We all procrastinate, but you’ll notice that procrastination is not on my list of obstacles. Why should it be? Procrastination is just a synonym for inefficiency. It doesn’t help us understand why we didn’t complete a task simply by saying that instead of the intended task, we did something else. Remember, when you procrastinate, you are performing a task. You just aren’t performing the task that some part of you thinks you should do. Procrastination is not an obstacle; it’s a description of what happens when we encounter obstacles to good time management.

The central question is: Why do we intend to do A but end up doing B instead? Here are the answers.

• Obstacle #1: ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder)
o The biggest obstacle to improving time management is neurogenetic. People with ADHD have a disconnect between their knowledge of skills and their ability to perform those skills. In other words, they know what they need to do. They say things such as, “I just have to write a to-do list” or “I just need to get organized.” However, they cannot perform these necessary time-management strategies because they cannot sustain goal-directed behavior. (Sustaining goal-directed behavior is the essence of what are called “executive function skills.”) Someone with true ADHD might look as if they are not trying, but they are. They lack the capacity to self-regulate in a planful manner.
o If you feel that you have a chronic inability to sustain goal-directed behavior, then you should get an evaluation with a psychologist or psychiatrist who specializes in the assessment and treatment of ADHD. A combination of medication and behavior therapy effectively alleviates the most significant symptoms of ADHD in 80% of those with the disorder.

• Obstacle #2: Old Habits
o It is true that old habits die hard . Your established behavior patterns have built-in reinforcements. (If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have lasted, right?) It takes humility and serious introspection to figure out what has been reinforcing an old habit that you don’t like. In most cases, you’ll discover a short-term reward that is thwarting a long-term goal. For example, it may be fun to watch Netflix now but that pile of bills and mail will be even larger later.
o Establishing new habits, such as standing over the recycling bin with today’s mail, will take time to sink in. Most new habits are uncomfortable and unrewarding at first. We experience this as effort. Therefore, we have push ourselves to behave in a new way. Over time, the new habits become rewarding and are easy to maintain. The commitment is always heaviest at the start.

• Obstacle #3: Priority Perjury
o If you keep calling something a priority but keep not doing it, then it’s not really a priority. You are lying to yourself to serve some secondary purpose, such as postponing the guilt that might go along with jettisoning a pet project or making yourself feel important by having important-sounding tasks on your to-do list. Either way, that’s Priority Perjury. Those long-overdue, undone projects are not really priorities.
o Cut your losses and take those items off of your list today. Sometime in the future, if it becomes important enough for you to deliberately carve out the time and map out the steps to complete this item, or if you someday acquire the skill or collateral support to complete this item, then you can put it back on your list and truthfully call it a priority.

• Obstacle #4: Time Blindness
o Adults sometimes behave like children, who have an underdeveloped sense of time. This is manifest in at least four ways: (a) Gross underestimation of how long a project will take; (b) Gross overestimation of how many tasks you can achieve in a given block of time; (c) Not tracking how much time has passed (neglect of the clock); and (d) Failure to arrive on-time for appointments or end your own appointments on-time.
o Good time management requires accurate estimation (which comes with practice) and conscious attention to the passage of time (which takes a deliberate commitment, the setting of alarms, keeping a detailed calendar, and revising your estimates as needed).

• Obstacle #5: Skill Thrill
o Talented people overcommit because showcasing what they can do is rewarding.
o Avoid the temptation to overcommit simply because you know you can do something well. Just because you could do something—perhaps better than most people—doesn’t mean that you should do it.

Triple Deuces
There are the five most common obstacles to healthy time management. Begin refining your own time management strategies by taking an honest look at those that apply most directly to you. Focus on the solutions that you believe are realistic in the near-term. Then apply the “triple deuces” technique: Commit to 2 small changes you’ll make in the next 2 days and tell 2 friends. It may be the one thing you do this weekend that will make all subsequent weekdays efficient and fulfilling.

But let’s not be trite. “Time is money” is so 1980s. So Michael Douglas in “Wall Street.”

Today, time is no longer compared to money or even precious metals. (Silence, however, may still be golden.) Today, time is “our most precious resource.” Not because there is less of it, but because most of us over-commit.

We corner ourselves with so many tasks that we begin to say inane things like, “I can’t afford to take a break.” Impressive, right?

Dr. Herb Benson of Harvard University was one of the first researchers to scientifically document the benefits of the relaxation response, the physiologically and emotionally calming result of closing one’s eyes, breathing slowly from the abdomen, and gently releasing muscle tension.

The relaxation response is the common substrate in all meditative traditions. It lowers blood pressure, increases feelings of wellness, and prolongs life.

Research on the relaxation response suggests, somewhat ironically, that those people who are really interested in having more time–on the order of years, not just minutes–should not saturate their diaries. Instead, they should take a daily 10-minute time-out.

We all should. Heck, we’d live longer.

For all of its rustic roots aimed at removing young people from the hustle and bustle of urban life, we camp folk have wandered from our bucolic baseline. These days, camp promo videos make it abundantly clear that life in the woods resembles a rock concert more than a tranquil retreat.

Have we unwittingly substituted one brand of hustle and bustle for another?

We all love our special brand of excitement, and I applaud camp program directors who create thrilling activities. However, I cringe when rest hour involves no rest, unstructured play is eschewed, and campers are dashed from place to place without a moment to themselves.

We have Six Flags to turn to for rave-level frenzy. Why not temper the pace of camp life?

Why indeed. What would parents say if they saw “free time” on the daily schedule? How would staff and campers respond if we insisted that they spend rest hour in total silence? If either of these questions makes you wince, it may reveal your prejudice against solitude. The fact is, a bit of down time does a body good.

This summer, consider leveraging the natural beauty of a leafy canopy, a starry sky, a breezy field, or a glistening waterfront by asking your staff to protect a few quiet moments each day with their campers.

Pack the rest of the day with exciting programs, but keep rest hour sacrosanct and give your staff permission to let each of their campers sit in solitude at least one other time per day. I guarantee that the contrast will make the rest of the day seem even more exciting.

And as an added bonus, directors who protect daily quiet time will see a decrease in camper impulsivity and staff burnout. What’s not to love about that plan?

All it takes is the courage to recognize that a fully packed daily schedule leaves no room for reflection and growth.

So, do you have what it takes to do nothing?

“You can go over there while I stay here with our stuff,” I said to Sava. “I can see you from here,” I added reassuringly.

He thought for a long moment. “Will you buy me something?” he asked, repeating the mantra of most elementary school children who have grown up in a commercialized culture.

“No,” I said reflexively. Then I offered my rationale: “You have enough stuffed animals already. Plus, Christmas is next week. Who knows what you’ll get?” I blanched at how much I sounded like my own parents. Didn’t we all promise ourselves as teenagers that we wouldn’t become our parents? Now that I have, at least in part, I don’t know whether to be appalled or resigned.

I snapped out of my self-analysis and added my original, refreshing spin on parenting: “If you see something you really like, you could get it with your own money.” This was a calculated statement, of course, since I know my children are far less likely to spend their own savings than mine. Funny thing.

“I better not go over there,” Sava said. “I’ll just be tempted.”

Man, I’d like to bottle that. In my clinical psychologist’s world, half the teenagers I see have gotten themselves into a jam ceding to temptation.

Choose your flavor of stress: academic, social, parental, athletic, physical, disciplinary. Some of it is caused by forces outside of adolescents’ control, but a good chunk results from giving in to short-term pleasure in the form of drugs, video games, hook-ups (online and off) and gossip.

Who knows whether Sava will be able to resist these tantalizing teen turn-ons. I’m not even sure how he does it now. But my hunch is that giving youngsters some measure of autonomy at a young age—which we do so well at camp—helps them better understand the consequences of their actions.

The word consequences has a negative connotation for many, but young people must also experience the many positive consequences of their actions. Especially important is enjoying the rewarding results of a long-term effort. I often wonder whether Sava’s playing the violin—wherein it takes hours of practice over many days to learn a new piece—helps him delay gratification in other arenas. My guess is that cultivating forbearance does generalize, at any age.

The holy grail of parenting, of course, is providing appropriate supports and opportunities in life while somehow attaining the balance between freedom and restriction. It’s an ideal we all strive for but never quite reach. I guess that’s why it’s called youth development not youth accomplishment.

So here we are now on our flight from Chicago to Seattle, without a fox, lemur or sloth. Chalk one up to impulse control. Maybe it’s a harbinger of mature self-regulation.

With some combination of luck and my continued effort, Sava won’t become anxious, get into academic trouble, develop an eating disorder, acquire an STD or get kicked out of school. Resist those temptations, baby.

Now, if I could just get him off my iPad we could both get some sleep.

Grief is natural and individual. We live in a close community. Naturally, when a member of our community dies, it affects us all in different ways. Perhaps the most important things to remember are: grief is a natural response to a loss; there is no “right” way to grieve; there is no fixed timetable for grieving a loss; and asking for support is a sign of strength, not weakness.

Grief is a natural expression of love for a person who has died. It is a reflection of the feelings we have for that person. A painful loss can also evoke painful memories of past losses and create new anxieties about possible future losses. This anxiety can be especially poignant when the loss is unexpected and uncontrollable, such as in the case of an undiagnosed medical condition, a motor vehicle accident or a shooting.

Caring for yourself and others
Some people might find it comforting to be alone, while others will want to be among friends. As adults in the community, we must take care of our own needs as well as the needs of the young people affected by loss. This can seem like a daunting task, but taking care of yourself puts you in a better position to help your students and other young people in your life.

Take time for yourself. Allow yourself time to experience fully what you are feeling. All feelings are normal and acceptable, including sadness, anger, guilt, frustration, anxiety, confusion and numbness.

Accept support from friends. Talk about your feelings with your peers. Remember that a loss often heightens our awareness of the relationships that we cherish.

Some suggestions for helping young people grieve:

• Start by listening. Rather than assuming how a young person feels or what he or she knows, ask: “What do you know about what happened and how has it made you feel?” Listen attentively, without distractions, and try to understand how the young person is doing.
• Be truthful. Sharing what you know about the facts of what happened (when you know them) may be difficult but is vitally important.
• Most young people have not had a lot of experience dealing with death. Let them know that all feelings are normal and that talking honestly about those feelings is a way to heal.
• If a student seeks you out to talk, your willingness to listen is the most helpful thing that you can do. Don’t worry about the “right” thing to say. Listen without judgment.
• Sharing your own feelings is okay. Joining in expressions of grief can be healing for everyone. But always remember that students need you to be the adult, especially when their world is feeling so unpredictable. Seek out your own peers for personal support.
• Remember that our students are not yet adults. They need our consistent and compassionate support as well as our limit-setting.
• Don’t be afraid to broach the topic of loss. It lets students know you are not afraid to talk about death, accidents, violence, etc.
• Keep your eyes open for students who withdraw. Quiet students may be very distressed and waiting for someone to inquire how they are doing. It’s always appropriate to ask, “Would you like to talk?”
• Suggest that students write in a journal. Unstructured journal writing and other artistic expression have a therapeutic benefit for many. Coach youngsters to be thoughtful about anything they post online.
• Help students keep up with routines, including regular sleep. Although some leeway with assignment deadlines can be helpful, the predictability of routines is reassuring.
• A loss may arouse memories and feelings of a prior loss. It may also heighten worries and concerns about loved ones at home. Many of our students have a parent, grandparent, or sibling who may be ill. Encourage them to talk about worries and concerns. Also encourage them to maintain contact with home
• Remind students they don’t have to “be strong.”  Crying or having difficulty concentrating, for example, are not signs of weakness.
• During stressful times, be sure to drink enough fluids and eat plenty fruits, vegetables and foods with protein. Energy helps.
• Remind students that people heal and recover from grief. They will make it through this painful time, however hopeless they feel now.
• Remember that grief takes time. Recovery is not instantaneous, but rather a process of healing. There is not “right” or “healthy” timetable for grieving. Students have a right to grieve, even if it seems others have gotten over it. Let them know you continue to be available.
• Have fun. Laugh. Laughter is healing. During a time of loss, people sometimes feel guilty about laughing, but laughter and a sense of humor can help with grieving.

Knowing when more help is needed
Natural grief in response to an expected or unexpected loss is not the same as clinical depression or anxiety, although some of the visible symptoms are similar. Sometimes, grief can exacerbate a pre-existing emotional or behavioral problem; sometimes it can evolve into a more complicated or distressing problem. Students who are vulnerable in other ways may find the loss particularly disturbing.

Here are some warning signs that may indicate the emergence of a more complicated problem, for which you may wish to seek additional support for a young person:

• Change in personality, especially becoming irritable, anxious, or apathetic
• Change in behavior, especially inability to concentrate or perform routine tasks
• Denying pain while at the same time acting overly strong or mature
• Academic failure or indifference to school activities
• Change in eating habits, either loss of appetite or significant overeating
• Chronic nightmares or hypervigilance
• Change in sleep pattern, either hypersomnia (over-sleeping), insomnia, or early-morning wakening
• Risk-taking behaviors, such as alcohol or other drug use, fighting, or sexual experimentation
• Agitation, hyperactivity, or chronic restlessness
• Loss of interest in friends and activities that the person used to enjoy
• Feelings of hopelessness, e.g., “It will never get better. I will always feel this way.”
• Deterioration of relationships with family and/or friends
• Expressions of overwhelming guilt, shame, or self-hatred
• Expressions of worthlessness, e.g., “I don’t matter. There’s nothing important or worthwhile about me.”
• Suicidal impulses, ideation, statements, gestures, or plans

Naturally, if a young person asks to see a mental health professional, do everything you can to facilitate that referral, beginning at the school health center, that student’s parents, the primary care physician or applicable clergy. Help and support are available in many forms.

I don’t have hard data to support my gut feeling, but I sense that by the 1950′s, that Ivy League line was all but erased. Yet with all of the beneficial variety in staff educational backgrounds came looser (dare I say sloppy?) hiring practices. Enter movies such as Meatballs, whose portrayal of camp shenanigans in the 1970′s is as legendary as it is accurate.

The second millennium ushered in a new wave of staff hiring practices. Heightened awareness of physical and sexual abuse perpetrated by camp staff, along with industry associations that emphasized staff professionalism, established practices like background checks for all staff and transformed slapdash one-day orientations into “staff training week.” These days, camp directors won’t even look at a prospective staff member’s application without first conducting a criminal background check and acquiring three references. (Whether they actually check those references is another story…) There are even a growing number of national and provincial accreditation standards that suggest specific topics for staff training.

All of this specificity and conscientiousness has created a new problem, however. There is no longer enough time during staff training week (which in most cases is actually five days, not seven) to cover all of the recommended topics in any kind of meaningful depth. The average camp staff member needs to know everything from CPR and first-aid for anaphylaxis to bullying prevention and best practices for “responding to sensitive issues.” So although industry professionalism is an admirable goal, it is seldom achieved at the level of the front-line staff member. Not only do most camp directors lack expertise in all required training fields, they do not have their staff on-site for long enough before opening day.

How can a twenty-first century camp train professional-grade staff without expanding staff training week into staff training month? The answer is ridiculously simple: online education that staff complete before staff training week. Today’s college students spend hours on YouTube already. Why not create a library of YouTube-length videos hosted by the top professionals in youth development and education? And, to ensure that the young man or woman taking care of your son or daughter has actually understood what they’ve watched, each video should be followed by a quiz whose results are also viewable to the camp director.

Enter ExpertOnlineTraining.com, an educational website with an impressive library of videos hosted by internationally renowned authors like Dr. Michael Thompson (of Raising Cain fame), Dr. Joel Haber (of BullyProof Your Child fame), and Faith Evans (of The More the Merrier fame). Ok, full disclosure: I co-founded the site. But that’s exactly why it should matter to moms and dads. You now know an industry insider and camp parent who created an educational solution to a serious problem no camp director would dare mention. I’m biased, of course, but I recommend that every parent look for the EOT logo on their camp’s website and ask how they use ExpertOnlineTraining.com to complement their on-site training. Your child deserves a capable leader, not just a student with a smile.

And yes, we now have a video training module on treating anaphylaxis. Thank you, Dr. Laura Blaisdell.

My camp director friends had made all kinds of predictions about that day. “Your kid’s gonna flip out,” some of them guessed, “because there’s been so much build-up to this moment.” “You’re gonna lose your junk,” others speculated, “because you’ll be overanalyzing every second of what Dacha does.” A few also suggested, “You and Dacha are going to be fine. It’s the cabin leader I’m worried about. It’s not every day that the author of The Summer Camp Handbook drops his son off at camp.” Sheesh.

In reality, none of that came true. Dacha was excited to be a camper, having grown up on the property but not having been allowed to participate in anything except waterfront activities. And I stepped through the entire day as if I’d done it a million times (which I kinda had, at least from the point of view of the cabin leader). Surprisingly (or perhaps not), we had remembered to pack everything. Heck, I didn’t even linger to chat up Dacha’s cabin leader. Why should I have? I trained the guy myself.

But I did make one huge mistake. I busted out my flash video recorder and tried to capture the whole experience with megapixel fidelity. The result: I was a step removed from actually savoring the moment. I knew what was going on, but I was so intent on memorializing that half hour from main-lodge check-in to our final goodbye hug that I missed the experience of dropping my son off at camp. And watching the video is completely unsatisfactory. It’s like trying to enjoy a sunset on Skype.

I realize that only a few parents reading this month’s column are youth development professionals who will be dropping off their own flesh and blood at camp this summer. And even fewer of you reading this have written advice columns for parents about creating a successful camp experience for your children. But that doesn’t matter. We all have one thing in common: We love our children and we enjoy being part of their lives. ‘Nuf said.

For this reason, I urge you to keep your smart phone and all other electronics at home on opening day. I’ll allow you one posed photo with the counselor in front of the cabin, but that’s it. Honestly. Plan to spend opening day breathing in the fresh air, listening carefully to your son or daughter’s tone, observing the subtleties in his or her behavior, and interacting face-to-face, not through a lens. The emotional memory you will create that day by being present in the moment will be higher def than any flash video. On opening day, be a parent, not a producer.

For more essays for parents, visit my page on EverythingSummerCamp.com. Select “Getting Ready for Summer Camp with Dr. Chris Thurber & Friends” on the home page.

So entrenched is this education–school link that year-round school is routinely proposed as the answer to educational deficits among US youth. Ironically, summer holds the potential to endow children and adolescents with the life skills and values they need to become healthy adults with important careers that make meaningful contributions to society. Formal schooling has tremendous value, but one key to a complete education is a high-quality camp experience.

Research on the benefits of summer camp has conclusively validated 150 years of conventional wisdom. Camp does accelerate the development of young people’s social skills, self-esteem, independence, spirituality, sense of adventure, and environmental awareness. Astute camp directors know that combining community living away from home with a natural setting and a recreational premise creates hearty, happy, healthy children who know how to work together, win with humility, and lose with grace. They become resilient, motivated, and emotionally intelligent.

In the United States and around the world, visionary adults have created excellent children’s camps; our challenge now is to give camp to many more children. For every child who attends summer camp in the United States, there are about five who do not. Ethnic minority children, including Chua’s own biracial children, are especially under-represented at US camps.

Since biblical times, wise adults have outlined the youthful precursors to successful adulthood. Every decade or so, a new group of adults laments the shortcomings of that generation’s youth and restates their vision about how those young people can overcome their failings. Most recently, The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills recast the optimal outcomes of youth development as aptitude in: professionalism/work ethic; oral and written communication; teamwork/collaboration; and critical thinking. If corporate America is smart enough to understand that applied skills are essential for success, when will parents wake up to the importance of summer camp?

Summer camp was predictably absent from the recommendations in Are They Really Ready to Work? (co-authored by The Partnership). Yet the report, published in 2006, suggests a variety of action steps that camps have been taking since the mid-1800s. These include: teaching young people to make appropriate choices concerning health and wellness; offering activities that nurture creative thinking and socially skilled problem-solving; and providing opportunities for leadership.

Some would have us believe that fun learning is an oxymoron anywhere beyond preschool. If we stay fixed in that mindset, summer camp is doomed, along with our children’s mental health. Happiness is not a quaint byproduct of leisure; it’s the driving force behind success. We do our best — at work, at play, and in relationships — when we’re having fun. From that standpoint, summer camp becomes the perfect complement to traditional education. To Harvard University’s president, Charles W. Eliot, this was clear in 1922 when he declared, “The organized summer camp is the most important step in education that America has given the world.”

Parents should know that Eliot’s wise words pale in comparison to the words of enthusiasm that young people routinely use to describe their camp experience, such as:

• “At camp, I make friends easily.”
• “At camp, I get to try new things…stuff that might not be cool at school.”
• “At camp, the pressures of school disappear and I can just relax and have fun.”
• “At camp, I can be a leader by setting a good example for my friends.”
• “At camp, I feel close to nature and to the planet.”
• “At camp, I get to be myself.”

Parents might be surprised to know that it is this last response, “At camp, get to be myself,” that holds the most transformative power for youth.  When boys and girls find their authentic voices in a safe, nurturing, and challenging environment, they experience a rush of self-confidence.  This self-confidence then carries forward into other domains at home, school, and beyond.  It fuels their willingness to explore and learn, which is a key predictor of later success.

A high quality camp experience does more than halt summer learning loss; it provides experiences that accelerate development in the very direction employers crave. To quote one of my former leaders-in-training from Camp Belknap, “What I learned at Princeton and in medical school never could have prepared me to be chief resident at Johns Hopkins. It was my experience at summer camp that earned me that spot. I’m confident it’s also what will make me a good parent.”

What more could moms and dads possibly need to hear to convince them of the necessity of enrolling their son or daughter in summer camp? Although many US schools need serious improvement, we have less of an educational deficit than many believe. We have summer camps, created a century and a half ago by professional educators to bolster classroom education. It is now a moral imperative that we fulfill our commitment to our children by embracing the complementary relationship between schools and camps.

A version of this article was originally published in the 2011 November/December issue of Camping Magazine.  Reprinted by permission of the American Camp Association.  ©2011 American Camping Association, Inc.

What about now? Do contemporary camp directors have the educational clout to pass muster with today’s parents? Can they survive in an industry that demands a vast skill set ranging from technological expertise to psychopharmacology? What is the “right” background for one to become a virtuoso camp director?

Success Exists
These questions probably have complicated answers, but simple ones appeal to me more. Plus, I’m not at camp director, so let me stick to what I know. First of all, I’ve met virtuoso camp directors, so I know the breed still exists. Moreover, there are many successful day, resident, and specialty camps out there. (By successful, I mean a combination of financially sound and mission-driven.) Clearly, someone is doing something right. That said, everyone reading this column will be able to think of a camp director he or she has met who is decidedly unprofessional—the kind of person who conjures up visions of lawsuits and makes a bad name for the industry.

Professionalism comprises at least four dialectics, or four sets of interacting forces: Mission—Vision, Wisdom—Courage, Energy—Stamina, and Leadership—Education. Reflection on these dynamic tensions sheds light on camp director professionalism in ways that a list of qualifications cannot.

The Mission—Vision Dialectic
Mission driven camps are those who operate under the assumption that their market niche is determined by their stated youth development outcomes, not the other way around. Professional directors are those who craft and refine their camp’s mission based on a marriage between their values and the outcomes they desire for themselves, their staff, and their campers. Professional directors are not only able to say, “Here’s what we offer, in your child’s best interests,” but they are also able to tolerate families who decide this camp is not for them and look elsewhere.

The complementary force of vision requires directors to look back at the history of organized camping and to look forward toward camping’s future. This vision enables them to direct camp without stagnating in ineffectual traditions or repeating mistakes of the past. Camp directors with a clear mission and a clear vision move their organizations forward with vibrant integrity.

The Wisdom—Courage Dialectic
Wise camp directors are those with life experience, of almost any sort. There is no substitute for a life lived full of challenges, mistakes, and triumphs, be they personal, social, organizational, educational, or vocational. Professional directors are those who have lived in the world—the very world from which they are hiring their staff and into which they are sending their campers when the season is over. Wisdom is scant in an ivory tower but brimming in the natural world.

The complementary force of courage enables directors to take the wisdom they’ve culled from life experience and apply it with confidence, both to their own lives and the lives of those they lead. Camp directors with courage value the opinions of others and take the initiative to do what they believe will work.

The Energy—Stamina Dialectic
The running joke among directors is how they respond to the naïve query: “So what do you do in the off-season?” Directing a camp takes far more energy, on an hourly basis, than most people realize. Professional directors are those whose energy is seemingly boundless; who can guest-pitch a softball game, repair a fence, order equipment, return phone calls, console a homesick camper, and resolve a conflict between two unit leaders all before lunch.

The complementary force of stamina is a byproduct of healthy living. Directors who get enough sleep, exercise, wholesome food, and time for reflection can maintain their energy levels over the entire season and year. Healthy social connections, both inside and outside the camp industry, are also essential.

The Leadership—Education Dialectic
To lead any organization effectively requires an understanding of its culture, or the shared assumptions of its members. Professional directors immerse themselves in their camp culture by talking to parents, staff, and campers; by walking (not driving a golf cart, please) around camp; by participating in skits, games, and productions; and by listening. Such directors can then winnow the pertinent practices from the irrelevant or harmful ones and, using their understanding of the camp’s culture as leverage, promote needed change.

The complementary force of education is polemic. I’ve heard leaders in the camp industry rail against university departments of recreation and leisure studies, claiming that a masters or doctorate in such fields produces innocent scholars who only think they could run a camp. I’ve also met camp directors who were lawyers, physicians, and real estate moguls in a previous life. They don’t even pretend that their formal schooling prepared them to be a camp director. Instead, they talk about the life experiences that taught them the necessary lessons or, as one camp director put it, gave them “the arrogance to believe” that they “might be able to direct a camp skillfully.” Not that formal education has no place. I just haven’t met a camp director yet who thinks that he or she somehow went to Camp Director School and that it made a difference.

And there you have it: The most satisfying irony in this whole question about professionalism. The first camp directors may have had boatloads of formal education, but even they understood the limitations of the classroom. In fact, they were motivated by those limitations. That, plus they were thrilled by the prospect of outdoor living and the lessons it taught. Camping is still the only experience that combines community living, away from home, in an outdoor, recreational setting.

By embracing the four dialectics of Mission—Vision, Wisdom—Courage, Energy—Stamina, and Leadership—Education, and by eschewing any stock formula for success, camp directors’ professionalism can shine brightly. Their responsibility—both to camping and to campers—is to pass on what they’ve learned to the next generation of directors, just as they themselves learned from the example of their predecessors.

This article originally appeared in Canada Camps (Jan/Feb 2008)

Readers familiar with my work know what a tremendous advocate I am for youth camping. Having worked for decades with the American Camp Association, the Ontario Camp Association, the International Association of Burn Camps, the Children’s Oncology Camping Association, the Diabetes Camping Association, and other venerable professional camp organizations, I understand what a positive and powerful developmental growth experience camp is for young people. [By the way, if you'd like to learn more about research on the positive outcomes of camp, visit acacamps.org/research and download the report called "Directions."]

I am also a tremendous advocate of child safety. As a clinical psychologist and waterfront director with two little children of my own, I’m probably one of the most safety-conscious people you’ll meet. Indeed, every summer, I bet my staff $500 that they’ll never catch me in any of our 64 camp boats without a life jacket. I’ve yet to lose that bet. I also teach my children about safe and unsafe touch so they understand the difference and could stop and report an inappropriate advance. Even if it happened at camp.

Of course, camp and safety go hand-in-hand. Campers do engage in risky activities at camp, such as swimming, rock climbing, and horseback riding, but camp directors ensure that every reasonable precaution is in place to minimize the occurrence of accidents. Those precautions are part of what make risky activities fun not frightening. Those precautions are also what make parents trust high-quality camps. Naturally, smart parents understand that no camp is accident-free, but when they can see the safety equipment in place, they are reassured. If you were to walk around camp, you could see the lifeguards on duty, see the safety harnesses on the climbers, and see the helmets on the riders.

Sadly, nobody could ever see the potential for inappropriate behavior between a camp staff member and a child. But that invisibility should not stop you from protecting your child from predators by asking the right questions and looking for the warning signs of an unhealthy relationship.

As I outline in my The Summer Camp Handbook, you should begin by teaching your child how to protect him- or herself from unsafe touch. Norman Friedman’s book Inoculating Your Child Against Sexual Abuse provides perfect guidance here. Next, conduct the search for your child’s camp carefully. This careful search has many components but the three that most parents neglect are:

1. Finding out whether the camp is accredited and by whom
2. Discussing the director’s education and experience
3. Asking about the camp’s hiring protocols and staff training program.

In these three neglected domains, here’s what you should verify:

1. The camp you send your child to should be accredited. In the US, this means accredited by the American Camp Association. In Canada, this means accredited by the province in which the camp operates. There are some high-quality non-accredited camps, but you’ll need to personally verify hundreds of health, safety, and personnel standards before resting assured you’ve chosen wisely. Use the ACA’s new Accreditation Standards for Camp Programs and Services as your guide.
2. Your camp’s director should have years of youth development experience under his or her belt and should participate in continuing professional education-such as camp conferences-each year. Find out what their professional credentials are, what conferences or seminars they last attended, and what other camp experience they have.
3. The camp should freely share with you its protocols for conducting required background checks. These could include criminal background checks, but that will only uncover whether a person has been convicted of a felony in the state or province in which the check is conducted. More meaningful is the process of religiously checking a staff member’s references. Finding people who have known the prospective hire well and who have witnessed their work with children is better than verifying whether or not they are not a convicted felon. The camp should also freely share with you its staff training program. This program should include modules on appropriate touch, discipline, and communication with children.

Finally, ask the camp director what off-season communication he or she officially sanctions between campers and staff. Because of the expansive and unregulated nature of the Internet, most camp directors do not permit the open exchange of e-mail addresses and screen names between campers and staff. Instead, they establish password-protected, supervised chat rooms on the camp’s own web site. (Supervised means that the camp director is reading every entry before posting it.) Other camp directors are allowing no Internet communication, in favor of handwritten postcards, which are carefully read before mailing. Find out today what your camp’s off-season communication policy is and steer away from anything that is unsupervised or does not permit parental access.

Lest your love and concern for your child evolve into protective paranoia, let me emphasize that the personal relationships that form between your child and the camp staff are typically wonderful. They are what kids remember most about camp and what they crave during the off-season. These relationships are also the necessary foundation for growth. Without those caring relationships, there can be no increased self-esteem or independence, no growth in social-skills or confidence. The key to a positive experience at camp is a healthy, nurturing relationship between children and their caregivers at camp. For this reason, it is my sincere hope that the principles outlined above will help you and your son or daughter find a camp where those healthy relationships flourish.

Special Footnote for Camp Directors: In addition to careful screening, thoughtful hiring procedures, and a thorough staff training protocol, there exists a new tool to help camp directors prevent predators from entering camps. MySummerCamps.com has created a National Criminal Database & National Sex Offender Search for camps. This service permits any camp director to perform background checks on his or her staff and volunteers at a very reasonable price. The turnaround time for these background checks is instantaneous because it is all done online. I recommend supplementing reference checks with this important background search.

“In what way are you concerned about the absence of a webcam?” I asked. “Well, it’s just that I wonder what’s going on that they don’t want to show me.” Jeepers. Like what?

Flashback to a recent disturbing article by Jeff Zaslow in the Wall Street Journal entitled Avoiding Kids: How Men Cope with Being Cast as Predators. Zaslow lamented the growing paranoia in American society that has parents frantically calling directors of day care centers demanding to know why their child was sitting on a man’s lap…only to learn that the man was not some pervert, but a father of one of the other children (also on his lap) and that he had been reading them all a story in plain view.

Zaslow quotes Frank McEnulty, a builder in Long Beach, California who was once a Boy Scout scoutmaster. “Today, I wouldn’t do that job for anything,” he said. “All it takes is for one kid to get ticked off at you for something and tell his parents you were acting weird on the campout.” Jeepers again.

Back to the “red flag” question.

Although I’m certain that webcams are not the answer to predator paranoia, her question was the wrong question to ask about any piece of electronic technology at camp. I don’t know whether something is a red flag or not until I’ve heard the answer to a better question: What is the camp’s mission?

For years (OK, only since 2005) I’ve been advocating that a camp’s adoption of any electronic technology should be congruent with its mission. New technologies can be seductive, but unless their introduction helps promote the camp’s outcomes, they are unnecessary. Certain electronic technologies may even erode a camp’s mission. (See The Digital Umbilical for a longer discussion on this topic.)

So before I answered this parent’s query with a knee-jerk condemnation such as, “Camp is about fresh air and friends, not about computers!” or a sensational conviction such as, “Oh my gosh! They don’t have a webcam! That’s absurd! Pull your child out of that camp immediately! Just imagine what could be going on!” I simply asked this parent, “What is this camp’s mission?”

Her reply: A blank stare.

A blank stare? What?! Is camp free now? Are children disposable? Did I miss something while I was away at camp this summer? Or are we still stuck in the 1880s believing that camp is just a place to have fun; that there’s no real learning or development that happens at camp?

But lo and behold! Even in the 1800s camp directors understood that camps served an essential educational function, one complementary to the classroom, but unique in important ways.

Yes, camp is fun, but it also provides community living, away from home, in an outdoor recreational setting. Nothing else provides that.

So it’s no surprise that camps accelerate children’s development in ways that school and home do not. (See ACA — Youth Development Outcomes of the Camp Experience — Directions to learn more about the American Camp Association’s groundbreaking research in this area.) For most children at most camps, their experience promotes social skills, independence, healthy risk taking, and self-esteem.

“Well,” I began hesitantly, “if you’re not sure what the camp is trying to do with your son, then I can’t say whether a webcam is a good thing or not.” Another blank stare. (I’m a psychologist, so I have graduate training in responding to these kinds of blank stares.)

“What would you like to have happen to your son after a few weeks at camp?” I asked.

No more blank stares, but a twinkle in her eye. Most parents know what they want for their children. (They just don’t always know what other people—like camp directors—want for their children.)

“I want him be more confident. I want him to learn to cope with a little homesickness and learn to be independent. It’s good for him to be away from home a bit…away from me and his dad. I want him to learn that he can solve problems on his own. And I want him to make friends…maybe some who are different from his friends at home. Of course, I also want him to have fun. To get better at basketball To make some memories that will carry him through the school year.”

Now we were getting somewhere.

“In what ways might a live Internet feed of his activities at camp promote or retard his progress gaining independence, social skills, and self-esteem?” I asked.

A knowing, sincere, and slightly sheepish smile bloomed on her face. Here was my chance to editorialize a bit. I started with the obvious.

“If you’ve selected a high-quality camp, you need not worry that they have something to hide. Quite the opposite. Any camp that’s done their homework by outlining their desired outcomes, writing a mission statement, and structuring their program to deliver those outcomes, will advertise that fact.

Such camps don’t need a webcam to prove or disprove anything through a live broadcast of events. Moreover, camp directors don’t want the liability of having a puerile camper moon the camera, to say nothing of parents’ anxieties about having their child’s naked backside on the world wide web.”

Another knowing smile and slightly furrowed brow gave me time to conclude:

“Webcams broadcast events, but what we really want is for children to create a narrative of their experience, though reflection, writing, and interaction. When they create a narrative, it deepens their understanding and allows them to share their impressions and analysis. We don’t really want to see camp happening, we want to understand what happened to our child because of camp. For this reason alone, I think families should select camps without webcams.”

At a high quality camp, parents need not be concerned about what might be going on that they can’t see. Instead, they should celebrate the fact that they can’t see any of what’s going on. The fact that their children are having an experience all their own is what makes camp the most fertile ground for positive youth development. Don’t worry, you’ll hear all about it in letters, postcards, and the ten months that follow camp. Best of all, you’ll see camp through your child’s eyes, not through a webcam’s lens.