I just read an essay by a university administrator with tips for preparing kids for college. One strategy jumped out. It is simple and direct and framed almost as an imperative: Send your kids to camp!
If you’re trying to prepare young adults for college life, letting them practice independence in weeklong chunks as children would seem like a no-brainer. If the first week of your life you spend out from under your parents’ roof is in a college dorm, well, good luck with that.
Earlier this month, our 16-year-old son was away at a Young Life (Christian) retreat in North Carolina – a week he had looked forward to for months. The packing list was a full page long and included specific items like a flannel shirt (for a Western-themed event) throw-away clothes for muddy activities and a unique uniform for a volleyball tournament (his cabin picked medical scrubs and surgical face masks).
While he was away in North Carolina, his mom and I scoured the daily videos posted to the camp’s website. We found him in one, during a circle-the-bat race. In the two-second clip, he lost his balance, staggered and then face-planted in the dirt. I put it on slo-mo and watched it again and again. Funny stuff.
But fun is just the veneer for the more important learning that goes on at camp. It’s the late-night discussions between kids of different backgrounds that will resonate long after the belly-flop contests and cabin-on-cabin pillow fights are forgotten.