Unsupervised 12/13 year olds overnight camp

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Would you be upset about this? My 12 DD came home from a girlscout camp today - she’s been there overnight for two nights- to tell me there were no adults in her cabin. And the nearest adult is two cabins away and the only other supervision in her cabin from 10pm to 7:30 am is 12 and 13 year old girls. This camp is not on a private camp ground. It is set up with nearby ( think 25 ft away) RV and public camping. They share all common areas with general population. Their ‘safety net’ was to lock the cabin door at midnight. I spent all evening being very upset and she’s not spending the night for the next two days and will be driven back and forth. The head of this camp told me this was SOP and I was wrong in being upset. I wouldn’t allow my 12 year old to be alone in my own home overnight much less an area where she’s interfacing with who knows who else at all times of day. She told me they use the ‘buddy system’!! I am so horrified and upset that I didn’t ask the question about this prior and she’s so mad that she cannot stay over with her friends. Am I wrong to be so upset? Just taking the temperature of the village here. Maybe I am being overprotective but I don’t think so.

I think you are.

I agree with one of the PPs - what, specifically, are your fears here? Somebody will break in? Somebody will sneak out? It will be Lord of the Flies in the cabin at midnight? They'll all get drunk on the bottle of gin somebody smuggled in? Your daughter will fall out of the top bunk and break a bone and nobody will know what to do? I am asking sincerely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s fine. When I was 13 I did a teen tour camp and we were four campers to a hotel room. Obviously strangers were also at the hotels. I can’t remember how we knew where the college age counselors were, but I got sick once and one came to my hotel room, so I guess we knew how to find them.

Off topic but -- that's not camping!! Hotel rooms? Please.

[Anonymous]

I would not be upset by this for that age group.

[Anonymous]

1. For PP, this is not Camp Winona. Camp Winona is a private GS camp, and it is super safe. Adults should not sleep in the same room as girls - the different glen shelters essentially function as bedrooms, not freestanding cabins. She also mentioned volunteers - Winona has paid, trained staff.

2. This does not sound like a camp run by our Girl Scout council. Please name the camp before you get everyone worked up.

I would have concerns about the camp, but not because the adults are sleeping separately from the kids. That is GS policy, for good reason.

[Anonymous]

It was fine. Geez get a grip.

[Anonymous]

These are GS rules, just like Boy Scouts, under youth protection rules. Plus, its good to learn a little bit of independence, don’t you think?

[Anonymous]

Do you share a room with all your kids? If you don't, they're 'unsupervised' in your own home.

You may not think you're a helicopter parent but you are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OMG you are a nut. When I went Girl Scout camping 50 years ago the setup was girls in their own tentss, leaders in another.

Leaders cannot sleep with the girls.

Change this to 25 years ago for me, and same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not Winona. They locked from the inside. I would be equally worried about being locked in from Outside in case of emergency!

Winona is set well apart from the surrounding community, with their own facilities. The glen shelters the girls sleep in are close together, and the counselors are close by in case of emergency. They're told never to leave the cabins at night without a buddy, even to go to the bathroom, and the walk there is fairly well-lighted. My daughter has gone to several GS summer camps over the years, including Winona, and all have been well-run and extremely safety conscious—to the point of being annoying sometimes, she says! She's never mentioned feeling scared or unsafe, either when she started out as a Brownie or now as a Cadette, when she's old enough to understand what real threats might look like.

What OP describes must be a troop campout, not a Council-run GS-only camp like Winona. There are still GS rules to be followed for troop campouts, but I know ours have always been at public campgrounds with the girls in the cabin next door to the adults. I don't think what's described here would require any kind of parental notification, though, since it's pretty standard. If they lied when she asked, that would be different, but the setups isn't really a violation of anything that I know of.

[Anonymous]

OP, can you confirm, are you in the DC area? Is your daughter in a summer sleep-away camp run by Girl Scouts of the Nation's Capital council?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, can you confirm, are you in the DC area? Is your daughter in a summer sleep-away camp run by Girl Scouts of the Nation's Capital council?

It's clearly not a GSCNC camp, if they're sharing the camp with non-GS campers and randomly sending the girls home in the middle of the week to shower. GSCNC tend to run a pretty tight ship, safety-wise, and would never do either of those things. For one thing, many of the girls ride the camp buses for several hours to get there, and the camps are fairly large, so the logistics of drop-off and pickup are pretty complex. There's no way they could just randomly decide to send hundreds of girls home for a night in the middle of the week.

I'm not affiliated with the Council or even a troop leader, but my daughter is a GS and has been going to the various GSCNC camps for years. I'd really hate for nervous parents about to send their girls off to Winona or Potomac Woods for the first time to read OP's post and think that anything like that might happen!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, can you confirm, are you in the DC area? Is your daughter in a summer sleep-away camp run by Girl Scouts of the Nation's Capital council?

It's clearly not a GSCNC camp, if they're sharing the camp with non-GS campers and randomly sending the girls home in the middle of the week to shower. GSCNC tend to run a pretty tight ship, safety-wise, and would never do either of those things. For one thing, many of the girls ride the camp buses for several hours to get there, and the camps are fairly large, so the logistics of drop-off and pickup are pretty complex. There's no way they could just randomly decide to send hundreds of girls home for a night in the middle of the week.

I'm not affiliated with the Council or even a troop leader, but my daughter is a GS and has been going to the various GSCNC camps for years. I'd really hate for nervous parents about to send their girls off to Winona or Potomac Woods for the first time to read OP's post and think that anything like that might happen!

(PP here: but they do sleep in all-girl shelters, with counselors within shouting distance in their own shelters. That's pretty standard, as others have noted. The rest is not.)

[Anonymous]

I have never heard of a camp with a break midway thru so the kids can go home and shower and sleep in their beds, and then come back?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OMG you are a nut. When I went Girl Scout camping 50 years ago the setup was girls in their own tentss, leaders in another.

Leaders cannot sleep with the girls.

Change this to 25 years ago for me, and same.

I went to GS camp in the 1980s, and the counselors slept in separate tents. IIRC, each tent had four girls in it. Totally normal. It's not like the kids are each sleeping in their own tent--they are in groups. And here, they are in cabins that lock! What, exactly, is OP afraid of?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op again. she’s been on several overnight camps for her lax team and a team mom is always with them. Including in their bunk at night. And I had no issue with that. I don’t disagree that they would sneak out even under supervision. It’s the not being told that was bothersome to me.

You're nuts. My boys play lacrosse and my NINE YEAR old didn't have a counselor in his room. I'm glad. I dont want a teen boy or young man sleeping in his room.

Jesus lady, your kids need to stay home.