It costs what?! More families request financial aid for summer camp
Filed under: Budgets, Extracurriculars, Kids and Money, Simplification
Kids may well count the days until summer vacation, but their parents are dreading it. That's because when school's out, camps are in. And we've got to find a way to pay for it somehow.
Time was, summer meant three months of running free, finding ways to kill hot summer afternoons at the community pool or with friends or in your backyard campsite. Those days are over.
Now the culture dictates that kids have to be stimulated 24/7. The kids expect to be entertained, and the grown-ups need for them to be elsewhere while they work. The result: Summer camp. Science camp, art camp, ocean adventures camp, cooking camp, horse camp, Spanish camp, overnight camp...etc. etc. ad nauseum.
The folks who run these summer camps know they've got us over a barrel. The costs of camps range from the painful to the improbable. The cost of one week of Lego camp at a community center near me is $170 a week. Times two (for both kids). And there's a $75 registration fee. That's $415 for one week of activity that will keep the little nits out of my hair for three hours a day while I work.
I'd better be productive then. By my estimation, there are 11 weeks to fill.
According to the L.A. Times, more parents are putting off signing up for summer camps (March and April is when you typically have to sign up your charges, lest the camps fill up without you). And more of them are requesting financial aid in order to do so.
This doesn't surprise me at all. Camps are a huge financial burden for middle-class parents. Lower-cost options like Girl Scout/Boy Scout camps and YMCA camps fill up the quickest. The costs just go up from there.
Allow me to make a modest proposal. What happens if we all agree that this has to stop? Keep kids home from camp in lieu of a good old fashioned, boring summer experience. Get a neighborhood group together and establish a sort of summer co-op, by which the parents who are at home supervise the kids (kids in a group of friends will play for hours without bothering you, it's been established.). Let them run free, play ball, swim in the pool, bury each other at the beach. Working parents can offer their services one evening a week or on the weekends.
I know, I know. This is how it *used* to work, back when kids had nothing else to do in the summer but be kids and ride their bikes through the neighborhood all day. And smaller children require more supervision than grade school kids. Still, the idea of a long, hot, boring summer is an idea whose time has come around again. Why can't it happen?
Maybe not so easy. But much easier on the pocketbook.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-02-2008 @ 4:47PM
Gary Forster said...
Julies right, kids need more time at home in the summer with their parents. But that's not how "it use to be." How it use to be was we kids were trusted to leave the house in the morning and expected to find friends and things to do. Send out the word and you could get enough together for a game, even if it meant you had to let "the little kids and the girls" play to have enough on each team. We decided the rules, found stuff to use for bases, picked teams, and played inning after inning. Without a coach or a parent in site for an entire day.
We also got to go to camp for a week, and that was a big deal. (Camping started in America in 1861 and by 1910 their were hundreds of youth camps coast to coast.) And camping was inexpensive because major donors supported the bulk of the expenses for the Scouts and Campfire and the YMCA because it "was for the good of the kids." It was great until about 1970.
Inflation was rampant, expenses went up but real family income was stagnant. Still is. TV's cost only 10% of what they did then because of automation and the global economy. But it still takes the same number of staff to run a camp (more actually because parents are so nervous). And the results have been the same as the increasing costs of a college education.
All of us are asked twice a year to give to our alma matter; and gifts to their endowment funds are the primary reason kids can afford to go to college at all (because our states have given up).
Camp is a very special time and place for kids to grow up. No games in the back yard can replace it. The more folks that volunteer and donate to a camp of their choice, the better off our kids, and our future will be.
For more info visit www.acacamps.org or www.ymca.net
Warm regards, Gary Forster, YMCA of the USA.
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5-09-2008 @ 7:33PM
EQM said...
As a stay at home mom sending my kids to camp seemed a litttle crazy, but my husband went to camp and wanted to have our kids try it too. My children all attend private, sleepover camps. They LOVE it. I feel I could be up 24/7 and I still couldn't give them what camp does. At this point they go for most of the summer. Yes we have to sacrafice other things (a lot of other things) so this can happen, but camp really gives my kids a lot, confidence, people skills that most kids won't get till college and it shows. They have friends from all around the country and when the mean girl thing rears it's ugly head at home, there are still many friends available by phone or computer so my daughter can and does just shake her head and go on with day.
Not all kids are meant for camp, but if you find a good one, and can make it work it is an unbelievale gift for your children
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