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Be a spy, do a spa - this is camp?

By Alfred Lubrano

Growing up in bells-and-whistles America, many kids today are too hip and stimulus-hungry for the traditional summer-camp experience of s'mores, cold lakes and moldy cabins. They're jonesing to learn how to fall in Hollywood stunt camp, to get pedicures in spa camp, and to shoot each other with paintballs in secret-agent camp. While old-school-style camping still exists, alternative specialty camps continue to excite and entice the happy-camper crowd. Growing in number and variety, specialty camps increasingly offer a different path through the summer woods. And for good or for ill, many serious kids are eschewing seasonal diversions in favor of camps that aren't camps at all, but really internships in fields of interest. "It takes more to entertain kids now," said Jennifer Hoffman, a publicist for Pali Overnight Adventures, a high-end specialty camp in California that features a five-star chef, luxury accommodations, and a fountain that spews chocolate. "By 10 or 11 years old, kids want a taste of things, like being an actor, or they want to be pampered and have a spa-camp experience," Hoffman says. "The more stimulus the better." If you're a parent, a lot has happened to camp since you last ingested bug juice and mystery meats and shared a bunk with a lunatic in the wilds. These days, kids attend camps that offer instruction and internships in professions like veterinary medicine, sports management and photojournalism. Or, they partake in activities like cooking, recording rock music, even adventuring in Costa Rica. Such camps are seen as the inevitable outgrowth of a wired society in which been-there/done-that children become savvy multimedia mavens by the time they're 7. How, the thinking goes, can you expect plugged-in young people to be content spending their summers quietly contemplating mountain sunsets?

Around 6.5 million children will attend camp this summer, up from 3.5 million 10 years ago, said Jeff Solomon, executive director of the National Camp Association in New York. Nearly 70 percent will go to sleep-away camp, while the rest will attend day camp, he added. There are three reasons for the increased camper population, Solomon said. First, many more young children - ages 4 and 5 - are attending camp than ever before. Historically, kids didn't go to sleep-away camp until 7, he explained. "But there are more dual-career and single-parent homes, baby-sitters are expensive, and the schoolyard's not safe," Solomon added. At the same time, children who normally stopped going to camp at 15 - the traditional cutoff age - are continuing to attend until they're 18, thanks to the specialty camps that excite them or offer pre-career programs. Finally, camps have seen a 20 percent increase in children from other countries in the last five years. Ninety percent of the world's summer camps are in the United States. Thanks to the Internet and a thriving world economy, parents from other nations can pick an American camp and pay for it, Solomon said. They'd better hope for a favorable exchange rate, because parents have to shell out major coin to have happy campers.

A traditional sleep-away camp costs $700 to $800 a week, according to National Camp Association figures. But specialty camps can run as much as 10 percent to 20 percent higher; the Pali camp, for example, located 90 minutes north of Los Angeles, costs $1,435 a week, Solomon said. Are they worth it? Duh, said Simon Mont, 15, of Rockville, Md., who has attended Pali's stunt-man camp. "Pali is the only camp that lets a kid jump off a 60-foot building onto a big pad," Simon intoned breathlessly. "We choreograph fight scenes, jump out of a moving car at 15 m.p.h. I love the adrenaline." Less frenetic are the spa camps. Who needs rustic when you can get a massage instead? "Oh, it's one of the best camps I've ever been to," said 14-year-old Alison Levy, referring to the Julian Krinsky/Canyon Ranch Young Adult Summer Program, held at Bryn Mawr College. The program offers manicures, pedicures and massages, as well as yoga, cooking and nutrition classes. "They teach you things other kids my age don't know, about your body and food," said Alison, who lives in Wynnewood. "It's not just getting your nails done," explained Alison's mother, Pamela. "The exercise program made Alison remarkably stronger and more confident." Not everyone is enamored of the spa-camp concept. "That's horrible," said Roberta Golinkoff, child-development psychologist at the University of Delaware and coauthor of Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Children Really Learn - And Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less. "The idea that little girls are put in training to become beauty queens is so offensive to me. It's all about the outside, and it should be about the inside, about building self-esteem." But Tina Krinsky, director of marketing for the Julian Krinsky Camps and Programs, bristles at such complaints. "Why can't we teach children good habits to learn stamina and fight lethargy?" Besides, she added, this is what children want. "We run kid focus groups," she said. "They have passions, like cooking, which they get from watching TV food programs. They don't want to just go to the woods." But as specialty camps grow in popularity - especially the career-prep places - some child experts fear for kids' brains. "I am very concerned we are narrowing kids' developmental activities just to prepare kids to make money in one field," said Colorado psychologist Jane Healy. "For children's brains to develop properly, they need free time for spontaneous, original fun.

These specialized activities are adult-driven and take something valuable from childhood." Cate Dooley, psychologist and codirector of the Mother-Son Project at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, agrees. "When kids say they're bored, with nothing to do, I say, 'Great, that's when creativity happens,' " she said. The child psychologists have allies among the directors of traditional camps, notably Michael Humes, whose family has run Camp Regis-Applejack in New York's Adirondack Mountains for 60 years. "This is real camping, teaching values that don't come and go with the latest craze," said Humes, who insists the newer camps don't cut into his business. "A good camp is about learning to get along with a bunch of boys and girls, sharing different experiences of camp life. It's different than the highly focused spa and sports camps." Humes believes they're still making children for whom camps such as Applejack is summer-time nirvana. But it's getting tougher to compete, especially when, down the road, the kids are building robots, making movies, and designing clothes. As Pali stunt camper Simon Mont said, "This is a lot more fun than regular camp."

Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer - April 23, 2005