Happy Campers

How To Find a Good Summer Fit for the Kids

The camp looked perfect in the brochure and on the DVD its representative brought to Jackie D’s Stamford home. There was a lake, log cabins, family-style dining, a well-trained staff and lots to do.

"I believe summer camp should be rustic and kids should swim in lakes and sleep in cabins and eat family style," the mother says. "I don’t think camp should be pretentious or too fancy. So I loved everything about the camp I was seeing."

Later that summer, after a few tearful calls home from her then 10 year-old son, Matthew, she was no longer sure.

"We thought it was the right camp. But everything about it turned out to the wrong for our son." says Jackie, who asked that her full name not be used to protect her son, who had "a summer that is best described as OK." "Not miserable, but not the fun one we had planned."

This summer her son, a sports loving boy who prefers being close to home, will enroll in a competitive sports program, spending his summer with friends and older siblings he adores.

Choosing camps, which many families do this time of year, can sometimes be as complicated as settling on the right college. Experts and parents say it involves understanding your child, his temperament and interests, while giving him an opportunity to grow.

It’s not a given, for example, that a shy child will be miserable at sleep-away camp or your gregarious oldest will thrive after weeks spent in a bunk. A sports or arts related camp may be a great fit for children with strong interests in those areas, but some experts suggest they also can be too limiting for some.

Day camps? Overnights? There are so many things to consider.

"Paramount over everything else is that the place is safe, comfortable and has some real standards that you can verify," says Gary Bloom, director of New Canaan-based Camp Playland, a day camp founded by his father in 1957. He says every parent’s first step should be to make sure the camp is licensed or accredited, noting in Connecticut for example, "the state licensing standards are tough and surprise inspections are a regular thing."

After establishing a basic level of quality and safety, Bloom says, "You need to be asking lots of questions about the counseling staff. You need to know how long they’ve been around. Are the counselors all teenagers or are there some grown-ups around? And then you need to know what the typical day is like."

Then there is the matter of the camp itself, says Bloom. "So ask what is its philosophy? How is it structured? How much time do the kids have to themselves? How much is supervised? All of this matters and it can vary in how it matters from kid to kid."

Indeed, the camp experience involves a host of variables. "Last year, I sent my son off to day camp with two of his best buddies, says Lynn S., a Westport mother of two. "One of his friends was miserable. One loved it and my guy was kind of in between." The child who liked it best "was the most adaptable and made a bunch of new friends." The child who hated it, "complained a lot because they swam a lot and he doesn’t swim well." Her son, "said he was happy except for when it rained because there wasn’t much to do and he loved all the activities they did when it wasn’t raining. Unfortunately, the four weeks he went, it rained a lot."

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