Camp Lets Kids Learn Independence, Gives Parents ?Taste of Future?

New Haven Register › August 01, 2009

Linked as:

Summary

IN a venerable tradition of summer, my wife and I sent our two children -- a tween and a young teen -- off to camp last week. Both boys had butterflies, evidenced by their distracted silence in the car to the airport and the pained, nervous wave from beyond security. But this year, there were no tears. At camp, they gain many pointless, essential experiences: unfiltered starlight, outdoor showers, musty cabins, spiders in odd corners, the morning mist off a lake, belligerent mosquitoes (my youngest claims to have once counted 40 bites), sweltering evenings when sleep comes hard and the glorious, eye-watering pleasure of watching a campfire rise and burn.

But, the goal of camp is the cultivation of independence -- for a child to be away from home and face problems without the assistance of parents. Children stand on the edge of a cliff, willing themselves to jump into the water below. Or manage a canoe during a thunderstorm on an overnight trip. Or ride an impossibly high zip line. In the process, they pass from taking external direction to accepting internal challenges: I will do this because I choose to do it, because I want to test myself.