For returning families wondering about the rationale behind the change in our visiting day, I offer the following:

Every year we have watched the anticipation of visiting day build in the kids, sometimes elevating behaviors or creating anxiety over whether visitors were coming. Every year we watched at least a couple of kids wait and wait for a parent hung up in traffic or simply not showing up. Every year we watched the double standard of parents afraid to say no and placing their kids in the middle of two rule sets by buying treats and stowing them secretly away in the cabin. Every year we watched the homesickness resurface in kids who had weathered the worst of their lousy feelings and come through once, only to have to go through the whole process again. Every year we watched homesickness emerge in a few kids who had displayed none before. Every year we watched parents struggle with the decision to come; the challenge of parting. Many came because they felt it was an expectation, regardless of our message to them to the contrary. They didn’t want their kid to be the one without a visitor. They came even though they would be returning in ten days. Every year we asked ourselves: why do we put them all through this? Is it worth it?

Have the days been fun? Yes. Have they served to support community feeling and ownership? Yes. Do parents love to come and spend the day at camp with their kid? No doubt, especially if the sun is shining. But do the kids need it? Does visitors day serve to enhance their camp experience? Does it serve to support our mission and goals for their summer? Now that we are a four-week camp, almost exclusively (have been for some years), I believe the answer to these questions is an unqualified no.

With the shift in the calendar this year, the opportunity presented itself to move visiting day to the last day, like so many other, I might venture to say most other camp programs have done for years. A visit two weeks in is too early. Can we really justify asking parents to visit, then return seven short days later to pick up their boys? The possible cost to them includes time, gas, lodging, food, presents and stress. Better yet, we have an opportunity to further strengthen our commitment to a solid, undisrupted camp experience for our campers, and still maintain the benefits of visiting day in terms of parental involvement and enjoyment.

—Chuck