Curious Parents Summer Camp Resources

Residential, Day, and After-School Summer Camps in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

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How Parents View the Camp Experience

Is it important to send my child to camp?

Youth development experts agree that children need a variety of experiences in their lives to help them grow into healthy adolescents and healthy adulthood. For children to develop positive (rather than negative) behaviors, their experiences must produce:

• A sense of industry and competency. Do they develop skills? Do they learn to work for what is important? Are they successful at what they do?
• A feeling of connectedness to others and to society. Do they feel like they “fit”? Do they see a role they can play in their group, family or community? Do they have friends?
• A belief in their ability to make decisions. Do they learn to make good choices? Do they see the results of their decisions?
• A stable identity. Are they learning what their skills are? Are they receiving positive feedback about themselves?

To help us understand what camp accomplishes, approximately 1000 parents completed a survey after their children returned home from camp. On a scale of 1-5 (with 1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree), parents rated the Top Five outcomes of camp for their child as follows: (on a 5 point scale)

1. My child felt successful at camp. (Average score: 4.63)
2. My child made new friends. (Average score: 4.60)
3. My child gained new skills. (Average score: 4.39)
4. Camp encouraged my child to get along better with others. (Average score: 4.35)
5. Camp helped my child have a better idea of what he/she is good at. (Average Score: 4.20)

Camp can provide an excellent experience for your child to learn and develop. According to the Search Institute, young people have seven developmental needs:

• Physical Activity
• Competence and Achievement
• Self-Definition
• Creative Self-Expression
• Positive Social Interactions
• Structure and Clear Limits
• Meaningful Participation

The camp experience is uniquely positioned to provide all of these developmental needs for your child. Consider camp as the perfect partner to family, school and community youth activities in helping your child learn independence, decision-making, social and emotional skills, character building and values - all in an atmosphere of creativity and enrichment under the supervision of positive adult role models.

In today’s pressure-oriented society, camp provides a non-threatening environment for America’s youth to be active, develop competence in life skills, learn about and enhance their own abilities, to benefit from meaningful participation in a community designed just for them.

Yes, camp is for everyone! Don’t let your child grow up without it!

Courtesy of the American Camping Association®