Who Me? Sleepless Over Sleep Away Camp?

My mom friend Penny joked that people spend thousands of dollars on summer sleepaway camp consultants who find the perfect match for your child. Besides this large expenditure, there should be visits to prospective camps while in session and perhaps even a follow up visit to the winner of the bake off competition. Actually, it’s true. Most moms in our town do hire consultants and visit camps a year ahead of time. It’s like a warm up for the college application process.

And yet, I am sending her daughter with my daughter to a YMCA sleepaway camp that none of us have ever set foot on. PickyKidPix, it turns out, convinced her daughter that this is the perfect camp for them to go together, and then got her to swear a blood oath not to back out. My Mom Friend Penny was fine with camp assuming that I did extensive research as I am prone to doing. So I complete shocked her with my lax attitude. That is so uncharacteristic of me, she chides me.

In my defense, as the mother of PickyKidPix, I realized a long time ago that you really don’t make life decisions for this kind of child, rather you facilitate the process once you get your marching orders. PickyKidPix did her own sleepaway camp research by interrogating her friends. Once she found the camp she liked, she told me that she intended to go there next summer and to please sign her up. She even dictated which session she wanted.

She did the same thing with choosing her orthodontist. I made three appointments. The first one wanted to pull permanent teeth. The second one was giving 50-50 odds about pulling the teeth. The third one was convinced he could straighten her teeth without any extractions. She’s just like Goldilocks and she wants to keep her teeth. All of them. She chose door number 3 despite the fact he is past retirement age and we are still waiting for said permanent teeth to come in.

I did do some undercover work about PickyKidPix‘s summer camp by asking around but things checked out. Everyone’s friend’s cousin twice removed seemed to be deliriously happy from their camp experience there. It’s a YMCA camp but not the cult-like YMCA camp on the other side of the state that my other daughter, Music Lovers, is going to; again, sight unseen. The mom friends at this camp rave so much that I am already suspicious of the Kool Aid that I will be forced to drink while sleeping in a tent for a torturous Moms’ Weekend. (More on that later. I believe Mom’s weekend is in August.)

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I didn’t spend hours researching creative arts sleep away camps. And I do, in fact, have a six inch pile of camp brochures with CDs in my kitchen. And I am still getting phone calls and a barrage of emails from camps.  It’s just that I researched sleepaway camps on the Eastern Seaboard for creative arts, specifically for fine art, for Music Lovers.

“Glass art, you say? Would that be stained glass or hot glass? Do you have a studio for blowing hot glass?” Yep, I was thorough.

All this camp research was for naught because Music Lovers decided that she just wanted to go to camp with her friends. Again, she told me which camp and which session to sign her up for. It was really unfortunate that her friends ended up not being able to go but she seems resolute to go alone. She told me she was not worried and that she will just make new friends. And she will. She is good like that.

In truth, had my children not had such strong convictions of where they wanted to attend camp, I might have gone the route of the camp advisor. And I would have visited camps near and far. But I am learning to take a gift horse in the mouth. And I know that these two camps will both be a fine experience.

And so my girls go off to YMCA sleepaway camp this summer with nary a visit nor a dime spent on advisory services. And I am good with it. I hope the college selection process will be as easy.

p.s. Here are some great resources to research summer sleepaway camp. See? I did my homework after all!

The Summer Lady

SummerCamp.org

Top 21 Summer Camps

Camp Professor

CampEasy

p.p.s. I also talked to a mom friend who attended the Cult Like YMCA camp as a child and whose three children have had the same magical experience that she did. Also, my neighbor’s son who will be a counselor-in-training tells me it’s the best experience of his life.

p.p.p.s. And, as it turns out, getting to be a counselor-in-training at these particular camps is more difficult that getting into most Ivy League colleges from an applicant to acceptance ratio. So, it’s not such a bad warm up for college after all!

May 16, 2012 | 8 comments View Post

Meet Author Trudy Ludwig for Advice on Bullying

Pull up a chair, click on a book, and read why more educators, parents, librarians, organizations and experts are recommending My Secret Bully, Just Kidding, Sorry!, Trouble Talk®, Too Perfect, Confessions of a Former Bully, and Better Than You as invaluable tools to supplement their life skills/character education/anti-bullying curricula.

Please join me on a Live Chat with author Trudy Ludwig, Thursday, May 17, 9 pm EST.

Confessions of a Former Bully by Trudy Ludwig

After Katie gets caught teasing a schoolmate, she’s told to meet with Mrs. Petrowski, the school counselor, so she can make right her wrong and learn to be a better friend. Bothered at first, it doesn’t take long before Katie realizes that bullying has hurt not only the people around her, but her, too. Told from the unusual point of view of the bullier rather than the bullied, Confessions of a Former Bully provides kids with real life tools they can use to identify and stop relational aggression.

Ten-year-old Katie finds herself where no child wants to be, in the principal’s office with both her parents. Caught bullying a friend on the school playground, she must meet with the school counselor once a week and figure out how to atone for her actions. As Katie learns more about herself and her options, she keeps a diary-like notebook of reflections and advice as well as facts about physical, emotional, and cyberbullying; why people bully others; and what tools kids can use when they experience or witness bullying. In a style similar to Marissa Moss’ Amelia’s Notebook series, Katie’s notebook features childlike drawings, and cartoons with digital-collage elements combine with boxed facts and quotes to brighten the pages. Although the story may be a vehicle for information, the many children looking for advice on bullying will find this journal more thought-provoking, practical, and readable than many nonfiction books on the subject. Grades 3-5. –Carolyn Phelan from Booklist

To view any book at Amazon, please click on image of book.

May 15, 2012 | 4 comments