10 Reasons Not To Send Your Kid To Summer Camp

Summer camp may be the cornerstone to American childhood but personally, I was never a fan. As a quiet, self-regulating child who preferred to read, being yanked from my air-conditioned home and placed outdoors with a bunch of sweaty perpetual noise-makers was definitely not my idea of a fun summer. I endured the experience only once, but I begged my family to never send me again. The worst part was, as I was forced to make green Gak and endure taunts from children I didn’t even know, I mostly sat around thinking about all the activities I could be doing. From my beloved Oregon Trail to playing with my American Girl doll, I already had my summer planned exactly the way I wanted it. And because I was the kind of kid who could accompany my parents pretty much anywhere with a couple of library books, such a summer was given to me from there on out.

But every time it gets to be this time of year, when there’s talk of camp applications and summer plans, I think of all those shy, introverted children who only associate summer with what their parents what them to do as opposed to what they would like to do. So if you have a kid who is stalling on packing for camp this year, consider the following before escorting them to that fateful bus stop.

[ITPGallery]

(photo: Elena Efimova/ Shutterstock)