Posted on 07/26/2008 6:16:18 AM PDT by Amelia
...Karin Miller, 43, a stay-at-home mother during the school year with a doctorate in psychology, who is redefining the role of camp counselor. She counsels parents, spending her days from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. printing out reams of e-mail messages to deliver to Bryn Mawr’s 372 female campers and leaving voice mail messages for their parents that always begin, “Nothing’s wrong, I’m just returning your call.”
Jill Tipograph, a camp consultant, said most high-end sleep-away camps in the Northeast now employ full-time parent liaisons like Ms. Miller...
...The liaisons are emblematic of what sleep-away camp experts say is an increasing emphasis on catering to increasingly high-maintenance parents, including those who make unsolicited bunk placement requests, flagrantly flout a camp’s ban on cellphones and junk food, and consider summer an ideal time to give their offspring a secret vacation from Ritalin.
One camp psychologist said she used to spend half her time on parental issues; now it’s 80 percent....
...“They’ll give their child two cellphones, so if they get caught with the first one, ‘Just give it up and you’ll have the second one to talk to me,’ “ he said. “That’s widespread, not isolated. I call it fading parental morality. What they’re doing is entering into delinquent behaviors with their children. And what kind of statement is that to a child?”...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
If I was in charge of hiring, I sure wouldn't hire anyone who had to have Mommy & Daddy handle the application process for him/her!
It’s a question of authority, and parental authority trumps some power mad little college kid.
I try to make sure that I follow the camp rules and encourage them to do the same.
But neither do I send my kids into an area where they are forced to compromise instilled ideals.
I agree.
However, apparently some of the camps say that no cell phones are allowed -- not an arbitrary college kid rule, but the camp's rule, spelled out beforehand.
If you insist that your child should have a cell phone so that he or she can call you every night, you need to find a different camp for your child.
Otherwise, you're teaching your child that rules are arbitrary, meant to be broken, don't apply to him, etc.
Let’s see! Would I even trust my little darlings with a cell phone at camp. I love them dearly, but I’d have to consider that the cell phone would probably be a casualty to youthful exuberance.
Nope! A plastic baggy with a handful of quarters would have to suit my darling little maniacs.
If dying or needing essentials they’d have to fight thier way to the pay phone with the rest of the rabble.
Of course, I might not be home, having taken my wife to go paint the town familiar.
I was wondering how many of the children sent to camp with cell phones used them exclusively for calling parents, and how many were running up huge texting bills!
Yikes! Well you know what they say in that cellphone commercial.
Who are all those people behind you?
Why, they’re my network!
Seems more ominous when you imagine that group of people behind your children.
Like Hillary’s community is raising your children.
Isn’t technology grand?
By the way, Amelia, why does a children’s camp have a psychologist? Do shrinks usually find gainful employment at children’s camp? Must make sitting around the campfire a real drag.
That’s not old fashioned, FRiend.
They would seem to need one mostly for the parents and not necessarily for the kids. :=)
Parents at least 80% of the time anyway.
The other 20% for psychoanalyzing ghost stories.
“...and then he heard a voice saying ‘give me back my BIG TOE!!!’”
“Johnny,” said the psychoanalyst placatingly, “tell me about the toe.”
Horrid!
Maybe one night before summer is over, we should have a FReeper ghost story thread! Or at least someone could suggest that to someone on the Canteen threads... ;-)
Sounds like fun. Then again some of the things I’ve read regarding Obama-rama has given me nightmares. :)
I was thinking the other day that Clinton was starting to look good by comparison.
I know you weren’t talking about my situation. However, people make assumptions about kids, espeically when they look normal.
I just did a first last night. I left my daughter at her junior high camp. She got sick on Thursday, and the junior camping trip was Friday. I kept her home on Friday night and sent her brother and sister. I decided that if she was better on Saturday, I’d drive her up for the day.
She seemed a lot better, and she was so happy to be there. I decided that she’d be okay if she spent the night, but I was going to stay the night up there also because I have to go back up there this morning. Well, one of the other kids got sick, and I volunteered to drive him home so his parents didn’t to come get him.
It’s a big deal to leave my daughter since she had a seizure. However, the parents at the junior camping group all know my daughter well, and one of the other parents has a kid with seizures. My daughter has emergency medicine, and it’s a suppository. The parent on the trip asked me if I had the emergency medicine, and she said she would give it to my daughter if needed.
I hope your school does the same and the staff is educated on what needs to be done for your child.
In the public school, they didn’t do anything. (I was in a very bad district in California.)
In the private school, they are wonderful.
I’m glad there are people in the schools that are kind and caring.
Actually, since these camps are private businesses, the parents who want their kids to have a cell phone should find them a different camp.
As a parent, I find it a little unnerving to entrust kids with anyone who wants to restrict their communication with me. I can see not allowing use of phones during certain activities, classes and so forth. They don't even need to be turned on...just there if there is a reason to call home.
What are they trying to hide?
ping
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