Reading an interesting Huff post article today and it kind of scratched an itchy spot for me. See as a Camp Director I work with a lot of kids and having done the camp thing in some form or other for the last 14 years I feel I have seen a few changes in the kids who roll through our summer programs and more specifically with the parents who bring them.
Our society has created a panic about safety. Think about those candied apples that some lovely grandma made with care and handed out at halloween that your mom unceremoniously dumped in the garbage. How many of you weren’t allowed to eat unwrapped candy because it might have been “tampered with?” I wasn’t
Did you know how many times in the history of North America this has happened? Not once.
There has never been a case of random halloween candy poisoning. A few horrors involving parents poisoning or overdosing their own kids and blaming the candy, a lot of media attention but no poison or razor blades handed out on halloween.
So we live in fear. We live in fear of poison candy or strangers in vans with tinted windows.
Speaking of vans with tinted windows, according to the RCMP, on any given year in the US, there are 115 “stereotypical” abductions (scary tinted window bad outcome stuff). This in a country of 311 million people meaning that you have about 0.000000368% chance of having your child involved in this terrifying situation. That’s 1:2,704,347. So why does allow this to chew up so much our consciousness? The outcome is horrific, yes, but if you fear those odds you better be ready to live in eternal fear because your child has a 1:56,439 chance of being killed by lightning, a 1 in 650,000 of being killed in a terrorist attack while traveling, a 1:1,000,000 chance of dying of flesh eating disease, and a 1:1,241,661 chance of dying from a poisonous snake bite. We’re all pretty well doomed then aren’t we?
Please don’t misunderstand me when I talk about this, I would do very scary things to protect my children if a saber toothed tiger jumped on them but we as a society go to enormous lengths to protect our children to from risks that are completely or mostly perceived.
We have become helicopter parents, hovering and forming a perimeter to hold off the evil forces of the world and ready to swoop in and air lift our children to safety at the first sign of difficulty and you know what? This hurts our children.
When we do this, when we rescue our children from all dangers and discomforts, our children do not learn how to handle even small dangers and discomforts. I don’t know what your life has been like, but there have been some dangers and discomforts to deal with in mine and I for one would like my kids to have a clue how to handle them when they inevitably come.
The challenge becomes figuring out how to facilitate your kids living their lives without exposing them to unnecessary risk and without taking off too many of the sharp edges. See I want to set my kids up for success and if that means there has to be a few tears now and then so be it, but I don’t want to put my kids through a life of misery either.
All of this has led to an interesting place for me professionally. See camp is having trouble attracting kids. Our camper number have gone down a little each summer and while there are a lot of factors I think the thwapping rotors of helicopter parents are one of the bigger ones. I was talking to Nikki the other day and she was lamenting about why people aren’t sending their kids to camp and in almost the next breath said she wasn’t sure how she will deal with Ben being at camp next summer.
My Ben. At my camp. About 150 meters from our house. Where I work. And she is uncomfortable.
I pointed this little irony out to her and she had a moment of pause. After a brief period of quiet she admitted she hadn’t thought of it like that.
It’s hard, trusting people with your kids.
I field phone calls every spring from nervous parents who ask questions like “how do I know my child will be 100% safe?” and I talk about how we hire and train staff and first aid and how we reduce the risk of activities.
What I really want to say to these parents is that they WON’T be 100% safe. Of course we will keep them safe physically and we will do our best to make sure that they have lots of support and love surrounding them, but when kids come to camp I want them to be pushed. I want each camper, at some point during the week, to be just a little uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s singing camp songs, sometimes it’s pushing higher on the climbing wall, sometimes it’s talking about challenging things at Chapel but my goal is for every camper who comes to be pushed just a little and once they have been pushed to realize they can do it and to be just a little more confident and just a little more resilient the next time.
I guess the point to all of this is that we as a generation of parents are trying to clear risk and discomfort from the lives of our kids and on the surface this is a noble aim but it isn’t helping.
Our kids need to deal with their own situations. They need to do this so they know how because you won’t always be there. They need to know that they earn the marks they get in school and we won’t go in and “fix it” for them. They need to find the strength that is inside of them rather than shelter under your strength. It’s your job to create an environment where your kids can realize how strong they are, not how strong you are.
How do we do that? Well, I’m taking suggestions…
thewoodsthroughthetrees 
the struggle of increasing campership and letting parents know that being uncomfortable is ok, is a tough one. i can’t wait to send Cayden to camp, and I pray that Valaqua will be there to make him uncomfortable. i loved camp but hated overnighters, but my parents kept sending me…i hope that i do that for my kids. i will put my thinking cap on for advertising ideas …
Thanks Joani! It strikes me that our culture is pushing in a direction that leads us away from things like camp and this bothers me. With research showing that not playing outside is making our kids ever sicker and Canadians being more and more fearful despite living in a safer and safer country… I just don’t know.
I think we need to rethink what is expected of us as parents. I so often feel like I need to “tighten it up” when I have my kids in public and make sure they are never unsupervised for more than 3.2 seconds, but that fear is just so irrational.
Jon, I agree with you. We have become a society that trusts no one, not even family. Parents need to let their kids do stupid things and break their arm so they can learn not to do that. I will be talking to people at church in the next few weeks about camp and I hope that they will send their kids.
An idea just popped into my head. An injury counter on the website. Or something like, 0 injuries in the past three years or something.
Steve
It’s always a balance between allowing your kids the chance to risk while keeping them alive to play another day. What I struggle with is that we have this culture of fear that we have allowed to be so pervasive. We design our live around fears that are predominately imagined (boogeyman, poisoned candy) and this drives us away from things we need like free play and outside time.
So, this might not be completely on topic, but I think we also need to let children know that we believe in their abilities. It’s impossible to do this without allowing them the freedom which will include uncomfortable situations, maybe a little danger, and, most definitely, failure.
Here is the video I was telling you about. http://www.ted.com/talks/kiran_bir_sethi_teaches_kids_to_take_charge.html
Not off topic at all! That’s just it, giving kids room to try and not feeling the need to catch them when they fall or airlift them out of trouble. Kids need the chance to try and fail and realize that didn’t kill them and try again. Now in this context I think camp is such an excellent opportunity for that, but I may be a little biased:)
I have seen so many kids spread their wings here, it’s probably my favorite part of my job. Well, that and the free t-shirts;)
Free T-shirts are awesome.
Jon, you are writing so often that I often can’t keep up with all of your posts (hence my delayed response to this wonderful post! Well written!). From one camp director to another, I’m in total agreement with you. I like to use the term “perceived risk” when talking with parents….it LOOKS like a risk, BUT we also LOOK (closely) at all the things that are keeping them safe while they participate! This is what you were talking about when you were telling parents about staff training and first aid etc. I’m also always amazed at the differences from one children to another….the children who don’t even want to/need to say good bye, and the children that NEED to see their parents off, clinging to them as they go. But also in parents….the ones that keep giving advice and warnings and guidance to their children (and to you as a camp staff) on their way out the door, and the ones that quickly disappear, letting their campers walk to their cabin on their own:) Encouraging homesick kids is often one of the biggest challenges, but also one of the biggest rewards if they manage to stay the whole week….often not wanting to go home at the end!!! But how do we get them here in the first place, that’s the biggest challenge!!!! You make good points. It’s been really nice to have been here at Shekinah for a full year already….because now I can comfortably talk with EVERY teacher that comes through here for our school program, and I can confidently talk about what we do here, because now I know it! This is been (and will continue to be) my mission heading out of winter school groups and into spring ones….because more often than not, skeptical kids just need a wee bit of a taste before they launch into a full week of camp and I am pretty sure that is what our school programming is doing for us (or at least it COULD be if I continue to talk UP summer camp…sort of like a crazy person;)
Thanks again for your post!!!
So true! Every camper is unique and has unique needs, just like every parent. I think more and more that it is about relationships. Parents trust organizations and individuals with whom they have relationships (like you and your school programs). One of my biggest compliments came to me through the grapevine when I went on sabbatical a few years back and a parent commented “but now who’s going to look after my kids at camp.” That’s big trust right there.
I actually love helping homesick kids get through the week. It’s hard on counsellors and staff, but so rewarding when they get to Friday and don’t want to go home.
We’re launching a day camp program this year to try and reach local kids and introduce them to our camp. Hope that helps us form more relationships:)