I'm Afraid of Summer Camp
You spend the big bucks, commit to 4 weeks and then your kid HATES IT!
I never went to summer camp growing up - but in New York, it is A WHOLE THING.
But first - I have a new episode of Parenting is a Joke for your listening pleasure! This week I talk to comic and actress- you’ve probably seen on Hacks or Curb Your Enthusiasm - it’s my friend Iris Bahr! I caught up with her while she was in New York - she currently lives in Tel Aviv, and we talked about different parenting styles around the world and how dating as a divorcee is all about scheduling - she thinks there should be a dating app called Custody Match. Listen Here!
The countdown to the end of school has begun in my apartment. Aren’t you supposed to like the 2nd grade? I mean, does it go up from here?
As mentioned, I’m afraid of summer camp because last year was an expensive and painful series of mistakes.
My kid’s a sore loser probably because he’s an only child; therefore, technically, he will never lose. On the other hand, as the youngest of six, I have no idea what it’s like to win.
It’s also my fault: we let our son win right from the start thinking we were building his self-esteem. Then one day, he lost his mind and threw the Candy Land board across the room because he was losing. It didn’t matter how many times I said, “It’s not my fault I drew the pretzel card!” he still screamed that he hated the game. That’s when I thought, ‘I did the wrong thing because most of life is failing! Fuck building his self-esteem; I need to develop his resilience!
Last year we put him in this summer camp called Gentle Sports – I know, could there be anything more Park Slope Brooklyn? It’s a sports camp that tries to de-emphasize competition and instead focuses on awareness of the game, mindfulness while playing, and teamwork. And they integrated yoga and meditation into every sports day. The website showed photos of 6-year-olds meditating as if they were lil’ Zen Buddhists. My husband’s childhood mainly was TV and comic books, while mine was ballet and Barbies, so we agreed our lives would have been better if we had gone to this camp as kids.
So we send him off and hope for transformation.
Now, I’m sure you know that extracting information about an experience from a 6-year-old is like trying to break the best-uncovered asset the FBI has ever hired, but on day 4, he finally answered our questions.
“What do you think about sports camp? What games are you playing? What are the mindful things you’re doing?
He replied, “We’re just playing soccer and football against each other, and my team lost 5 times, so we didn’t get any Pokemon cards, and the winning team made fun of us and got to sit under the better shadier tree at lunch.”
THE SHADIER TREE?
I was about to lose my mind because this didn’t sound like a Brooklyn-based gentle athletics program; this sounded like a slightly watered-down version of The Hunger Games!!!
And my husband, trying, hoping, praying, asked, “Well did you guys learn breathing techniques or do a downward dog or anything like that?” Our son looked at us with a squished-up incredulous face and barked, “No, nothing! I just kept losing, and I didn’t get any of the prizes. I hate this camp, and they’re mean.”
We were enraged. We try breathing exercises to calm down, BUT AS WE ALL KNOW THEY DON’T WORK. Finally, my husband declared, “That’s it! I’m going to email the camp NOW.” I immediately begged him not to because I don’t want to be those Brooklyn parents, the ones podcasts are made around, asking to talk to the manager because their precious, perfect child isn’t being adequately catered to.
But he pushed back, “NO. We’re paying for Gentle Sports. If it’s just shitty sports and not anything they advertised, I want answers and a discount.”
It’s true - this camp was expensive. And it’s one thing to pay for bullshit knowingly, but knowing that you’re not getting the bullshit you thought you were paying for is infuriating. I’m not getting ripped off by a rip-off.
My husband wrote the camp and I shuddered when he hit send. He literally wrote that it wasn’t gentle. Instead of a culture of teamwork, it seemed to be straight-up competition and Pokemon prizes. There seemed to be no meditation, yoga practices, or mindfulness as promised.
I guess we were officially those parents.
The camp replied quickly that they were concerned to hear about this, that they had people looking into it, and that they had opened a case. Oh great, now there are detectives involved? Is it a fucking case?
And I was scared. Please don’t take it out on my child.
On Friday, I arrived at pick-up and noticed all the kids were holding certificates and they were personalized depending on what they had achieved. I glanced at one that read Most Helpful, another Most Enthusiastic. My son ran toward me, glowing, excited to show his certificate.
Scrawled in a sharpie, it read Most Mindful.
I’d never seen a passive-aggressive diploma before, a transcendent transgression, I’ve never been slapped in the face with a mantra, but at that moment, I’d never been so present in my awareness that this award given to my child was a direct fuck you to us, his parents. It was gentle, I’ll give them that.
That was his last day at Gentle Sports. We did not get our money back. We switched him to something called Gameworks, where a bunch of lovely geeky teenagers teach kids tabletop games in the morning, and in the afternoon, they hang out in the park battling with foam swords and shields. It’s basically a primer for Dungeons and Dragons and cosplay battles. There is winning and losing, but my son never mentions it as they give him badges for losing but sticking with it. And he loves it.
My husband and I agree; our lives would have been better if we had gone to this camp as kids.