How Mom and I Grew in Self-Confidence Through My Summer Camp Experience
How Mom and I Grew in Self-Confidence Through My Summer Camp Experience
Here are snippets of my mother’s published writings between 1956 and 1958 about how we both grew in self-confidence (she as a mother and I as a child) through my summer camp experiences.
“… I was the mother of one of those wonderful, but baffling, noisemakers called a boy. Jim seemed well-rounded and secure as long as he was at home. The moment he was taken away to visit, or found himself involved in a party, he became oversensitive, shy, and cowered at the sight of strangers. The halo he wore so well at home slipped when he was exposed to the social side. He became weepy, unsure, and just wanted to go home. In spite of all of our efforts, I could see that Jim was growing ill at ease among people. Even though he was involved in a classroom situation within a “special” school for children with disabilities, he was missing out on the social side of school. We had to face it. In spite of having frequent, small groups of guests in our home, our seven-year-old was not becoming socially adapted. So we sent him to camp …”
”Through our Easter Seals clinic, we arranged to have Jim spend a two-week period at Camp Wawbeek, Wisconsin Dells, WI.… When I looked ahead at the two weeks of camp life for Jim, I wondered how I would survive without him during that period. Then I realized my greatest fault: I had a tendency to become over-protective. I was molly-coddling Jim into fearsome insecurity. Jim was becoming the person who might have trouble adjusting to the hard world…I had to do it – send him to camp”.
“… Camp experience proved to be stimulating for both of us. Sometimes parents are so close to their son that they cannot see him.
To get an overall picture of your child and his challenges, you must get away.”
(Continued on page 2)
