7 Hidden Benefits of Summer Camp for Both Kids and Parents

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The school year is just about ending, if not over for most families. That means summer camp is starting. For many families, including my own, camp will begin just a few days after the last day of school.
It seems like just yesterday it was the last day of camp, when we went home sunburnt, tired, and ready for a two-week-long nap—and then, school started again. But the six-hour days of games, adventure, and fun, and equally important, community building, enrichment, and socializing are now on the horizon once again.
My family and I are ready: backpacks stuffed with bathing suits, swim goggles, swim shoes, towels, tubes of sunblock, water bottles, and many other must-haves. I am a camp parent, and I work at my children's camp.
There are so many hidden benefits of summer camp for both parents and kids.
For more than 70 years, the JCC Camps in Medford, where my children attend, have served families in Southern New Jersey and the Philadelphia area.
Camps like the JCC are in demand, and day camps make up over 5,600 camps in America. However, that number is even greater when adding year-round camps. Data shows camps welcomed 26 million campers in 2024, as per the American Camp Association, a national organization that serves more than 15,000 year-round and summer camps in the U.S.
Organized camp in America goes back to 1861, starting with the Gunnery Camp in Connecticut. Clearly, going to camp, either during the summer or all year, is a part of the American identity.
Much of the popularity of summer camp comes from the experiences kids have, the bonds they make, and the new skills they learn over the summer. Here are just some of the benefits for kids.
While the everyday amenities at summer camps are vital for campers' experiences, programs have been developed for children and teens of various ages that focus on a range of activities and learning.
According to the American Camp Association, camps have been adding programs to their line-up of offerings. The top three types of programs include adventure programs that include challenge courses, zip lines, backpacking, mountain biking, etc., and then: family camps, new nature programs, gardening, cooking, wellness/fitness, and STEM programs.
Camps give kids the opportunity to try something new that they might not have the time or resources to do during the busy school year.
Learning new things and interacting with peers offers growth for both campers and staff. To be even more specific, the American Camp Association divides these benefits into four developmental categories: Positive Identity, Social Skills, Physical & Thinking Skills, and Positive Values & Spirituality For example, developing social skills builds leadership, friendship, social comfort, and peer relationship skills.
This summer camp season, I am a supervisor where I oversee counselors who manage groups or 'bunks' of around ten campers each. I witness firsthand how campers and counselors grow in all of the areas listed above—so much so, I base my evaluations on a similar criterion.
Camp is also a microcosm of our real world. The skills campers and counselors employ every day at camp, like problem management or 'peer relationship skills,' are the exact same skills our schools and workforces are requiring for students and future employees.
In some cases, camp is an opportunity to experience and develop spiritual and cultural values. At the JCC Camps in Medford, we also connect spiritually and culturally with Jewish values.
While any camp will always focus on growth, development, and community building, the JCC Camps also celebrate Jewish life, traditions, like Shabbat. Campers do not have to be Jewish to attend, but Jewish culture is tethered to the camp experience.
My children, who are Jewish by heritage but are not practicing, have learned so much about our roots through camp, from singing the HaMotzi (blessing over bread), eating challah during Shabbat, and exploring new themes each week of the summer through games, stories, arts and crafts, cooking, theater, and music.
More importantly, though, camp values, regardless of religion, can likely be found at every camp: a sense of togetherness, self-growth, and learning a variety of skills needed in all aspects of life.
Whether you send your kids off to camp for the day, week, or the whole summer—or, like me, work at camp—there are several benefits for parents of campers, too.
When children begin their summer break, parents can be both elated and stressed. Every day care for our children, depending on parents' work schedules, can be an obstacle that many parents struggle to manage.
Camp can give parents a needed break, whether it's a day camp or a sleepaway camp. If the pandemic taught parents one thing, it was that occupying our children with activities, attention, and learning while also working our jobs is no easy task.
Families send their children to camp for lots of reasons, one being child care. As the cost-of-living increases, many two-working-parent households still have demanding jobs, like my sister and brother-in-law, who are attorneys and cannot simply 'keep their kids at home.'
In my experience as a camp employee, many staff are full-time teachers or work in school-related professions, like school nurses. Working at a summer camp is the perfect commitment because, like the campers, our schedules are aligned: we end school, and then we start camp together. Working at camp has allowed me not only to provide financially for my family, but also to support my children while they have, quite frankly, the best days of their summer.
In college, I worked at the JCC Camps in Medford and ultimately became a better teacher because of my time there. Fast forward, now as a teacher and parent, I am unburdened by summer employment and summer childcare anxiety. Rather than having to save for summer expenses or teaching various classes and sending our children to summer daycare, my wife and I realized that a camp dad has been one of the best decisions we've made as parents. We have found a way to do both: Dad works at camp with us; Dad drives us to camp; Dad checks in on us at camp. Dad takes us home from camp. We get to spend every day with Dad.
I balance the responsibilities equally, supervisor and a dad. This means I get to experience all of their experiences with them. Sometimes, I'm right next to them, or sometimes watching from a distance. I love seeing my children swimming in the pool, their swim caps bobbing in and out of the water, seeing them play kickball on an open field, the whack of the ball against their foot and the cheers of their team while lapping bases, seeing my children at lunch, passing food around the table (Bourekas), smiling and socializing, seeing my children be kids and make memories.
Being a man and a father at camp has increased my ability to support and engage with campers. Men and dads are understaffed in camp settings and in the majority of child care environments, including schools, where men make up 3% of teachers.
Being a camp dad or just a young man is instrumental in shaping children for the future, being role models for boys and girls alike. When I'm at camp and kneeling in the dirt eye to eye with a camper that needs support, when I'm trying to comfort them, using my toolbox of thinking skills and positive values, I recognize that this is important work, regardless of whether the camper is my child or yours.
In those mornings after I drop my kids off at their bunk, I settle under a large wooden pavilion, and campers mosey in from the bus yard, giant backpacks like turtle shells dangling off their shoulders, marching in like ants. They shout over each other—a madness of chatter that I can't comprehend, just clusters of kids excited to see each other.
I walk around camp, checking on counselors, their bunks, and kids and staff. I see my children, and I know that there is a happiness here that people can't fully appreciate unless they've experienced it, if they've been a 'camp kid' or have had their camp kid come home defeated in pure joy.
What I arrive at as a camp dad is that after those eight weeks of summer camp, I hope that my children are filled with a security that their dad will always be there for them—that maybe they'll walk through the rest of their lives with that comfort, and they'll remember their summers—this camp, those days with memories tied to a forever-happiness, tied to me, tied to the love of their dad.
When we're in the car driving home after a long day, I notice how sweaty and even a little smelly they are, with their hair still damp from the pool or the sun. They're dirty, with grass and dirt wedged under their nails, and their tongues are stained blue from ice pops. They can barely keep their eyes open as the cool breeze of a summer evening flows through the car. We sit in a comfortable silence, listening to the katydids singing as they carry us home. In that moment, I know in my heart, my bones, and my gut that whatever they did that day at camp was the best day ever.
Read the original article on Parents