rock climbing camps - Tips on Trips and Camps

As I speak with families, the issue of cost is always part of the conversation, no matter if we are talking about summer camps for kids, unique summer experiences for tweens or travel or study options for teens. Parents spend a lot of time and financial resources investing in their children’s experiences. Travel sports teams, lessons in the arts, and a myriad of other after school and weekend activities. They supervise, volunteer and generally make possible a rich life for kids. So why is an away from home summer experience worth the financial investment? The personal growth that kids gain from sleepaway summer camps or high schoolers learn from summer travel programs occurs when kids have opportunities to make decisions independent of their parents.

Here are 5 important skills a child of any age masters by being away from home in a summer program.

1. Practice sleeping away from the comforts of your own home. For some kids this is the hardest part.

2. Ability to keep track of your own “stuff”. Whether at traditional sleep away camps, enrichment on college campuses, community service programs or the other types of summer activities, lose your socks and it can be a problem.

3. Learning to negotiate through conflict. This might be simply improved patience in taking turns or dealing with the disappointment of not being chosen for a desired activity.

4. Advocating for yourself. So often we hear from camp directors that when kids find themselves in challenging or disappointing situations the first thing they do is call home. Asking for help and speaking up for yourself are lessons that can only be learned away from Mom and Dad’s participation.

5. Trying new things not available at home. Rock climbing camps, water skiing camps, archeology camps, community service with native Americans to name a few of the activities not readily available to most families.

The benefits kids get from these fabulous opportunities are often intangible. Is it worth the investment? Absolutely!

Every summer teams of Tips on Trips and Camps advisors go camp visiting. It is an opportunity to see camps in action so that the advice on camps that we share with families is current and relevant to the overnight camp selection process.

By all accounts I am a relatively conservative type A kind of person, and how I found myself at the top of the flying trapeze at one of the camps in Pennsylvania is one of those moments of acting before thinking.

But there I was, 50 feet in the air, terrified and standing on a small plank clinging to the circus camp counselor who was both half my age and half my size, and telling him there must be some other way of getting down rather than swinging from the trapeze and then dropping into the net. My knees were shaking badly and the counselor was encouraging me to release the death grip I had on his arm and just hold the trapeze bar. After much coaxing and ultimately his pushing me off the plank, I was swinging through the air. I was too frightened to really enjoy myself, but felt exhilarated that I had conquered this incredible challenge.

Summer Camp presents kids with challenges at every turn. Be it climbing to the top of the wall at rock climbing camps, hitting a home run at baseball camps, mounting a horse for the first time at horseback riding camps, singing a solo at a performing arts camp, or simply sleeping away from home at traditional sleep away camps. All these experiences can feel as frightening as standing on top of that circus trapeze and all offering the satisfaction of doing something outside a child’s every day experience, and succeeding. Sleep away camps provide an environment where a child can feel secure and challenged at the same time. It is at camp with counselors who have the expertise and skill to create a safe environment that kids are willing to push boundaries and try new things.

I will never forget my trapeze ride. Given the chance I would have tried it a second time and been a little less afraid and a little more able. Camp creates these kinds of memories and opportunities to learn new skills, over and over again.

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