June 12, 2007
Get Those Kids Outdoors!
Knute Berger dislikes the decline of kids going to summer camp. A lamentable trend, indeed.
My son will be trotting off to camp for the second straight year. It's his favorite summertime activity, and one which Mrs. Earling and I celebrate for the total detachment from the assorted electronic gadgets we already try to limit. It's rustic, simple, and virtually begs for the kids to be out of doors rather than in.
If only my daughter were old enough to go too...
Posted by Eric Earling at June 12, 2007
10:00 PM | Email This
1. How long do they go for? All summer? One or two weeks?
I have a child going to camp this year, but as a counselor. That will be a big change.
2. Just one week. Cost gets pretty prohibitive beyond that, even if you can even find longer camps with stretches, which seem uncommon around here. The camp Berger highlights in his article goes from $1200+ for stretches of 2-3 weeks. My wallet can't take that on top of private school tuition.
3. Yikes! Well, I didn't realize what the camp was - I thought it was Hidden Valley, then clicked the link. I'm familiar with Lakeside - I've been there many times over the years. It's a wonderful experience & one of the cheapest camps around.
4. Camps and nature are great, and I hope your personal attitude of tolerance will keep your son from being unduly influenced by his camp's mission of teaching that anyone who doesn't share his "inerrant" religion will go to "a real Hell".
5. Amen,
If more of the little obese blobs played outside like we did when were kids, they wouldn't be obese blobs. I limit my kids TV, Video Games, Internet, etc. and keep them playing inside and outside with youthful vigor. I can't believe how many of today's high school kids are obese. What the heck are they eating? Probably a steady diet of vending machine sugar.
Get them outside.
7. Wow, Berger even manages to blame Bush and developers for this trend (note paragraph on no child left behind)! Probably caused by global warming too? Camps are great. My kids have gone for years and my youngest is attending the excellent Camp Seymour this summer for 2 weeks.
But camp isn't enough. I think parents need to get off their rear ends and take their kids camping as well. I took mine for a week or more every summer. You should too! It's inexpensive and it's fun.
8. I'll be cooking at that church this weekend for the rods & hogs event.
I am leary of sending either of my daughter's to camp. The risk outweighs the benefits in my opinion.
They would also miss out on some fantasic events such as the at Skagit HD with the Salute the Troops ride. As well as the SONShine Run benefit for the Granite Falls Boys and Girls Club and many other fine family events.
9. Bruce at #4 -- Thanks for once again reminding all of us how truly terrified you lefties are of Christianity. For crying out loud Bruce. You control the media, you control education, you've beaten us over the head with political correctness and you still whine like a little crybaby when someone dares to send their child for 1-week to a summer camp run by Christians. You pound leftist dogma into the heads of the nation's children 180 days a year,(and we pay for it). Even that amount of brainwashing isn't enough, you probably think we need to send the kids to communist indoctrination camps,(publicly funded, of course), every summer. I've said it before, liberals aren't "liberals" they are intolerant socialist "controllers".
And it's about time we quit being nice and start standing up to them.
10. Bruce #4
So should we send our kids to a camp run by Casto & Stalin.
Talk about a fool, you fit the shoe quite well!
11. BillC- Take a deep breath, read your post and mine, and then tell me which one of us is "terrified, whining like a little crybaby, intolerant." As for who "controls education", Eric works for, uh, the department of education.
12. I don't know any more about that camp than what's posted on their link and this
statement of faith. It might be jumping to conclusions a bit in Bruce's statement that all other religions be damned is taught there, but it doesn't appear out of the realm of possibility by reading that statement, or that it's at least implied.
It's not where I would choose to send my kids, but to each his own. We get outdoors every year as a family and throroughly enjoy it. This is one of the best places in the country to do it.
13. Bruce: so tolerance only extends to being tolerant of things you approve of? That's not very ... useful.
14. Bruce, I'm sick of being civil to you communists. Stick it up your A**.
15. Cheers for that post headline! Even if camp isn't doable for everyone, unsupervised and lightly supervised time outdoors is something that today's kids should get way more of. Backyards, city parks, national parks, camping, fishing, staring at the stars, or whatever floats their boat. Nature shouldn't just be ghettoed into rare footage on dvds or abstracted in classroom educational strategies.
16. There are cheaper ways to go to summer camp - Scout camps are typically way less expensive dollarwise that the alternatives.
But, since they are volunteer run organizations there's more parental involvement in the overall program - you can't just drop your kid off and walk away...which means not only does your child get some exercise, you might too!
17. We tried several camps before we settled on
Camp Sealth (on Vashon Island) for our kids. They loved it and went for 9 summers in a row. My oldest was an intern and a CIT (Counselor in Training) there as well.
They loved the boat trip over to the island (on Da Boata). Not cheap, but it was well worth the memories for the kids.
Bill H
18. no way! not without my kid's all-protective life-bubble and our team of class action lawyers at the ready!....