For years we have seen obesity increase in America. This is especially true with kids. Society has had many scape goats for this. But the truth is, that what we eat and our activity are the two easiest ways to affect obesity in our kids. Schools, feeling partially responsible have taken this issue on and have seen progress at reducing obesity. The latest information shows that schools are reasonably effective, and that most children gain weight during the summer months.  Yes, thats right, kids put on weight during the summer. When I was a kid, summers were a time of running, swimming, loads of physical activity, sadly, that is not the case any more.

Paul T von Hippel, PhD, associate professor of public affairs at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, in Austin says "look beyond the school year, we need to  think about trying to change children's behavior when they are not in school," he urged. "We need to educate parents about nutrition, reduce child screen time, and regulate food marketing and advertising aimed at children".

Armed with this information, it is important that we analyze what our children are doing during the non school time, and how we can have a positive impact on reducing obesity. For many of us, working parents, it is difficult to make the time to keep our children off the screen and outside moving around. Paul Hippel said "My own experience with childhood obesity ended when I went to camp at age 8. Sending more children to summer camps or learning programs, for example, could potentially help lower rates of childhood obesity,"

As camp directors, we see this every summer, kids loose weight. How? It's simple. First, our cook, Michelle, makes meals that are home cooked, starting with raw ingredients and creating child friendly foods they will like. Next, at the table Counselors serve children, so they ensure that campers get a healthy mix of veggies along with their chicken for instance. A never ending salad bar is always available. As we all know, snacks are often the culprit. We only have apples as snacks and the campers love them. 2nd and probably most important is we have no screens at camp. Children's brains want to be engaged, so without a screen they have to get up and run, swim, play & socialize. Camp days are long - from 7:30 a.m.- 9 p.m. kids are busy all day longand this takes energy. Campers are not alone in this, everyone at camp looses weight during camp. For some it's a few pounds, for myself it's a healthy 10 lbs or so. So camp is part of my healthy lifestyle, maybe it could be part of your child's too.

Read more about summer obesity 

Lice are those pesky little creature that thrive in places where people are in close contact. This could be schools, churches and summer camps. Recently, these pesky little creatures seem to be more determined than ever to ruin a childs fun. Although it's kinda gross to think about lice living on your head, they are not dangerous and fairly easy to get rid. In communal settings like camp, where people live close to each other, it's important that Lice checks are in place. At Swift Nature Camp our nurse inspects each camper on the first day of camp. This is usally successful at stoping an outbreak because when we do find lice we start a treatment program of killing the lice with shampoo and then combing out any Eggs or Nits that might be left. Then a bout a week later we reshampoo and comb. At camp we do this in privacy with out letting the other campers know that lice have been detected. We know of many other camps that have had huge infestations where nearly all camp was effected. Our policy has kept lice outbreaks to a handfull of campers each year. Below is a recent report outlining the limited summer camps lice policy.

SAN FRANCISCO — Despite AAP recommendations for head lice management, 30% of summer camps were either unaware of guidelines or had no formal lice policy, according to survey results presented at the 2016 AAP National Conference and Exhibition.“Head lice often becomes a problem when people are concentrated together in one place, so naturally we think about children in the classroom, yet even more so at summer camps; whenever people are head-to-head, that is when there is the greatest risk of exposure,” Ashley DeHudy, MD, MPH, from the University of Michigan Mott Children’s Hospital told Infectious Diseases in Children. “Considering the AAP’s current lice management recommendations for the school setting, I was interested in examining lice infestations in the camp setting to determine how the recommendations were being translated.”

To evaluate current summer camp policies regarding head lice management, DeHudy and colleagues partnered with a national Web-based health records system to send summer camp leadership (n=500) an online survey on lice policy, management and training. The researchers received a total of 255 responses, predominantly from camp directors (36%) and camp nurses (36%). 

Survey results demonstrated that while 30% of summer camps lacked formal head lice policies, another 34% of camps instead adhered to a “No-Nit” policy – excluding campers with the presence of nits only – despite AAP statements that these policies are ineffective. 

“We know that the AAP does not support ‘No-Nit’ policies in the school setting, because the presence of nits does not equal active infestation,” DeHudy said in an interview. “Similarly, summer camps should not exclude children based simply on the presence of nits.”

Among surveyed camp leadership, only 20% noted that a camper would be allowed to remain at camp and receive treatment if nits and live lice were found; 58% of survey responses reported that their camps would provide lice treatment, however only 40% of those said that their facility would repeat a second application, if needed, 7 days afterward. Furthermore, most surveyed summer camp personnel (63%) responded that manual removal of nits following treatment was required to prevent head lice infestation.

“In some instances, camp policies for managing head lice varied greatly from either American Camp Association recommendations or from the AAP’s recommendations for the school setting,” DeHudy said. “Also, when camp leadership was surveyed about their ability to detect lice infestations, only 50% felt confident their staff would be able to detect the lice, while 30% believed their staff would be confident in actually treating the lice infestation.”

According to the survey, 35% of camp leadership noted that they had little formal head lice education, yet most those responders said that they would favor hands-on or Web-based training in recognizing or treating lice. 

“It is important for pediatricians to reinforce to parents that they should familiarize themselves with whether their child’s summer camp has a head lice policy, and if so, what it is, because otherwise children might be coming home from camp a little earlier than expected,” DeHudy said.– by Bob Stott

Reference:
DeHudy A, et al. Abstract # 318305. Presented at: AAP National Conference and Exhibition; Oct. 22-25, 2016; San Francisco, California.

Often SNC alumni ask "How can I do to help camp". Here is a list of 8 things you an do all year long to help us out  

8) When cleaning out the basement think of SNC. We are always looking for Games, Puzzles, Lifejackets, Canoes and Craft supplies

7) Remember our website SwiftNatureCamp.com. When talking with friends and families be sure to let them know about SNC. Word of mouth is our best way letting the world know about SNC.

6) Be sure to follow SNC on Facebook, Twitter , Instagram and Pinterest.

5) Were your camp t-shirt when out in public.

4) When someone asks you about camp tell them a story how camp impacted you.  Fun is important but it's not your only story.

3) Share your camp story (video or written) on the internet post it on social media even on SNC media. and please send it to us.

2) Give positive reviews all around. Here are just a few place; Camp Ratings, Google & Yelp

1) Think back to your summer at SNC and let it warm you from the inside and bring a smile to your face.

As a parent and a camp director, I often speak with parents that have their child on the fast track. Life has become all about building their child's resume, one filled with Accomplishment and Direction. When I mention I run a summer camp they are often unwilling to hear why camp is an important part of what today's children need. At Swift Nature Camp we are about people building not about building resumes. The  better the kids,  the better the people. We believe it is people that will change the world not resumes.
Recently the below article was in the Washington Post,  maybe this is what I need to print and hand out to those parents... Tell us what you think.

 

“Do you even like your children?” the woman I had just met asked me.

The audacity of the question took my breath away. I had been chatting with her, explaining that my kids go to sleep-away camp for two months every year.

I quickly realized two things at once: She was obnoxious, and she actually didn’t care if I missed my kids during the summer. She was talking about something else.I didn’t have to tell her the reason I “send them away” for most of the summer is because I like them. They adore camp, and it’s actually harder on me than it is on them. I often tell people that the first year they were both gone, it felt like I had lost an arm. I wandered around the house from room to room experiencing phantom limb pain.

Now, instead of being offended, I got excited.

I was going to be able to tell her something that my husband and I rarely get to explain: We do it because we truly think it will help our kids be successful in life. With under-employment and a stagnating labor market looming in their future, an all-around, sleep-away summer camp is one of the best competitive advantages we can give our children.

Huh?

Surely, college admissions officers aren’t going to be impressed with killer friendship bracelets or knowing all the words to the never-ending camp song “Charlie on the M.T.A.” Who cares if they can pitch a tent or build a fire?

Indeed, every summer my kids “miss out” on the specialized, résumé-building summers that their peers have. Their friends go to one-sport summer camps and take summer school to skip ahead in math. Older peers go to SAT/ACT prep classes. One kid worked in his dad’s business as an intern, while another enrolled in a summer program that helped him write all his college essays.

Many (this woman included) would say that I’m doing my children a serious disservice by choosing a quaint and out-of-date ideal instead. There are online “Ivy League Coaches” that might say we are making a terrible mistake.

We don’t think this is a mistake at all. It might not be something to put on the college application (unless my child eventually becomes a counselor), but that isn’t the goal for us.

Our goal is bigger.

We are consciously opting out of the things-to-put-on-the-college-application arms race, and instead betting on three huge benefits of summer camp, which we believe will give them a true competitive advantage — in life:

1. Building creativity.

2. Developing broadly as a human being.

3. Not-living-in-my-basement-as-an-adult independence.

MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson says, in his book “The Second Machine Age,” that we have reached a pivotal moment where technology is replacing skills and people at an accelerated pace. He argues that creativity and innovation are becoming competitive advantages in the race against artificial intelligence, because creativity is something a machine has a hard time replicating.

The problem is that creativity seems so intangible.

Steve Jobs once said, “Creativity is just connecting things.” He believed that people invent when they connect the dots between the experiences they’ve had. To do this, he argued that we need to have more experiences and spend more time thinking about those experiences.

Indeed. According to Adam Grant’s book “Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World,” researchers at Michigan State University found that to receive the Nobel Prize, you need deep study in your field and those broad experiences Jobs was talking about. They studied the winning scientists from 1901 through 2005 and compared them with typical scientists living at the same time. Grant writes that the Nobel Prize winners were:

* Two times more likely to  play an instrument, compose or conduct.

* Seven times more likely to draw, paint or sculpt.

* Seven-and-a-half times more likely to do woodwork or be a mechanic, electrician or glassblower.

* Twelve times more likely to write poetry, plays, novels or short stories.

* And 22 times more likely to be an amateur actor, dancer or magician.

You read that right. Magician.

It’s not just that this kind of original thinker actively seeks out creative pursuits. These original experiences provide a new way of looking at the world, which helped the prize-winners think differently in their day jobs.

The beauty of summer camp is that not only do kids get to do all sorts of crazy new things, they also get to do it in nature, which lends its own creative boost.

Most importantly, my kids have such intensely packed schedules full of sports, music, art classes, community service and technological stimulation throughout the school year that it makes finding these all-important quiet mental spaces more difficult.

Summers provide a much-needed opportunity for my children to unplug, achieve focus and develop those creative thought processes and connections.

Okay, okay. Creativity might be a compelling tool to beat out that neighbor girl applying to the same college, but what about this “developing broadly as a human being” stuff?

I didn’t come up with that phrase. Harvard did.

William Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions at Harvard, has penned a compelling letter to parents. It practically begs and pleads with them to reevaluate the summer extracurriculars race and to “bring summer back,” with an “old-fashioned summer job” perhaps, or simply time to “gather strength for the school year ahead.”

Fitzsimmons writes, “What can be negative is when people lose sight of the fact that it’s important to develop broadly as a human being, as opposed to being an achievement machine. In the end, people will do much better reflecting, perhaps through some down time, in the summer.”

In terms of “developing broadly as a human being,” summer camp can provide an impressive list of life skills.

Studies over the past decade have shown outdoor programs stimulate the development of interpersonal competencies, enhance leadership skills and have positive effects on adolescents’ sense of empowerment, self-control, independence, self-understanding, assertiveness, decision-making skills, self-esteem, leadership, academics, personality and interpersonal relations.

Now for the cherry on top: Independence.

Michael Thompson, the author of “Homesick and Happy,” has written, “… there are things that, as a parent, you cannot do for your children, as much as you might wish to. You cannot make them happy (if you try too hard they become whiners); you cannot give them self-esteem and confidence (those come from their own accomplishments); you cannot pick friends for them and micro-manage their social lives, and finally you cannot give them independence. The only way children can grow into independence is to have their parents open the door and let them walk out. That’s what makes camp such a life-changing experience for children.”

So, yes, Ms. Tiger Mom, I am letting my children walk out the door and make useless lanyards for two months.

They might not have anything “constructive” to place on their college application, but they will reflect, unwind, think and laugh. They will explore, perform skits they wrote themselves and make those endless friendship bracelets to tie onto the wrists of lifelong friends.

The result will be that when they come back through our door, we’re pretty sure that, in addition to having gobs of creativity and independence, they’ll be more comfortable with who they are as people.

And just maybe they’ll even bring back a few magic tricks.

Laura Clydesdale lives in Berkeley, Calif., with her husband and children.

Come to the Swift Nature Camp Open House in Chicagoland May 30h.   

Our Open House is a wonderful time to learn more about camp by meeting the Directors (Lonnie & Jeff) and Staff. If you are already enrolled this is a time to meet new friends and play games with the other campers and counsleors. You can even bring a freind. We promise to bring some fun criiters from our Nature Center for you to meet. We hope you can make it to this fun program. Please dress for the weather. If you have any questions call us at 630-654-8036.

OPEN HOUSE AT THE WILLOWBROOK WILDLIFE CENTER

TIME: 2pm-4pm

WHERE: Willowbrook Wildlife Center ( across from the College of Dupage)

Wishing you all the best, See yiu soon.

Happy Trails

Lonnie & Jeff

DIRECTIONS to Willowbrook Wildlife center

WILLOWBROOK WILDLIFE CENTER IS LOCATED on the east side of Park Boulevard across from College of DuPage, one mile south of Roosevelt (Rt. 38) and one mile north of Butterfield Road (Rt. 56).

(630) 942-6200

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