Camp is a Brain Changer

This column is being written in early May, scheduled to be printed after Shavuos but before the camp season begins. As I write this, I have no idea if camps will open this summer, if thousands of our children will be in the mountains in sleepaway camps, or if they will be camp-less, job-less, and bored-full.

True, some of those children will feel relieved from the pressure to go to camp. These are kids who love the idea of relaxing all summer long at home and probably wish camp could be canceled every year. They may dread the four weeks each summer when they leave home for the mouse-infested, bear-ridden bunkhouses of the great outdoors. No, thank you, some of those campers may be saying. Goodbye and good riddance.

I will return to the subject of these happy no-thank-you campers later on. But for many children, camp is an incredible experience, rich with relationship building and activities. For these children, its effects linger on throughout the school year as they wait in anticipation for the next summer to begin.

This article is not about the problems of camp. For example, the problem of how children need to be accepted as staff members after attending as campers for a few years. And how some are devastated when they are not. Or the prohibitive cost of attending camp that many parents can ill afford. Or the extreme materialism that is engendered when girls feel coerced into buying an inordinate amount of clothing and paraphernalia to keep up appearances for bunkmates. Or the system of assigning jobs that can be hurtful. Or the boredom that kids experience once they become staff members because there are too many hours with too little to do. Nope. This article is not about the failures of camp, although I am itemizing them here to let you know that I am aware of them.

It is about its successes.

What are the successes of camp?

There are many!

What many parents, counselors, and campers don’t realize is that the experience of camp is a powerful one. It’s not simply about having a good time; it can be a truly life-altering experience because, believe it or not, the camp experience is brain-altering.

What do I mean?

There have been a number of studies researching the developmental outcomes of camp on children. Many have been discussed at the non-profit ACA (American Camp Association) conferences in which camp owners, directors, and others interested in camp programs join to discuss topics of importance related to the camping experience. Tina Wayne Bryson, a keynote speaker at one conference (perhaps better known as the co-author of Dan Siegal’s bestseller, The Whole-Brain Child), discussed the actual brain changes that occurs as a result of the camp experience.

Tina explained that it’s not only that experiences affect us; they actually rewire — or change — the structure of the brain. To be successful in adult life, she says, we need to be able to attend to a couple of important tasks: regulate the body and its emotions, develop awareness of ourselves (how we act and why we act that way), learn and deepen communication, feel empathy and attunement to others, grow in our ability to adapt to new situations, bounce back from setbacks instead of collapsing from them, make mature and reflective choices about our lives, and overcome fears that hold us back from taking risks to succeed.

All of these tasks, Tina says, is part of the job of the middle prefrontal cortex, the part of our thinking brain that is located behind the forehead and eyes in the front-most part of our frontal lobe. If our prefrontal cortex develops adequately to complete all these duties, then we have the skills to become successful in adult life. The ability to do all of the above well indicates that we have achieved good mental and emotional health, can form good relationships, and have acquired tools to achieve what is important to us in our world — physically, mentally, and spiritually.

What’s this got to do with camp, you want to know? Because in the cutting-edge world of neuroscience, we are learning how the actual brain structure changes with each experience we undergo. And these brain changes further affect how we are able to navigate our world. We know this because fMRI’s are brain scans used in research that show how different parts of our brains change after experiences, both in positive and negative ways. And the experience of camp shows evidence of positive brain changes.

The studies Youth Development Outcomes of the Camp Experience: Evidence for Multidimensional Growth and Examining the Role of Summer Camps in Developing Academic and Workplace Readiness both show that camp has the potential to effect psychological growth in ways that increase children’s social skills and feelings of happiness. Others areas of this psychological impact are the ability to overcome adversity, learn flexibility, work within groups, and affect regulation. Camp is a place where there are so many activities going on each day within a social environment, and particularly a fun one, that children are motivated in ways they cannot be otherwise — to get along with others, uncover latent creativity, work hard to figure things out, master skills, and tolerate frustration. Of course, all these skills are challenged in school and at home as well, but precisely because camp is fun, and it appears to be a non-pressuring environment as compared with school or home, children find it easier to adapt to the needs of this fun community and push themselves harder, with effects that spill over into the academic school year, even into adult life!

 In a discussion of camp in the Harvard newsletter, it explains that the greatest opportunities to develop the five core areas of social-emotional learning (SEL) that are indicative of adult success (self-awareness, self-management, relationship building, decision-making, and social awareness) are presented in the sleepaway camp environment. It’s not hard to understand why. With limited access to their parents, children are challenged to figure things out on their own. They are presented with novel activities that are new to everyone, not just them, so it’s easier to join the fun and uncover previously unknown talents and strengths. Academics is considered only one of multiple intelligences, so for children who don’t excel in academics especially, this is an opportunity to discover the other intelligences they may have. The fast pace of camp challenges campers to continuously set goals and achieve them, often in a fun, silly, social way. Races like the wheelbarrow race are perfect examples of that.

And most importantly, the endless hours spent singing, thinking, engrossed in late-night conversations, the times of reflection and introspection that camp fosters (especially when the OD is finally asleep but the campers are not), are an important piece of self-awareness, of mindfulness, that is found in such plentiful abundance in the camp setting.

Let’s get back to that child who hates camp.

Sometimes, the camp is the problem — how it is structured, the counselors they hire, how they (don’t!) model for the counselors how to be attuned to the campers’ concerns and well-being. Those in charge of camps should be attending conferences in which the camping experience is considered part of creating the whole-brain child. Just as there is training for teachers, anyone involved in camp should be trained in areas of child development and camp purpose.

But more often, the issue of a child hating camp has more to do with his or her own issues than camp structure. For example, a child who struggles socially and camp becomes another area where he fails. Or a child who is severely homesick or who has generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, or an eating disorder.    

As a therapist, I find that a child who refuses to go to camp, who is miserable in camp even if he is fabulous in school, is offering you a clear sign that there is something not being addressed in his life. There is an underlying anxiety that is more easily masked in school than in an environment where he cannot run home, to be alone for hours at a time, so that he can pull himself together on the surface for the brief time he must spend in public. Homesickness, for example, is not about a child who is so close to her parents or siblings or who loves her home so much that she cannot bear to be away. It’s about a child who cannot separate properly in an age-appropriate way. The underlying reasons can be many, and they are beyond the scope of this article, but it’s definitely worth a visit to a therapist, even for just the parents if the child refuses to attend.

Because if the brain is changed by the camp experience in ways that reach into adulthood, we would be remiss as educators, parents, and camp directors not to take that information seriously to give all children that camp experience.

Ask any adult who has been a camper; we are not the same people leaving camp we were coming in. Because camp is a brain changer.

Originally published in Binah Magazine