 year olds, what are we going to do to make sure that we own our phones, that they don’t own us? And I think that’s going to be the key to getting the collective action thing going, is creating a frame where it’s not the parents trying to take the phone away because that is not giving them status, that’s not giving them respect, and it goes against their desire to individuate. But instead you say, “No, look, these companies don’t care about you. You are the product.”
Home is a wonderful place, but it’s a place that doesn’t enable you to grow as much as environments that stretch you. So I would suggest that homesickness is a feature, not a bug. Or put differently, there’s some parents that go, “Hey, other kids could do this, but mine can’t.” Well, how old is she? “She’s 12.” Okay. Most kids could do three, four weeks when they’re eight, okay? That’s about 95% are going to be totally okay at age eight to go several weeks.
If you tell your 12-year-old, they can’t do it. And then you ask them, “When do you want to do it?” Well, when they’re 13, “While other people can do it, maybe I can’t.” When are they ever going to know they can do that? By the way, they’re going to be going to college at some point. You think suddenly it’s going to snap and go, “Oh, I couldn’t go to camp for two weeks, but now I could go for nine months.”
And then what happens on the other side is, “Wait, I’m now the kind of kid that can be away from home and make friends and accomplish new skills and be spectacular without being in the shadow of my mom and dad.” I still love them as much. In fact, I might love them a little bit more because they had enough confidence in me to take this risk. So I absolutely believe that homesickness, well, it’s an exercise in anti fragility. It’s one of those things that puts us outside of our comfort zone that then gives us evidence that we’re more capable than we thought.
Now what’s the 20th case? The 20th case is the parent who needs to say, “No, I’m not going to come get you.” And by the way, here’s the thing that I’ve learned about kids, and this is true at about 999 out of 1,000 cases. So I have maybe two campers out of 2,000 a summer that this does not apply to, is that once they know the option’s not there, they will redirect their energy. They’re not fools, right? Now, but they’re really, really good at being persistent. So they’ll try their counselor, then they’ll try the division later, then they’ll try a director. And sometimes we just have to be, “Look, I’m telling you, you’re not going to call home.” And they go, “Okay.” And then they adjust. And very, very, very rarely the parent has to say, “Actually, sweetheart, I’m not going to come get you. Have a good time.” But that’s super rare.
“Yeah, I’ve seen him smiling it all the time. No evidence of massive despondency. Nope. Doing great.” Fine. She saved the letter.
If I cut your meat for you, Emily, every time you ate, you would think I’m sending the message I don’t think you can catch your own meat. If I rush and open the door and do everything for you, at some point you had to go, “Hey buddy, I am an adult human being. I don’t need you to do things for me.’ If you do things for people all the time, especially when they see other people aren’t being scaffolded as much, they will get the message that they’re not capable. I know parents don’t want to hear this, but that is unquestionably the message they get, is, “Other kids might be able to do camp. They might be able to do a sleepover, but you, my sweet, delicate china doll, you can’t.” And again, I hope this doesn’t sound like a jerk.
Here’s the little secret about camp, is camp is a place that’s challenging you in a lot of different ways. I’ll try an activity and fail at it. And then I’ll learn through tenacity I could later succeed. I’ll try an activity and fail at it and never succeed. I could set a goal to dunk a basketball and it ain’t going to happen. I could set that goal. I have to learn there’s some things I can’t do. I’ll have friends at cabin base I don’t like. I’ll have days I was looking forward to activity, it rained. And all these little inconveniences are ones I learned to deal with. And camp’s fun enough and the relationship’s strong enough that it makes it all okay, right? But I’m a big fan of the guy who wrote the Black Swan. I’m forgetting his name, but it talks about anti fragility, is that-
I’ll also say that the level of professionalism in camps have gone way, way up. When I came in the industry 30 years ago, if you looked at a brochure, it was like a carnival cruise line. We’ve got archery, we’ve got canoeing. Here are the activities we do. And it might be 24 pages, 22 of which is, “Here’s stuff you get to do.” Now, a well crafted message about camp is, “Here are the hero role models we’re going to have as counselors. Here’s what your child’s going to learn. Here are values at our camps. It’s responsibility, respect, reaching out, reasonable risk and resilience.” The four or five Rs, depending on if it’s the camp in Texas or the camp in North Carolina.
So there is an overall sort of youth development professionalism that has come in. You’ll not be surprised to have camp directors who know who Emily Oster is as opposed to just who’s a really, really good person to teach the breaststroke, right? So I think we’ve just really elevated our game in terms of creating safe, healthy environments that enable kids to grow.
ParentData is produced by Tamar Avishai with support from the ParentData team and PRX. If you have thoughts on this episode, please join the conversation on my Instagram @profemilyoster. And if you want to support the show, become a subscriber to the ParentData Newsletter at parentdata.org, where I write weekly posts on everything to do with parents and data to help you make better, more informed parenting decisions.
For example, earlier this year we published an article titled “A Data-Driven Approach to Summer Camp,” which not only tackles the data about the importance of camp like we talked about today with Steve, but also helps to manage all the logistics. One word labels, iron on, press on, just…labels. Read all about it at parentdata.org.
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I both love this episode and it also almost killed me when I was a kid. I had appendicitis when I was at summer camp as a kid (it didn’t burst until I was home) and my camp counselors thought I was faking being sick to go home early. I think they finally let me call home the night before pickup and my parents and I decided to just wait until the next day. Sometimes kids aren’t faking and aren’t homesick – they are literally on their way to needing emergency surgery.
I could not agree more when you say “if you get it, you get it.” I went to sleep away camp starting at age 6 for two weeks every summer. I know now it was because my parents wanted a break so they could travel, but I loved it so much I went for the next 10 years and became a counselor. Camp is so formative — I have lifelong friends — and I’m excited for my daughter to go when she’s old enough. This was well before overuse of technology was a concern for parents, so I can only imagine how much more beneficial it will be for my girl. I love camp!