https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/talking-about-youth-development-helping-campers-grow-successful-adults

"The resilient child is one who works well, plays well, loves well, and expects well." —Norman Garmezy When we talk about youth, we too often use negative terms: what we would like...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/staying-out-point-struggle

Scene 1: Tabatha, one of your five-year-old day campers, is going through her fussy-eating routine with you at lunchtime again. What happens is now so familiar to you that you’re...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/boys-camp-developing-skills-life-success

I spent a few months earlier this year visiting camps throughout New England. One of my stops was Camp Watitoh, a sleepaway camp in the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts, where a college classmate...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/impact-camp-experiences-social-skills-happiness

With depression, anxiety, and addiction rates high among adolescents (Keyes, 2006), and many youth engaged in relational aggression and other damaging social practices like bullying, there is clearly...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/noticing-deficit-disorder-how-camp-can-restore-art-seeing-world

We are in the midst of an epidemic of visual impairment no medical doctor can fix — but which camps might cure. Back in the `60s, artist, researcher, and psychologist Rudolf Arnheim (1969) lamented...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/kids-are-all-right

Most kids, most of the time, are totally doing the right thing. They are listening to you, being respectful to each other, playing and having fun in activities (they may not have chosen for...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/sorry-not-sorry

We've all been there. We're trying to help or referee some situation with kids, we're told a few things or parts of the story, and we think we know what happened, so we turn to the kid who we think...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/evaluating-bereavement-camps

Spending time in nature is often therapeutic and provides many benefits, such as improving cognitive functioning (Berman, Jonides, & Kaplan, 2008) and improving memory (Berto, 2005). Spending...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/internship-test-prep-or-camp-summer-planning-amid-noise-haste

"Go placidly amid the noise and haste" marks the beginning of a 1927 prose poem, "Desiderata," by American writer Max Ehrmann. A copy of this well-known piece, the Latin translation of which is "...

https://www.acacamps.org/article/camping-magazine/did-you-know-update-your-knowledge

Staying abreast of health-related updates that impact camp practices is challenging but worth the effort, especially for readers who supervise staff providing care to campers and/or other staff. Here...