Good Parenting

If the word “affordable” doesn’t come to mind when you think of summer camp, you’re not alone. Sending your kids to sleepaway camp for just a few weeks could run you several thousand bucks or more.

But here’s the good news. There’s a camp for everyone’s budget! You don’t have to break the bank for your child to enjoy a fantastic camp experience, and a less expensive camp does not necessarily mean it’s a lower quality camp.

You might be asking yourself whether sending your child to camp is worth the price. And by the way, why does it cost so much?

In general, summer camps have high operating costs that need to be covered in order to maximize your child’s safety and fun. When you pay a little more for camp, the camp can be extremely selective in the staff it hires and pay its camp counselors more than they’d make elsewhere, plus it allows the camp to purchase and share with your child the highest-end (best quality) equipment and supplies.

You can’t put a price tag on safety, supervision and fun for your child!

But that’s not all. We haven’t even discussed insurance premiums, advertising, transportation, and other many other costs camps incur to deliver an industry-best-practice camp experience for your child.

The high cost of raising kids is indisputable, but the documented benefits of the camp experience are indisputable, too. Imagine all the fun and important things your child would miss by not going to camp:

Fun, instructional activities
Social interaction with other kids
Making new friends
Learning to live independently and take responsibility for themselves
Gaining self-confidence and esteem
Making personal connections with other kids and camp counselors
Creating special lifetime memories

In this terrible economy, families are cutting back on everything that’s not essential. Certainly a fantastic camp experience is something every child deserves, but whether the price of camp is “worth it” is open to subjectivity. Only you can decide the appropriate answer for your family.

And although the summer camp in industry is often considered to be one where you get what you pay for, the important point to remember is that there’s a camp to fit every family’s budget whether you’re looking for a day camp in Los Angeles, a sleepaway camp in New York or any other camp anywhere in between.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 11:01 am and is filed under Good Parenting.