"People still question me, ‘How are you away from your daughter for 6 and a half weeks?’
And it is very, very easy. She came home her first summer and knew how to fold her laundry...
But she also knows how to have hard conversations and work through problems."
From a K&E parent I talked to recently.
Want to talk to her yourself? Reply to this email, and I'll put you in touch. Seriously.
The thing about summer camp is, it's different.
It's not how most people spent their own summers. Maybe you did a week somewhere, once. But 6.5 weeks? That's a lot (a lot!) of the summer.
And camp people like me can forget that. To us, the choice feels so obvious, like signing a kid up for swim lessons or playdates or music lessons or rec sports. That of-course-you-would thinking skips right over the biggest group of people out there. Maybe you.
I've been talking with a lot of camp families this fall. Past, present, and brand new. And one thing that keeps coming up is the heat parents take from their own friends and family. How could you send your kid away all summer? Won't you miss them?
Of course they miss them. Missing them is never really at the heart of the question.
I'll Just Say It
I honestly believe great parents send their kids to summer camp.
And it is a seriously tough thing to do. The parents who do this love their kids so much. They miss them, and they wish they could wake up and laugh with them all summer long.
And they send them anyway, because camp gives their kids something that is really hard to give them anywhere else: a place that’s made for them where summer is just like we remember growing up.
But making that happen is a real sacrifice across a couple different lines. I want to call it what it is.
Harder Than It Used To Be
Parents today are more involved than any generation before them. Look at this.
Since 1965, moms have increased their weekly time on child care by about 35%. Dads are up 177%. Those are wild jumps over basically two lifetimes, and my bet is the numbers keep climbing.
Parents being involved like this is a real thing and an important thing. It's parents caring more, being around more, doing more.
But I also think this graph shows that sending your kid to camp is harder now than it has ever been.
If we're loosely tracking the graph, call it somewhere between 35% and 100% harder than when we grew up. The sacrifice has never been bigger because it’s never been more normal to be around and with your kids.
So when someone asks a K&E parent, ‘How can you send her for 6.5 weeks?’ part of the honest answer is that these parents are giving up more than any generation before them did.
And they do it anyway.
What They Get Back
Some other quotes I scribbled down as I talked to parents this week:
"To get away from screens and go out and be real kids and be in nature and actually have conversations is such a better life skill for them than anything we can give them at home. They're just so happy. There's probably nothing you could do better."
Another, years into this: "Best decision as a parent I've made, hands down. And not even a debate."
And the one that says the quiet part out loud: "We don't love being away from our kid all summer, but what he gets out of the experience is worth it."
The best parents I know want success and confidence and happiness for their kids, and a great combination of all three at the same time. And parents who send kids camp trust that this is among the best places in the work to find all three.
So, two things.
To our current families: thank you. Thank you for trusting us with your kids and making a sacrifice most people never see up close. We know exactly how big it is.
And if you're thinking about camp for the first time, wondering whether you could really do this, I'd love to talk.
Better yet, I'll introduce you to a parent who has been exactly where you are.
You got this,
Jack
PS - Did you see K&E in the Concord Monitor? Check it out!
Want to switch to just getting camp news once a month? Program updates, things happening at camp, how the summer is shaping up?
Click here → Update your profile You stay in the loop on camp either way.