Youth Summer Camp: What you Need to Know
It used to be that parents sending their kids off to summer camp worried about their children staying up too late at night and not changing their underpants often enough, but the modern world has a whole new host of health and safety concerns for the 21st century. Youth summer camp now has the difficult decisions that circle around topics such as condoms and sex education counseling.
Boys and girls have always chased each other, to a certain extent, while at summer camp; it’s only in the modern world that it has become somewhat of a problem. Youth summer camp can now be considered as a somewhat different species than they used to be. Children are hitting puberty at earlier ages and are, in some cases, experimenting with sexuality even before that time.
Any set of statistics about sexual activity will confirm that information. First kisses fell somewhere between the ages of 16-19 two generations ago. Now, shockingly for some adults, this happens anywhere from age 10-16. This means that youth summer camp has a higher and higher percentage of campers who are kissing each other.
What Can Be Done?
While it might be shocking to many adults that children who, just 20 years ago, snuck out of their camp cabins at night to go to the ‘other side’ of the camp (boys sneaking to the girls’ side and vice versa) to talk are now doing it to kiss, and perhaps more, it’s the truth when it comes to many youth summer camp. Camps have always been strict, for the most part, about enforcing rules such as staying on one’s gender-appropriate domain, but at the same time, the counselors knew that that was part of the fun of summer camp.
Much youthful joy was to be had in sneaking across the camp in the light of the moon; joy was even to be had in getting caught. Most children wore their punishment as a badge of courage and playful disrespect of the rules. The difference is that in those days the goal was to sneak out. Unfortunately, in a lot of situations, the goal nowadays is to kiss someone, or for teenagers even more than that. The last thing parents want is their teens coming home from summer camp with herpes; however, summer camps, like high schools, across the nation have to take this reality in stride.
Make sure that your son or daughter’s summer camp is taking the safety of the youth summer camp; camp should be a time that one remembers forever, but for the good reasons, not the bad.
Tags: Summer Camp