ChildrenMany children are experiencing their first overnight camp. Others are trying out a new overnight camp. All face the same concern: What if I don't like it here? Most first-timers are going to experience moderate to significant homesickness. There will be frantic calls and/or letters pleading to be able to return home. How does a parent respond? What if there really is a problem that is making your child miserable?
Most camps have learned to restrict direct access between child and parent, for nothing serves to intensify the child's wish to go home more than hearing the voices of the parents, especially if the parents are wavering in their resolve. Hopefully you have prepared your child for the feelings by talking about them rather than avoiding them. It IS normal to miss being home and that feeling is usually at its strongest in the first few days but may easily persist for a week or more. It will be strongly influenced by how readily your child is able to fit in with his new peer group, whether someone is actually picking on him, and the occurrence of minor injuries or health problems at the start of camp. Talking about these possibilities ahead of time helps the child to recognize that this is an expected reaction. The promises that the distress is likely to fade as the child gets used to the place or gets assistance with the problem has more validity when you haven't white-washed how painful it can be for a little while.
If you are getting an SOS signal, the first step is to communicate with the camp director and, hopefully, you would then have access to your child's bunk leader. It is important to get a response from camp staff that is reassuring, i.e., that they will follow-up on your concerns and get back to you in a timely fashion with helpful information. A positive history with the camp and an accurate sense of your child's likelihood to complain without a serious cause will make it easier to decide if you can allow the camp staff to work it out while you remain in the background. This can be a difficult decision if it's a new camp and/or if you are surprised by your child's distress. As always, if you truly believe that your child is at risk, than you go and see for yourself.
It is important to make sure that someone on site quietly talks to your child. Most children are reluctant to tell any of the adults at the camp how they are really feeling. Ignore your child's plea to not tell anyone. They are afraid of the embarrassment if their peers finding out. That's why the camp staff must handle this in a sensitive manner. Review the expected process so you are comfortable with their approach. Quality camps should have quality staff who have dealt with this problem many times every summer. A general procedure for dealing with this usually involves initially validating the feeling (instead of minimizing it or trying to quickly brush it aside) and then engaging the child in a problem solving process in which the staff person tries to encourage the child to come up with a plan that will help to reduce the distress or resolve the issue.
Helpful strategies may include a "feelings log" where the child can write down the distress (or dictate it to the staff person) with the promise that the parents will be able to read it on visitors' day. This tends to reduce obsessing about the same thoughts over and over. Sometimes there will be a problem of being teased and it may even require an intervention by the staff. Sometimes the child is afraid of an activity and some private help to master it can allay that fear. Having the child make a list of what she likes and doesn't like about the camp often helps the child to recognize that there are many positives. Anxious children tend to exaggerate the negative aspect and "forget" about the activities they are enjoying or the children who are being friendly.
Creating day-to-day goals can be helpful. The staff person should focus on the part of the day causing the most difficulty (often falling asleep) and create a plan to try to reduce the anxiety just for that one issue. Do a daily progress check, working together to refine the plan until the child experiences some success. For example, being scared at night is often best reduced by teaching the child how to take deep breaths and intensely visualize being in the safest, most relaxing place he can think of. This usually is very calming and the child begins to fall asleep more easily.
If you arrive on Visiting Day and your child is still pleading to go home, the camp staff and the parents need to decide if this child is just not ready for overnight camp or if the situation had been improving but seeing the parents caused it to flare up again. Typically, I encourage parents, if there is some doubt about the child's ability to cope with camp, to make an agreement with all parties involved for the child to give it one more week. If the child then tells the camp director that she still absolutely wants to go home, then the parents will return and take her home. Notice that conversation should be between the child and the director. (Of course, the parents must have confidence in the director.)
My experience has been that many children who are struggling to settle in, once they have seen their parents and have been given the delayed option to come home (a sense of control), will typically be fine for the remainder of the stay. Those who still aren't probably should come home. If that is the end result, it is important to help the child realize that many children need to be older before they are ready to go away for extended periods of time and that it is okay. When they feel ready, in a year or many years, then it can be tried again. The parents should not see their child as having "failed" (or that they have failed as parents). Just remember that children take varied pathways into adulthood.
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