Call Me Crazy - Homesickness is My Favorite Part of Summer Camp
“Homesickness has become my favorite part of the sleep-away camp experience.”
Our counselors think I’m crazy when I start staff training discussions with this statement. Most will agree that experiencing or helping someone through the discomfort of missing home does not have positive associations. In fact, though it breaks my heart, many parents decide not to send their kids to summer camp solely on the possibility that their child may experience homesickness.
Here are a few reasons why I have a positive view of homesickness, and why I argue that it is why you should send your child to sleep-away camp.
Kids who experience homesickness get more out of their time at camp than those who don’t.
The camp mission is for kids to triumphantly cross the finish line bursting with confidence and self-esteem. This is earned through learning new and exciting skills and activities, making new friends, and living a LOT of life every minute of the day for multiple weeks - all while being away from their built in comforts and support systems.
Campers who already have this experience in their wheelhouse will thrive and grow in innumerable ways. However, those who need a few days of guidance while adjusting to this great big adventure will additionally associate summer camp with the moment they make the all important realization that they can be uncomfortable but find a way to be okay - and not only okay, but have the time of their lives. They will associate being nervous about a new experience with tremendous experiential reward.
Most importantly, they will have done this “on their own” (without mom and dad), and very few, if any, experiences they’ve had fall into this category.
Staff (myself very much included) connect more deeply with campers who need more support.
Oftentimes kids actively communicate that they are homesick and ask for help. Sometimes their behavior is sussed out by a counselor. Regardless, once this is known, they tend to get a bit more face-time with us than their peers who are having an easier time of it.
Don’t get me wrong - it is absolutely heart wrenching to sit side by side with a camper who is feeling emotions they don’t understand. Sometimes you can’t get a word through the tears, sometimes outbursts are agitated and confused. Sometimes their need comes at 2am when you yourself are desperate for rest. And sometimes, tragically, you think you’ve cracked the code only to hear over the radio, “Carl, we need you back up at the baseball field.”
But when these kids say goodbye to me on departure day with a knowing smile that says, “you helped change my life this summer” my tears rival theirs when they were in the thick of it. These are the kids we remember most, knowing that the payoff exponentially matched the time and emotions that we have shared
It’s an honor to make a difference in their lives.
For most kids who come to sleepaway camp for the first time, it’s the biggest experience they’ve had in their young lives. They’re stepping away from the structures that you as parents have painstakingly built around them to keep them safe and to guide them through life. We are there for the moment they step outside of that structure and feel vulnerabilities they’ve never felt before. While it can be daunting to navigate the emotional landscape that coincides with the process of working through homesickness, the fact of the matter is that we are active participants in an incredibly important moment in their lives.
It’s not often that one gets to play a role in a before-and-after moment in a child’s life that isn’t your own, and this significance is not lost on Maddie and I - we count it an honor and a privilege.
We may not remember the winner of every color war or the results of intercamp competitions. But we will forever remember campers who we’ve journeyed together to the new limits of their emotions, whose gratitude for summer camp makes its way into school essays, and whose parents now include us on holiday card lists.
They’re the reason we do what we do. They’re the campers we will remember for the rest of our lives.