Camps Help Make Children Resilient
In a recent article published in the American Camp Association’s Camp Magazine, Dr. Michael Ungar, a professor of social work at Dalhousie University and scientific director of the Resilience Research Centre (go Canada!), discussed how camps, like good schools and loving families, immunize children against adversity by giving them manageable amounts of stress and the supports they need to learn how to cope effectively.
Debunking the resilience myth that resilient individuals are those who overcome adversity because of special individual qualities, Dr. Ungar recognizes that studies from fields ranging from child development to neuropsychology are proving that resilience depends much more on one’s surrounding environment than on our own rugged individualism.
Seven Experiences Children Need
According to Dr. Ungar, the best camps do not provide cookie-cutter solutions to what kids need. “Instead, great camps understand that the factors that make children resilient are cumulative.” Below are excerpts of his recommended seven experiences that camps need to offer children:
- New relationships, not just with peers, but with trusted adults other than children’s parents. Just think about how useful a skill like that is: being able to negotiate with an adult on one’s own to get what one needs.
- A powerful identity that makes children feel confident in front of others provides children with something genuine to like about themselves. The camp experience not only helps the child discover what he can do, it also provides him with an audience that shows appreciation.
- Camps help children feel in control of their lives. The child who has some say over daily activities at a camp and learns to fix problems when they happen (cleaning up a mess when a group of campers get too rowdy) is the child who will take home with her a view of the world as manageable the next time she encounters trouble.
- Camps make sure that all children are treated fairly. The more inclusive activities are of individual campers’ cultures, and the more activities show, rather than tell, each camper that they have something to contribute, the more children will feel fairly treated. The goal is to strive not only for equality, with every child treated equally, but also to instill a spirit of equity, in which each child receives that which she needs individually to feel valued.
- At camp, children get what they need to develop physically. We now know that early experiences of exposure to risk, and poor health resulting from too little exercise when young, have long-term consequences for the child’s healthy development.
- Perhaps best of all, camps offer children a chance to feel like they belong. All those goofy chants and team songs, the sense of common purpose, and the attachment to the identity that camps promote go a long way to offering children a sense of being rooted.
- Finally, camps can offer children a better sense of their culture. Camps give young people both cultural roots and the chance to understand children who have cultures very different than their own.
We like to think that we do all of the above at our multicultural camp during our girls-only camps and boys-only camps, while we intentionally empower our campers! Check out this link for the full article.