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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think most of you filling your teen’s summer weeks must have missed the Dr Gray thread about the importance of self play and less structure. This goes for teens too. Raising a bunch of robots with no personality. Kids that look great on paper but have no idea who they really are. [/quote]

Have you ever been to sleepaway camp? It isn’t as structured as you think…especially for the teen ages.

Having grown up in the Midwest where no one does sleepaway camp and we all just bummed around all summer, I can tell you sleepaway camp fosters far more skills and independence than a summer home doing the various versions of “nothing” talking about here.  My kids go and love it [/quote]

I used to volunteer at a sleep away camp for 3 years as a teen and was also a nurse at various ones for multiple summers. They are completely structured. Down to when you wake up, where you are every hour, food handed to you, and lights out.

I can tell you the older teen counselors are only there to be with their friends and have sex at night. That was kinda insane to me how little they cared.  And many girls of various ages came to me about being assaulted and my reports were brushed off a lot. So no, I don’t think it fosters independence at all. Parents just think it helps. [/quote]

I work summers at a sleepaway camp (currently, not decades ago), and that is not my experience at all as an adult there.  But they have been single gender camps.  The teens pick their schedule and activities and can really lean into new skills and focus on a couple things, or they can try a variety of stuff, or they can spend the whole day reading if they want (but no one does). While wake up, lights out, and meals are at set times- they largely have control of their day.  They make friends with kids that are maybe not their typical type, the counselors are all former campers that love being there.  A lot of problem solving and conflict resolution they guide themselves goes on, they gain a ton of confidence, honestly, I have nothing negative to say about it.  And while I spend summers working at camps-it is purely for fun because my kids love them, I don’t have any cash incentive  or stake in the camps.  [/quote]

Just an FYI that most sexual assaults at camps are same gender, even at co-ed camps. That is why so many are probably not reported and the ones that are, aren’t taken seriously enough. [/quote]

Acting like it is a rampant problem isn’t reality.  You have no idea to make this claim.  But what I do know is the same kids come back year after year.  Their parent and in some case grandparents went.  The camps have been around 100+ yrs.  If kids/parents were being abused, they wouldn’t happily and willingly go and parents wouldn’t send them.   [/quote]

I think given the enormous sex abuse scandals that we have seen in Boy Scouts, an organization that is more than 100 years old, and in multiple religious denominations that are much older than that, it's pretty naive to state that parents don't send their kids happily and willingly to places where children get hurt.

I am not saying that this is a reason to choose or not to choose summer camp.  I think that decision of whether or not to send your kids to camp should be made carefully, after looking at lots of factors, and that the right decision is different for different families, and different kids in the same family.  But to say "Oh, people have been doing it for 100+ years so obviously it's fine" is absurd. [/quote]

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