Camp Woodland Blog

Growing up happens one step at a time. Little by little, kids take on new experiences, stretch beyond what’s familiar, and discover they’re capable of doing more on their own.

Look at the milestones of growing up, and an interesting pattern emerges:

• 3 minutes is the first time you feel comfortable leaving your kid out of your sight (maybe in a crib, playpen, or bouncy thing).
• 3 hours is the first morning they’re with a babysitter or at daycare.
• 3 days is that first long weekend sleepover with the grandparents or the cousins.
• 3 weeks (let’s come back to this one).
• 3 months is the first semester at college or other post-high school experience.
• 3 years is after college, out in the world with a first job and a first apartment.
• 3 decades is settling down, starting a family, and getting into life for the long haul.

Not everyone’s timeline is going to look exactly the same, but these are pretty standard stops along the way.

And then there’s that three week stretch…

Before I get to that, it’s worth saying that the number of steps kids take away from home is shrinking every year. When I was a  kid, I would go play until the street lights came on or my Mom would ring the bell to come home. Now even the playground is full of grown-ups.

And independence is definitely a skill to hone and practice. It’s something you learn how to do, just like anything else. Throw a kid straight into the deep end and it will rightfully be panic time. Keep them in the living room and nothing new happens. There’s got to be blocks of time along the way where you get a little bit of practice at it so the next big thing seems considerably more manageable.

**That 3 Week Thing**

Look at that list again and almost every step kind of just ends up happening in the run of everyday life. Daycare has a start date because everyone’s got to go back to work. Grandma plans out the long weekend. College tells you when move-in day is for that first semester with a dorm room assignment.

But the 3-week thing doesn’t leave us a lot of options out there. Three weeks (or four or six) is different. Nobody mails you an invitation for it and honestly, it could be easy to skip entirely. 

And skipping it leaves a giant gap in the middle of the list: a kid whose longest stay away from home is a weekend at grandma’s, all of a sudden is walking into a dorm for three months.

Camp really is one of the few in-betweens. We hear this from camp families all the time. Because it’s true. They can see it at those first drop-offs with the rest of the freshmen. They’ve gotten a bunch of 3, 4 and 6-week stretches under their belts. The climb up the independence ladder followed a rather simple progression.

I’m not going to list all the ways this happens during a stretch at camp, except to say the days and weeks stack the whole way.

One Question To Ask

Parents ask us how to know if their kid is ready for this rung. We keep it simple: did they do the one before it? A kid who’s done the three days at grandma’s is ready for three (or more!) weeks at camp. A kid who hasn’t should probably do that first.

Woodland and Towering Pines are set up for just that. First-summer campers can come for three weeks, half the summer, then move on to the full six weeks when ready (which could very possibly be the same summer!).

Yes, we want every kid here for the whole summer eventually. The full summer is the full experience. We plan camp to run Day 1 to Day 43, right in that order with the days and weekends building on each other. But for families new to camp, three weeks is often the right-sized rung.

Kids Need Room to Grow

The ladder mostly climbs itself. Minutes turn into hours, hours turn into days, and one day it’s decades, and they’re building a life of their own.

The three weeks is the one rung you have to go get on purpose. We saved you a spot (make your reservation HERE)!