5 Things Parents Do To Ruin Camp For Kids (From A Counselor)

I'm not the kind of person who thinks nature stuff is inherently superior to electronic stuff. I love trees and hikes, but I can't play Monster Hunter: Generations on a goddamn pine cone. Sadly, as much as I appreciate your child's attempt to catch 'em all or beat up Bowser, anything that beep-boops is better left at home and nowhere near the cabin that they're going to share with 11 other kids. You know what's not the best way to make a first impression on 11 other kids? Being told that you'll probably be allowed to keep your electronic device, and then having it ripped away from you by your parents in front of all of your potential friends.

Forcing a kid to argue with you in public is the worst socializing technique since the invention of the missed high five. There's a time and a place for everything, and Surrounded By A Bunch Of Children Who Will See A Boy Throwing A Tantrum And Stay The Hell Away From Him is not the best place for "Give me that game right ... NOW." Also, on a more practical note, they're staying in cabins and tents -- two places that aren't known for their generous supply of wall sockets. As soon as the battery runs out, that game system becomes an expensive brick that they're trying to save from getting broken.

bykst/Pixabay
"You and I are destined to do this forever." -- Nature

And it will get broken. A mix of bunk beds, other kids trying to grab it, and the efforts of the great outdoors will do that. I can't explain it, but the world will mystically conspire to destroy the invading technology. At the end of the week, the kid will have to explain that his $250 birthday present lost its duels with both the top bunk and the lake. So just leave it at home. Two weeks before the trip, tell the kid that a cat ate it. And then, when camp is over, tell them that the surgery was a success and give it back to them. I think that should work. Or at least make them really interested in biology.

Some kids who I had didn't know that they needed to take something for their outdoor allergies until the moment before they had to take it. I don't know if you've ever been six before, but a giant collection of pills that you need to take because a person you met yesterday says that they'll keep you from going unconscious is, like, the worst surprise that you can get when you're that age. It's like being told that today is Christmas, but all you get is the gift of a continued life, and it tastes disgusting.

The same goes for suddenly finding out that the food that the other kids are enjoying is banned from you. The kids can't rationalize it, so the counselor becomes some inexplicable, glee-killing specter who wants to rip flavor from the kid's meals and replace it with nothing but jelly sandwiches.

Counselling/Pixabay
"Your mom says that all you can consume is jelly until you leave here. You have our sympathies."

I'll give kids credit, a lot of them were good as shit at remembering the names and amount of medicine that they needed to take at the infirmary. At their age, I was eating leaves because I saw a horse do it. But parents need to remind them so that their week isn't a Whack-A-Mole game which replaces the moles with ailments that need to be immediately taken care of. Counselors also ask that no one packs their kid Ibuprofen. I'm aware that you'd probably have to swallow the whole bottle like a snake in order to feel anything from it, but kids self-medicating themselves is a good thing to stay away from -- you know, out of principle.

When you tell a kid that we have to be somewhere in 15 minutes and they need to have a certain lost item, they will tear the earth apart trying to find it. And when they do, they'll hastily and clumsily shove everything back in that closet, setting up the next thrilling round of "Where Is Josh's Fucking Hat?" Like sandals going missing, the fact that at the end of the week, the closet's interior will look like helicopter footage of hurricane aftermath is unavoidable. But if a parent can say "Toothbrush is here, shirts are here, sunglasses are here, and everything else is here," camp counselors won't have to organize a Water Bottle Search & Rescue team every time they're scheduled to go outside.

I get it. Camp is fun, and your kid might have trouble being away from his parents for the first time. But it's so much harder on the kid when you decide to go with Option B: Sleep Tight In This Unfamiliar Place With These Unfamiliar People, Totally Alone With Your Thoughts And Your Tears At Night, than Option A: It's The Afternoon And The Counselor Seems To Be Starting Some Sort Of Icebreaker Game, So I Should Leave.

And don't say "You won't even notice that I'm here," because we will. You can't fool us, because we've been people before. If my mom showed up to something that I was doing with my friends, and she was the only parent there, any hope of a fun afternoon of Super Smash Bros.-ing was dashed, replaced by the overwhelming knowledge of "Oh god, my mom's here. Oh god, my mom's here."

Counselors don't immediately launch into group games because they're the greatest things ever. If I just met a group of people and an older man came up to us and said "NOW EVERYONE LOCK HANDS AND TRY TO UNTANGLE YOURSELVES WITHOUT LETTING GO! THIS IS THE LAW!" I would run, because I don't do well with cults and/or murder. But they do help those kids who might have some trouble adjusting to get involved with the rest of the cabin. It takes their mind off the fact that, yes, the person they trusted the most has agreed to have them abandoned in the woods with no one whom they know.

Unsplash/Pixabay
"Don't worry. The wolf howls will eventually lull you to sleep."

Counselors really want your kids to have a fun experience. And that's tough sometimes, because about 30 minutes into the week-long arts and crafts class that they signed up for, a few kids realize that they really should've picked archery. Also, it's hot, walking a lot is tiring, etc. But the camp staff needs them to get excited about the general prospect of camp. And when parents are diverting their attention to hold their hand and whisper, "You're getting chicken nuggets for dinner and you're near a climbing wall. Isn't that NEAT?" all they'll be able to focus on until they're picked up on Friday is "Well, Mom left. Happiness was great while it lasted."

That was a mistake.

Watching a dozen eight-year-olds from various spots in suburban North Carolina try to suddenly grapple with the idea that there might not be a Heaven, and that death is just IT for them, is fascinating. Some immediately deny it, and some are very, very intrigued by it, only to forget about it when they learn that a pool is nearby. And some tell their parents at the end of the week that they now know that Jesus isn't real. And who gave them their lessons in the futility of theism? By that point, they'd completely forgotten that a kid had stood up and asked about the possibility of an Atheism Hour at a summer camp, but they definitely remembered the time their counselor passionately condemned their eternal souls.

olivierlabbe1/Pixabay
"The cabin had a great time swimming in the lake yesterday! Also, they might be damned."

Kids are going to spend the week with other kids their age who weren't raised the same way. And with that comes the possibility that they're going to be exposed to, for lack of a better term, certain viewpoints. And these viewpoints will drastically alter the course of the camp, whether they be the viewpoint that fart noises are best delivered en masse or the viewpoint of a 12-year-old who has "seen a video where people do it in the butt." There is nothing that shatters a small-town fifth-grader's reality faster than learning that the butt is not just an export station.

Camp counselors do their best to make sure that kids have, at the very least, a mediocre time at camp. They fail sometimes, but unless they're bags of sentient turd, they keep good intentions in mind. So if you look back and wonder why you had a miserable time at camp, consider that maybe it wasn't the counselors who caused it. Maybe it was the person that paid for your trip.

And that's why whiskey was invented.

Daniel has a blog.

Discover more ways parents bungle their way through parenting in 4 Things Kids Never Learn (Because Parents Teach Them Badly) and find out why some camps are truly terrifying in 5 Realities Of The Rehab Camp My Parents Paid To Kidnap Me.

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