Camp Arowhon
Parenting
Is some anxiety ok?
I’ve been working on letting go of my own feelings of despair when either of my beloved offspring is not ok. This is so hard. Appallingly challenging. My urgent need to fix it is even more compelling.Whether these feelings are built into parental DNA, or just the product of our generation of parents for whom […]
ContinueWhy don’t boys try harder?
I hear so often from parents of boys that their sons are unmotivated, don’t seem to care about doing well in school and can’t seem to get themselves organized. “Where’s your agenda? Why aren’t you writing in it?” These are good questions. The only problem is that we’re asking the wrong guy. Literally. When we […]
ContinueMarch Break and….boredom.
In a February column in the New York Times, Pamela Paul opined: “Boredom teaches us that life isn’t a parade of amusements. More important, it spawns creativity and self-sufficiency.” Three cheers! And now let’s bring on March Break, a golden opportunity to hear kids say: “I’m bored.” The two words that strike terror into the […]
ContinueDid St. Mike’s have to happen?
I feel awful about what happened at St Mike’s. Awful for the boys and their parents, and sad for our culture where such goings-on can occur – and be tolerated. I have been hearing this from parents, the worried question: Could what happened at St. Mike’s happen elsewhere? Some parents ask this question, some don’t. […]
ContinueDo we over-identify with our children?
I ran into a male friend, 45ish, last week and he told me a story that made him sad. His wife was dropping their 10-year-old daughter off at school. She saw the other girls turn their back on her daughter. She called her husband, crying. Now he’s upset, for two reasons: One, obviously he’s worried […]
ContinueWhy Failure is Good for Kids
ContinueHomework
After the interrupted sleeps of infancy, and before the storms of adolescence, nicely sandwiched in the middle is the nightmare of homework. Not the kids’ nightmare. Ours. It’s ours because many of us parents care more about our kids’ homework than they do. And therein lies the problem. Kids know whenever we care more about […]
ContinueAutonomy and Mastery – the Hidden Gifts of Camp
What do kids need, really need, in order to thrive? A smart guy at University of Rochester did a study on just that and he, Richard Ryan, identified three psychological requirements for kids to thrive: Autonomy, mastery and connection. One would hope for schools to supply at least the opportunity for these to occur. Because […]
ContinueNotes from PreCamp 2018
All our staff are here and it’s been a fabulous PreCamp training thus far… One nugget: In a session with our full staff last night (about 165 staff) I asked them to go to one side of the room if they put their own needs first, and to the other side if they look first […]
ContinueAnxiety, the new epidemic
My camp team has been going to the biggest camp directors conference in the world, the American Camp Association Tri-State Conference, for years. 4000 camp directors, four days, about 20 workshops on offer in every time slot, all day every day. Many learning options for us. But not as many these days. Why? Because they’re […]
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