Wouldn’t you feel like you failed at your duties of being a parent if you sent the kids to a music camp when actually they wanted to go to a sports camp? Now for the next three months you have to hear them complaining about how bored they are. And when they go back to school, all they can say is they learned how to play an accordion eight hours a day while all of their other friends got better in soccer. Now it’s too late because all of the sports camps are filled in your area and the nearest camp with a vacancy is 150 miles away. Isn’t that a little too far to be driving everyday to take the kids to summer camp.
Let’s avoid a repeat of that scenario for the summers to come. First of all, what you want to do is talk to the children. Ask them what type of camp they want to attend. After all, they are the ones who will be attending, so they should be able to share some input. Would they prefer a day camp, or would they rather go away to an overnight camp for the summer? Of course it should be reasonable and suitable for their age groups. For instance, you might want to wait until Jr is at least eight or nine years old before you ship him off to an overnight camp.
Sports camp is just one option among many. I choose that one because sports camps were my favorite of all that I had been to while growing up. Nowadays, there are specialized camps available. So if it just so happens that your kids prefer acting over sports, look for a nearby drama camp. To help eliminate the agony of searching for a camp that will keep the kids happy for the summer, go to www.aca-camps.org. This website is extremely helpful. Everything is categorized from age group to how much you’d like to spend. It’s even broken down into the different regions of the US to the preferred length of sessions for each camp.
Now when school starts in September, and the teacher asks your kids what they did for the summer, they can begin by saying, “My parents let me go to…” instead of, “My parents made me…”. Fortunately, my younger brother and I had a cool mom and dad. The only complaint that we had was that the summer wasn’t long enough.