Structured Summer Camps vs. Free Unscheduled Time: What I Learned As A Working Parent
Last May, I spread three crumpled summer camp brochures across my kitchen table, next to a half-drunk iced coffee and my open work calendar. My 10-year-old Leo picked gummy bears out of a family-sized bag, leaning against the edge, while 7-year-old Mia drew unicorns on the back of a gas bill. I pointed to the glossy photo of kids battling homemade robots on the front of the first brochure. “This looks cool, right? It’s downtown, we can stop for donuts after pick up on Fridays.” Leo shrugged, didn’t look up from his gummy bears. “Can we just stay home? Me and Mia can build forts and wait for the ice cream truck. We don’t need to go nowhere.”
I’d spent a month stressing about filling 10 weeks of summer. My sister swore by full weeks of structured camps to avoid summer learning loss, my best friend said any tightly scheduled time killed kid creativity and I was setting mine up for burnout. My mom had offered to watch the kids three weeks straight in June, so I had a choice: fill those three weeks with part-time camps, or take Leo up on his offer of unscheduled time. I caved, and said we’d do two weeks of full-day structured camps first, then three weeks open at my mom’s.
The first two weeks of camps were fine, but draining. Leo did soccer camp, Mia did art camp. I dropped them off at 9 a.m., grabbed a coffee on my way to work, picked them up at 4 p.m. every day. By the time we got home, both were cranky and snapping at each other over who got the last popsicle, and were in bed by 7, two hours earlier than their usual summer bedtime. One night over dinner, Leo said, “Coach tells us when to run, when to drink water, even when we can go to the bathroom. I just want to not have to ask permission to walk around for a little bit.” Mia chimed in, “My art teacher made everyone make the same paper mache bunny for the end-of-camp show. I wanted to make a fire-breathing dragon, but she said we had to stick to the plan.” I got it, they were just tired of being told what to do every minute of the day.
The first morning of unscheduled time, I checked my phone 12 times before my 10 a.m. meeting, convinced my mom would text me saying they were already bored out of their minds and watching TV nonstop. The first text I got was a blurry photo of two kids standing in front of a fort made of moving boxes and an old tarp, propped up against our back fence. They’d spent the whole morning dragging the boxes out and cutting doors with a steak knife (my mom said she supervised, don’t worry).
They spent three days expanding that fort, adding a window out of clear plastic and a store counter out of an old side table. They collected bottle caps and painted rocks to use as money, made handwritten signs for their rock and lemonade store, and spent an hour every afternoon trying to get passing neighbors to stop. One day after a heavy rain, they spent four hours digging in the garden bed looking for worms, because they wanted to start a worm compost bin.
They fought a lot, too: once they screamed so loud over who got to be store manager that Mia broke Leo’s favorite Spider-Man action figure. My mom just let them work it out, instead of stepping in immediately, and by the end of the day they’d made a trade: Mia got manager three days a week, Leo got it two. Another afternoon they moped around the living room for 20 minutes saying there was nothing to do. My mom didn’t pull out a pre-planned craft or turn on a movie. She just told them if they were bored, they could pull the weeds in the garden. After 10 minutes of moping, they decided to walk down to the corner store to spend their allowance on popsicles, and came home with a new friend: an 8-year-old new to the neighborhood who was also wandering around with nothing to do.
After that summer, I started reading a little about what unstructured time does for kids, and it made sense. All that time figuring out what to do, working out fights, solving problems when their fort collapsed mid-build? That’s the kind of thinking that doesn’t get practiced when every minute is planned by an adult. But that doesn’t mean structured camps are bad, either. The year before that, Leo tried rock climbing at a week-long camp, something he never would have tried at home because I’m terrified of heights and we don’t have a rock wall in the backyard. He still climbs at the local gym once a month now. Mia learned how to thread a needle and do basic stitches at a small craft camp a couple years ago, and now she makes little stuffed animals for her cousins all the time. Camps let kids try things they can’t do at home, meet new people, learn new skills.
The concrete things I’ve picked up that work for us, that any parent can test: First, you don’t have to pick one or the other. Most summers are 10 weeks long, you don’t have to fill every day with camps or leave every day open. We split it now: for every one week of structured camp or activity, we do two weeks of open unscheduled time. It fits my work schedule, it gives the kids a mix of new experiences and down time. Second, if you have a lot of open time, you don’t have to let it be completely unregulated to be “unstructured”. We just have two simple rules: no screens before lunch, and everyone helps clean up any big mess they make at the end of the day. That’s it. No required reading, no scheduled activities, just those two rules. Third, if you have to work full time and need full-time childcare all summer, don’t feel guilty about filling the whole summer with camps. Just look for camps that build in at least an hour of unstructured free play every day, instead of scheduling every minute back to back. That gives kids the space to do their own thing while still having the supervision you need.
This year, we’re sticking to our mix. Leo already signed up for a week-long skateboarding camp he wanted, and Mia picked a week of horseback riding. The rest of the summer is open, as far as we’re planning. Some days they’ll mope around bored, some days they’ll come home tired and cranky from camp. I still see other parents posting their perfectly planned 10-week summer schedules on social media and get a little twinge of worry that I’m doing it wrong. But so far, this works for my kids. There’s no one right answer for every family, anyway. We just figure it out as we go.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Structured Summer Camps vs