Drifting Development

A few special needs that all campers (and staff members) will have in the coming year

By Chris Thurber

We knew it was coming, but it was still worrisome to see. Campers and staff in the 2022 summer struggled mightily, compared to their pre-pandemic age peers. A rare confluence of COVID and quarantine factors clearly caused young people’s normal social and emotional development to lag; social isolation, family stress, online learning (not the academic kind), apprehension about the future, and diminished access to professional care all took a toll on young minds. Much has been written already about the mental-health consequences of the pandemic, but what does the future hold? No one knows for sure, but here are my predictions for the coming year or two, along with some essential recommendations.

© Can Stock Photo / pazham

1. Less resilience.

Unpredictable events are a fact of life. What was different about the pandemic was how little access young people (both campers and college-age staff) had to resilient role models. Looking back, this scarcity is scary because people are not born socially and emotionally resilient. They learn how to cope with stress in healthy ways from peers, parents, and professionals who set a good example with their own adaptive attitudes and behaviors. Young people might even learn from the occasional celebrity or main character in a book, film, or news report. But with diminished exposure to positive role models, most young people became more overwhelmed, gave up more easily, blamed others more readily, and stopped trying more quickly. This decrease in resilience was worsened by most young people’s facing less direct social challenges, such as face-to-face disagreements, as well as learning and working online, which made it easier to avoid difficult or uncomfortable tasks. Showing up in person, without the option of muting your audio and video, exceeded the limits of many young people’s rusty social skills.

Recommendation: Everyone can learn better ways to bounce back from adversity. As soon as next season’s campers are enrolled and next season’s staff members are hired, begin teaching them healthy ways of coping with stress. For example, share stories and strategies on your website, in correspondence, and in orientations and trainings. Campers and staff members need memorable anecdotes about other people—including those from within the organization—who have overcome challenges successfully.

Frame these narratives for what they are: inspirational accounts of everyday people who faced everything from small daily hassles to devastating life events, yet who persevered. Emphasize the how in these stories, as well as the distinction between unhealthy coping (e.g., social isolation, substance abuse) and healthy coping (e.g., social support, positive attitudes).

Great starting places: YouTube video of Beigette Gill, who recovered from a spinal injury and eventually returned to work as Fernwood Cove’s camp director.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4deopjZMPk 

Inspirational role models are a good start, but when staff members and campers arrive on site, they’ll still need practice. Staff members will all benefit from a stronger support system, such as a peer mentor. And younger campers will benefit from having an older “big sib” with whom they can spend some free time.

2. More conflict.

Like the adults in their lives, young people witnessed a lot of conflict during the years of the pandemic: mass shootings, police brutality, social justice protests, political clashes, a government insurrection, and a steady stream of “alternate facts” articulated and embraced with as much conviction as verifiable facts. Unlike some of the adults in their lives, many campers and college-age staff lacked the life experience and formal education to resolve conflicts peacefully and winnow fact from fiction.

Nobody does either perfectly, but the pandemic deprived many people of the daily, face-to-face opportunities to work out differences and find evidence to support their convictions. Young people—who needed those opportunities most—now show deficits in conflict-resolution skills and their ability to discern what is real. Further impeding their healthy development are the adults who continue leveraging propaganda for personal gain and political power. 

Recommendation: Devote at least one full day of staff training to teaching new and returning hires how to resolve conflicts peacefully, especially those sparked by misinformation. Have every member of the staff participate in realistic role plays, based on the camper-camper, staff-camper, and staff-staff conflicts you’ve witnessed or heard about in the last two years. Skillful conflict resolution cannot simply be described; proficiency requires ample practice.

Great starting place: For conflict resolution: Dr. Ross Greene’s Collaborative & Proactive Solutions model, available as an online course https://livesinthebalance.org/workshops-and-trainings/#on-demand-training that senior staff members can take and then customize for a one-day, camp-based training workshop. For fake news: Commonsense Media’s video and article https://www.commonsensemedia.org/articles/how-to-spot-fake-news-and-teach-kids-to-be-media-savvy 

As with resilience, the cerebral preparation lays a good foundation, but be sure that staff members and campers have an opportunity to role play conflict resolution, with senior staff coaching them through a few scenarios, soon after they arrive on site. 

© Can Stock Photo / focalpoint

3. Mental-health manipulation.

The de-stigmatization of mental illness and mental-health care has been heroic, heartwarming, and healthy. Protagonists of popular television series, such as Tony Soprano (The Sopranos) and Bobby Axelrod (Billions) even visit psychotherapists. Ignoring for a moment their unscrupulous behaviors, characters like these demonstrate how toughness and vulnerability can coexist, how social and emotional struggles are human, and how professional supports are beneficial. In addition, student organizations, such as Active Minds, and star athletes, such as Michael Phelps, have successfully raised awareness about the normalcy of mental-health problems and the effectiveness of various treatments.

However, the rise of influencers (personalities with a substantial following on social media sites) has sometimes caused the public perception of mental illness to morph from normal to necessary, from permissible to popular. On TikTok especially, everything from depression and anxiety to dissociative identity disorder and anorexia nervosa has been glamorized. Indeed, certain influencers turn serious, sometimes lethal problems into fashion statements and social currency by romanticizing their (often self-diagnosed) mental illnesses, hospitalizations, and self-harm behaviors. Rather than de-stigmatizing mental illness, this socially competitive practice puts unhealthy pressure on young people to conform. In turn, some of these young people adopt a mental-health diagnosis of their own, as part of their identity, lest they be considered banal.

(As an aside, it’s worth noting that joking about COVID and other physical illnesses also has had pernicious effects. Many people who lost loved ones, or watched them struggle through intensive care, have felt hurt and disrespected by pandemic humor. Too soon.)

Recommendation: Whereas de-stigmatizing mental illness and treatment have been a noble pursuit (with additional progress still to be made), making young people feel deficient for not having a diagnosed mental illness, or having a mental illness that is not severe enough to have required hospitalization is clearly counterproductive. Also unhealthy is a situation when a young person begins seeing natural ups and downs as mental illness. To counteract this trend, camps can clearly and repeatedly communicate their core values. On a website, letterhead, promotional materials, merchandise, and in-camp signage, state something your camp stands for. (Avoid the misstep of saying what your camp doesn’t stand for.) 

In your camp-branded style, communicate any of the following: all people have inherent worth; people’s treatment of others matters far more than whether they have a medical or psychological diagnosis; we share a responsibility to one another and to the earth; all members of the community should feel included. If you communicate these and other core values clearly, members of the community are less likely to feel pressure to adopt a medical or mental-health diagnosis, as well as less likely to feel inferior if they have a legitimate diagnosis from a licensed professional.

Because many info packets and web pages will be unseen, signage overlooked, and merchandise messages ignored, spend most of your effort instructing staff members on the best in-person ways they can teach camp’s values. This might include small group discussions and thought-provoking games, as well as candid discussions about the media they consume at home. You should also encourage staff members to respond compassionately but honestly to peers’ and campers’ over-pathologizing life’s ups and downs. This might include correcting someone who misuses words like trauma, migraine, depression, and panic attack.

Great starting place: The sensitivity of this topic merits an in-person discussion with staff members. Prepare them to do their jobs well by clarifying the camp’s core values, including what behaviors your community celebrates. To lay the groundwork for such an important discussion, ask staff to read a few editorials about how values are transmitted in popular culture. For example: https://feminisminindia.com/2018/10/18/mental-illnesses-social-media/ and https://www.forbes.com/sites/beaarthur/2020/10/06/can-the-culture-make-mental-health-cool/?sh=6ac505842ba8. Then, when staff members are together on site, offer a few prompts that have applied leadership implications, such as “How will the example you set for campers convey our camp’s core values?”

4. Amplified fears.

As of this writing, COVID-19 has caused 6.5-million deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Among your campers and staff members are probably some who have lost a loved one to coronavirus; others who have had to care for a seriously ill family member; and many who have feared for their own health. To the list I shared in the two-part article entitled “Kids’ Big Fears” (Camp Business, Jan/Feb + Mar/Apr, 2012), I can add “fear of illness or death.” Hearing daily mortality statistics, on top of other horrific news, has made many young people (and older ones) feel edgier. Although the pandemic has had some positive outcomes, it also made many of us feel that life is more bleak, tenuous, and brutal than we felt before. It’s how I imagine the character of Francie feels in Patrick McCabe’s novel The Butcher Boy. His lifetime of trauma prompts him to ask, upon his release from a treatment unit as an adult ex-con, “Are all the beautiful things gone?”

Recommendation: In addition to recognizing that none of us knows everything about another person’s lived experiences (popularly referred to as being trauma-informed), we owe it to ourselves to assume the best intentions behind other people’s behavior. Until we have evidence to the contrary, even behavior that we find irritating, jolting, or patently offensive should be considered well-intended. 

Jumping to the conclusion that others have malicious intent has created pockets of “cancel culture” and given rise to the phenomenon of “doxing,” both of which sidestep civil debate and the right to defend oneself. The latter is considered a basic human right in most countries.

Beyond my expertise is how to reverse the contemporary trend of avoiding difficult conversations in favor of defaming or dismissing someone, and sidestepping human rights and published concepts of justice in favor of throwing someone to the Internet wolves. However, nearly all youth-development professionals do have the power to cultivate patience, compassion, and open-mindedness in themselves. Perhaps a widespread commitment to such personal growth will turn the tide.

Great starting place: The U.S. Bill of Rights is under 500 words; adding Section 1 of the 14th Amendment bumps the total to 564 words—not an unwieldy reading assignment for your staff. However, many of those 564 words are hotly debated, making it a great prelude to a discussion about how we debate. And schools have given you a head start. For campers, ask them to read the directions to a simple board game, like Candyland or Uno. 

All of your staff members and most of your campers have participated in school workshops that began with establishing ground rules for respectful interaction. Plus, most returning staff members will be familiar with the common camp practice of small groups’ establishing codes of conduct, teamwork contract, or cabin rules (for overnight camps) on the first day of a new session. But when is the last time any of them have read the Bill of Rights, which guarantees civil rights and liberties and sets rules for due process of law? 

Whatever their political persuasion, citizenship, or identity, staff members (and perhaps campers) might be able to cultivate more patience, compassion, and open-mindedness by discussing the question, “How are the U.S. Bill of Rights and a camp code of conduct alike and different?”  

One of the most fascinating consultations I provided to a camp this summer came from a director who left me this voicemail (which I have edited for confidentiality): “Chris, a staff member came to me after breakfast to report an incident of bullying that occurred yesterday evening after lights-out. Apparently, this staff member overheard a fewout, gay campers bullying a straight camper. The staff member intervened and spoke to the kids about respect and so forth, but wanted to talk with me before completing a Behavioral Incident Report. I have some initial thoughts, but I wanted to chat with you before I follow up with the campers and their unit. Please call me if you get this message before noon.”

As unusual as this scenario may sound, it reflects some universal human needs. For example, we all want to feel worthy, and we all want to belong. As I have outlined above, many young people are less resilient, less deft at resolving conflicts, more inclined to advertise their uniqueness, and more fearful of capricious loss than in previous generations. 

Kids have always ridiculed other kids, so that part of this example is unsurprising. But to witness kids who identify as members of a historically persecuted minority bullying a peer for being a member of a majority group is unusual. But maybe it’s not surprising, given the turmoil of the past few years.

Even though I was able to call back before noon, the camp director had already realized that, although the particulars of this incident were atypical, the underlying needs of the campers involved were normal. Both the bullies and the target wanted to be heard and respected; both wanted the world to be predictable and fair; both sought to exercise some control over their lives; and both craved social connection. Guided by experience and intuition, and unruffled by the incident, the director’s skillful follow-up began by providing empathy for all the parties’ common needs, then moved to listening carefully to each person’s perceptions, and ended by cooperating with them in designing a prosocial path forward that allowed everyone’s reasonable needs to be met.

The pandemic has set young people’s development adrift. Perhaps knowing more about what to expect and how to prepare will help you and your staff reverse some unhealthy trends and reset a steady course for everyone’s continued, positive growth.

 Christopher Thurber, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and faculty member at Phillips Exeter Academy. He created Prep4Camp.com, the only evidence-based homesickness prevention program, and co-authored the best-selling Summer Camp Handbook with Dr. Jon Malinowski. His newest book, The Unlikely Art of Parental Pressure, includes eight ways adults can transform harmful pressure to healthy pressure. Learn more about the work that Chris does with schools, camps, and companies on DrChrisThurber.com.