When Summer Camp is Over
The post-camp wind down can be an important time in a child’s life, and it also presents a valuable opportunity to help your child with his or her emotional and intellectual development. In the hours and days just after camp, memories are fresh, feelings are fresh, and the details of home stand out with a sharper clarity than they have before or will again.
The process starts during the first hour or so after the homecoming. Ask your child to tell you everything that happened—from the moment he or she first got off the bus. You may enjoy the tale told at this level of detail, but having your child perform this exercise serves additional purpose. It helps to remind her of thoughts and feelings she had when she first left, which will be otherwise forgotten and overshadowed by the ensuing adventures. Also, it helps her separate the events of each day, which may become more difficult as time goes by. It won’t be long before each game, thunderstorm, and swimming lesson blur into the events of a single long day.
As the next few days go by, if you can stand it, allow and encourage your child to keep singing the songs she learned at camp. Songs can sometimes be as evocative to memory as scents. Even after the last t-shirt is washed and the smell of camp is gone for good, your child may still keep those touching, silly and beautiful songs with her forever. But only if she remembers the words.
If she’s interested in doing so, help your child make a scrapbook incorporating the pictures she took at camp, the names of her tent mates, friendship bracelets she may have made, shells and snippets she may have collected, etc. When finished, this may not be a brilliant work of art, but you might be surprised by how much it means to her later. A child’s memory is a strange thing—events and names that are astonishing in their power and indelibility can vanish in less than a year without leaving a trace. Decades later, she may find that she wants those memories back. Help her keep them within reach.
