As we motor through the summer, it's hard to believe that school starts in less than a month, and there are more weeks of school vacation behind us than in front. Our family has enjoyed a great balance of camps, weeks at home, and hanging out. Not being brought up with the concept of camps, I always imagined them as lengthy separation of child and parent a la the movie 'The Parent Trap'. I never knew that day camps existed in just about every shape and price bracket. And I'm thankful that we live in a town who provides fabulous parks and recreation facilities with which to make my kids exhausted.
But it's not as simple as packing your kid a lunch, snack, and a swimsuit and collecting them 6 hours later. Oh no. The Summer Camp learning curve is steep for novice parents; here are ten things that parents need to know about summer camps.
1. In order to register your child online when camp registration opens (usually March) you need to be armed with several laptops and willing volunteers to get the weeks you want. This year we saw camps fill within 7 minutes. It's the cyber equivalent to an in-line punch up when U2 tickets go on sale.
2. On the day that they take a trip to the museum, beach, aquarium, your kid becomes one of THOSE kids. The noisy, misbehaving, crazy kids that are part of a large group. The ones that you always complain about when you visit any of those places with your family. Get over it. They're allowed to be like that when they're with their camp group.
3. The horrible child from school will always be at your child's camp. And if you're really unlucky, so will their older brother. And their younger brother. And his evil twin.
4. In the course of the summer, your kids will collectively lose 3 towels, 4 water bottles, 2 and a half swimsuits, one lunch box, a sock and a pair of underpants. Yes, they WERE labeled, thank you for asking. Well maybe not the underpants - who labels those?!
5. You child won't remember the name of the counsellor they loved the most until 2 weeks after camp finishes and they wake up crying in the middle of the night because they think they will never see Sarah/Josh/Marty again.
6. There's ALWAYS a show on the last day. Parents have to arrive 30 mins early, sit on a hard seat, a bug-ridden field, or in a non air-conditioned hall. And we have to take video with our phones of our child doing a dance, running a race, or singing. Or all three. Lots and lots of video.
7. You will NEVER really know whether your child eats all the lunch or snack you send them with. The brown bag lunch was invented to make it possible for kids to pretend to eat food and then toss it away rather than put it back into a lunch box for mom to examine.
8. Camps that provide snacks can only produce ones that end in '-sicle'. Popsicle, fudgesicle, ice-creamsicle, goldfish-sicle.
9. You kid smells funny when they come home.
10. Never, NEVER, toss away the t-shirts that they acquire during the weeks of camp. It may threaten to discolor all your laundry, be day-glo green with a layer of fabric paint on top, or 9 sizes too big, but your kid will never forgive you if you dispose of them before January comes. At least you can use them to wear at the next camp so that they don't destroy their good clothes.
But look on the bright side - the likelihood of discovering that your child found their long-lost twin sister at camp is very slim. I think I'll just settle for stinky towels.
