the summer of our discontent
June 5, 2016 9:55 AM Subscribe
The Families That Can't Afford Summer. "The assumption that underlies summer vacation — that there is one parent waiting at home for the kids — is true for just over a quarter of American families."
We are about to experience our first summer of "summer vacation," and I'm dreading it a little. It's expensive, even the cheap YMCA camp our son will go to. It's also a logistical nightmare- there are other camps that look fun, but how on earth do we transport him to/from and still work our normal work hours? There are a lot of camps where that's impossible. And every camp runs on weird hours that are incompatible with working days, forcing you to pay more for extra hours before and after camp. I've been surprised through the school year how much the school and camp schedules are set up to be super hard to work around if you commute from our suburb/outlying city to Boston. There is still a lot about our public school system that seems to rely on the idea that a parent will be at home, even during the school year.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 10:22 AM on June 5, 2016 [17 favorites]
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 10:22 AM on June 5, 2016 [17 favorites]
My oldest is 3 and I literally have no idea what we will do in a couple years. Most of these camps seem to start in July and end in mid-August -- do you just not work for the whole month of June and then take another two weeks off before Labor Day?
posted by Ralston McTodd at 10:28 AM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Ralston McTodd at 10:28 AM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
I've always thought that we would be better served by school breaks that were more staggered. Like, here in Toronto, there's this whole complex of March Break and Summer Break camps that ramps up for 2 weeks in the Spring and 10 weeks in the summer and then goes away again. If every school had three 4 week breaks, and they weren't all basically the same breaks, there could be a year round programs that offered break care to whatever students needed it at the time. There could be some coordination among the breaks -- feeder middle schools on the same break as their high school, for example -- to try to minimize how much the same family had kids on two different break schedules (so they could still have family vacations, assuming they can afford them) but generally try and spread the breaks geographically so the same staff can cover all the school breaks.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:29 AM on June 5, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 10:29 AM on June 5, 2016 [8 favorites]
Why do we have summer camps for kids?
When did these things begin? Do other countries have similar summer camps or do they differ and, if so, how? Summer camps are in part timed for the close of the school year, but is it time to rethink our school year?
posted by Postroad at 10:33 AM on June 5, 2016
When did these things begin? Do other countries have similar summer camps or do they differ and, if so, how? Summer camps are in part timed for the close of the school year, but is it time to rethink our school year?
posted by Postroad at 10:33 AM on June 5, 2016
This is our first camp summer too -- they're already bored out of their minds after being off school for two weeks before camp starts tomorrow, and we've been doing outings just about every day to fun or educational activities. I can't imagine a whole summer of this. The older one qualifies for six weeks of half-day camp through the public schools at no cost to us; I honestly don't know what we'd do if he didn't. The younger one just finished preschool and is going to a couple of one-week camp sessions to break up the tedium of being home with mom all summer, but OH MY GOD they're so EXPENSIVE! If we had to pay to keep both of them in camp all summer, we would manage it, but it'd be a big hit to our family budget, and we'd have to cut back somewhere else. I'm not sure how even middle-income families afford it, let alone low-income families.
And then there's a four-week period at the end of summer where there are just NO CAMPS running. I guess a lot of parents put their kids in daycare or leave them home alone those four weeks? But there's a gap there when your kids are in elementary school and not routinely going to daycare so it's hard to get a spot, but aren't old enough to be left home alone, and that seems like a nightmare. Those last four weeks when my kids are here ALL DAY EVERY DAY and it's a billion degrees out I imagine we'll all just kill each other.
(Plus to get spots in the camps a lot of parents whose kids are in elementary school sit there February 1 reloading the registration page over and over to get their kids enrolled on the first day of enrollment so they have their summer child care/camp situation worked out for the first six weeks.)
It's just kind-of a mad system that you don't even realize is there until all your friends are going through it and, wow, this is not well-organized or convenient AT ALL. And I'm a believer in summer ideally involving time for kids to unwind and explore their own interests and get a lot of free play in, but that's really demanding of parents -- first you need one at home, and second you need a parent who can make that happen (and not lose their mind in the process) and can facilitate all that freedom, which is less easy than it sounds.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:33 AM on June 5, 2016 [10 favorites]
And then there's a four-week period at the end of summer where there are just NO CAMPS running. I guess a lot of parents put their kids in daycare or leave them home alone those four weeks? But there's a gap there when your kids are in elementary school and not routinely going to daycare so it's hard to get a spot, but aren't old enough to be left home alone, and that seems like a nightmare. Those last four weeks when my kids are here ALL DAY EVERY DAY and it's a billion degrees out I imagine we'll all just kill each other.
(Plus to get spots in the camps a lot of parents whose kids are in elementary school sit there February 1 reloading the registration page over and over to get their kids enrolled on the first day of enrollment so they have their summer child care/camp situation worked out for the first six weeks.)
It's just kind-of a mad system that you don't even realize is there until all your friends are going through it and, wow, this is not well-organized or convenient AT ALL. And I'm a believer in summer ideally involving time for kids to unwind and explore their own interests and get a lot of free play in, but that's really demanding of parents -- first you need one at home, and second you need a parent who can make that happen (and not lose their mind in the process) and can facilitate all that freedom, which is less easy than it sounds.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:33 AM on June 5, 2016 [10 favorites]
Summer camps are in part timed for the close of the school year, but is it time to rethink our school year?
Maybe so. The school year seems to have always been timed around not having air conditioning in schools.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:36 AM on June 5, 2016 [15 favorites]
Maybe so. The school year seems to have always been timed around not having air conditioning in schools.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:36 AM on June 5, 2016 [15 favorites]
Oh god, I hated summer when my son was school age. Summer day camps seem to be like a great idea until you find out that they don't start until 9 and then end at 4:30 and then stop all together two weeks before school restarts. I came pretty close to getting fired multiple times due to camp screwing up my work schedule. I have no idea how people less well off then I was at the time manage.
posted by octothorpe at 10:36 AM on June 5, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 10:36 AM on June 5, 2016 [5 favorites]
There were so many day camps I couldn't go to because they all fucking started at 9 and ended at 4. I kind of think it's deliberately classist- they can fill up the program without catering to dual income families, so they don't.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:43 AM on June 5, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:43 AM on June 5, 2016 [4 favorites]
Part of the "Two-Income Trap"®
Back in '74 the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed, which required banks to not discount 2nd household incomes.
This naturally pushed up the borrowing capacity of households, which helped fuel the stupendous 20%/yr home appreciation of the 70s (I was a kid in the Bay Area in the late 1970s and today's craziness, and the dotcom madness of the late 90s are just repeats of that).
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:44 AM on June 5, 2016 [6 favorites]
Back in '74 the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed, which required banks to not discount 2nd household incomes.
This naturally pushed up the borrowing capacity of households, which helped fuel the stupendous 20%/yr home appreciation of the 70s (I was a kid in the Bay Area in the late 1970s and today's craziness, and the dotcom madness of the late 90s are just repeats of that).
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:44 AM on June 5, 2016 [6 favorites]
I don't have kids. But I know that kids are expensive and I don't know how you all do it. Keeping kids occupied in the summer has to be like herding cats. I had a one week summer camp in the mountains that I went to and then aside from that it was a constant "what to do? I'm bored." From what I've seen on camp prices they've gone up exponentially since I was a kid. I've always had a deep appreciation for what parents do... like I said, I don't know how you do it. Especially those of you who don't have a lot of money.
posted by azpenguin at 10:45 AM on June 5, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by azpenguin at 10:45 AM on June 5, 2016 [4 favorites]
When did these things begin?
In the mid-1900's to get kids out of the cities where there was high rates of infection (Polio) during the summers.
posted by sammyo at 10:47 AM on June 5, 2016 [17 favorites]
In the mid-1900's to get kids out of the cities where there was high rates of infection (Polio) during the summers.
posted by sammyo at 10:47 AM on June 5, 2016 [17 favorites]
I was an introvert whose mom was home all summer, but I don't remember being bored at all. I kind of dreaded things like swimming camp. I was such a goodie-goodie in school that I always looked forward to a few months of living according to my own rules and whims. I'm realizing now how lucky I was to have that freedom.
Another couple items to add to my list of "reminders of why I don't want kids" for when the hormones start ramping up.
posted by mantecol at 10:52 AM on June 5, 2016 [30 favorites]
Another couple items to add to my list of "reminders of why I don't want kids" for when the hormones start ramping up.
posted by mantecol at 10:52 AM on June 5, 2016 [30 favorites]
All the public schools I went to had free full-day recreation programs all summer. If you signed up for a specialized program like sports or music, there might be a $5 fee. When I was younger and in parochial school, I was lucky enough to have a parent at home. I had no freaking idea how privileged we were. Most of the parents I know are really scrambling right now.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:52 AM on June 5, 2016
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:52 AM on June 5, 2016
The other huge difference is, when I was in elementary school in the 80s, there were still quite a number of stay-at-home moms in the neighborhood, and kids were allowed to roam fairly freely around the neighborhood, so there were other kids to play with and places we could independently go (very local parks, other kids' houses, just riding bikes up and down the block). These days kids at home during the day are so few and far between (both because fewer households have children generally, and because in many many more of those households all adults work), and unsupervised kids running around the neighborhood is likely to earn you a visit from the cops. So even if you are a stay-at-home parent and can keep the kids home with you in the summer, it's YOU AND THEM STARING AT EACH OTHER because there are no peers for them to play with unless they're in camp or daycare and if you let them play outside or go to the park, you have to go sit and supervise them doing so.
Which makes even Freedom Summer (for those who can afford it) less pleasant and more demanding of parents than it was 30 or 40 years ago.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:53 AM on June 5, 2016 [53 favorites]
Which makes even Freedom Summer (for those who can afford it) less pleasant and more demanding of parents than it was 30 or 40 years ago.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:53 AM on June 5, 2016 [53 favorites]
This is our first summer facing the situation where we are both working full-time. It's been hairy; it means that - in an attempt to stagger some breaks in for the kids where they aren't being schlepped around town - that we are only taking one week of a full family vacation, and then my wife and I have each booked some separate time off to be with the kids. Even with that, we have one week where we have no camps and we're going to patch that together with work-from-home days and grandparents. Without some good work situations and family, we would be in trouble.
It's been incredibly tough finding camps for each week, and then trying to find enough variety that they won't be too bored, and then finding pre & post care. We had some anxious days where they were on waitlist for one of the weeks, but we were fortunate to get called and be given spots. I honestly don't know how they are going to handle it - on the one hand, we shouldn't have the problem of overall boredom as the summer progresses; at the same time, they are used (especially my oldest, who has some LD issues) to having some downtime.
I guess what I'm saying is that the full "summer vacation" experience where the kids are at home with a parent all summer is trying and difficult; and this process of trying to make sure they have a camp every week over the summer is also trying and difficult and incredibly expensive.
posted by nubs at 10:55 AM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
It's been incredibly tough finding camps for each week, and then trying to find enough variety that they won't be too bored, and then finding pre & post care. We had some anxious days where they were on waitlist for one of the weeks, but we were fortunate to get called and be given spots. I honestly don't know how they are going to handle it - on the one hand, we shouldn't have the problem of overall boredom as the summer progresses; at the same time, they are used (especially my oldest, who has some LD issues) to having some downtime.
I guess what I'm saying is that the full "summer vacation" experience where the kids are at home with a parent all summer is trying and difficult; and this process of trying to make sure they have a camp every week over the summer is also trying and difficult and incredibly expensive.
posted by nubs at 10:55 AM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
Some cities have great programs that include free or almost free summer camp.I mean, yeah, sort of. They're mostly not free or almost-free. (Your link notes that there aren't a lot of free programs, and their definition of "low-cost" isn't that low.) But you also have to be really on-the-ball to get a spot. My friends knew the exact moment when registration for the local cheap summer camp opened up, and at that exact moment they were on their computers, hitting refresh again and again to try to get in to get a spot. But what happens if you don't have computer access? What happens if you have a slow connection? What happens if you drive a bus and can't be at the computer hitting refresh at the very moment when enrollment opens? What happens if your life is kind of chaotic and you didn't remember in February that you needed to look up the exact moment when summer camps opened up so you could get a spot?
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:56 AM on June 5, 2016 [14 favorites]
In suburban Chicago, it costs around $925 a month to send our kid to the village-operated "camp," which is essentially daycare in the form of a mixture of field trips and supervised playground play and arts and crafts. This total, includes, as have others have noted, the upcharge for the hour and change needed to actually be able to drop your kid off early enough to make it to work and another upcharge for the hour and change needed after the camp because--shocker!--your work day doesn't end at 2:30.
This year, we get a summer off because my spouse's mom is coming from Romania to stay with us and watch him. We are building our vacation around going to get her and we literally paid for the tickets to Europe for the three of us for what it normally costs to keep our kid in middling "camps" run by the park district in our middle class town.
And yeah, we're stupidly fortunate to be able to do either. I'm grateful for that. But how the hell did "modest summer daycare for a single kid with middle class parents" and "round trip airfare for three to Europe" end up as equivalent expenses?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:58 AM on June 5, 2016 [12 favorites]
This year, we get a summer off because my spouse's mom is coming from Romania to stay with us and watch him. We are building our vacation around going to get her and we literally paid for the tickets to Europe for the three of us for what it normally costs to keep our kid in middling "camps" run by the park district in our middle class town.
And yeah, we're stupidly fortunate to be able to do either. I'm grateful for that. But how the hell did "modest summer daycare for a single kid with middle class parents" and "round trip airfare for three to Europe" end up as equivalent expenses?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:58 AM on June 5, 2016 [12 favorites]
"I kind of think it's deliberately classist- they can fill up the program without catering to dual income families, so they don't."
posted by showbiz_liz
I agree. Interestingly I was talking to someone about education back in the 70s (I am talking about the UK) there was a lot more money there, so for example, there were musical instruments available for kids to learn, and fields for them to play in. Now the money has been turned off to a degree not know in a long time, and we are witnessing the results: education is becoming more classist and elitist, only those with money get a decent one and opportunities which are denied the poor.
We don't really have the summer camp thing in the UK (or didn't when I was a kid) but we had a couple of weeks in August when there was an activites fortnight at the community college, and most of the kids in the town would go, but back then the prices were probably more reasonable as well. Now it is deliberately set up so only those who can afford it can go.
posted by marienbad at 11:00 AM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by showbiz_liz
I agree. Interestingly I was talking to someone about education back in the 70s (I am talking about the UK) there was a lot more money there, so for example, there were musical instruments available for kids to learn, and fields for them to play in. Now the money has been turned off to a degree not know in a long time, and we are witnessing the results: education is becoming more classist and elitist, only those with money get a decent one and opportunities which are denied the poor.
We don't really have the summer camp thing in the UK (or didn't when I was a kid) but we had a couple of weeks in August when there was an activites fortnight at the community college, and most of the kids in the town would go, but back then the prices were probably more reasonable as well. Now it is deliberately set up so only those who can afford it can go.
posted by marienbad at 11:00 AM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
If the demand for flexible childcare options is this high, it seems like a fantastic business opportunity. I guess it's a bit of a problem that demand is uneven throughout the year.
posted by mantecol at 11:00 AM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by mantecol at 11:00 AM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
Do other countries have similar summer camps or do they differ and, if so, how?
the Young Pioneers in the former soviet union had state funded summer camps.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:00 AM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
the Young Pioneers in the former soviet union had state funded summer camps.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:00 AM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
As an adult I realize this is why we spent so much time, especially in the summer, at the public library in the mall where my Mom worked while she worked :/ There was that one summer where Parks and Rec set up an indoor playground inside the mall for $1 a day which was really fun. I don't know if cities have innovative programs like that these days.
posted by Calzephyr at 11:01 AM on June 5, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by Calzephyr at 11:01 AM on June 5, 2016 [5 favorites]
This situation is even worse for single parents. Imagine being a single person with an elementary-school-aged kid or two, living somewhere where you don't have a big social support network, and working a crappy job that barely pays for your basic expenses and offers little to no flexibility? I know people who are living like that, and it sounds like hell. I imagine that I would crumble if put under that kind of strain. It's a pretty normal situation too, millions of people i. The US (mostly women, of course) are going through that.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 11:02 AM on June 5, 2016 [26 favorites]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 11:02 AM on June 5, 2016 [26 favorites]
I lurk on assorted forums and do not have the heart to "tell it like it is" to all those who support the idea that childcare costs essentially go away once children are in school, especially public school.
posted by beaning at 11:03 AM on June 5, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by beaning at 11:03 AM on June 5, 2016 [4 favorites]
I lurk on assorted forums and do not have the heart to "tell it like it is" to all those who support the idea that childcare costs essentially go away once children are in school, especially public school.
I mean, even after school programs don't go until Mom and/or Dad get out of work, most of the time. I can't imagine anyone would think there's no cost to caring for a school age child.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:07 AM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
I mean, even after school programs don't go until Mom and/or Dad get out of work, most of the time. I can't imagine anyone would think there's no cost to caring for a school age child.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:07 AM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
Back in the day most kids didn't go to camp. Instead they stayed home unsupervised, made pipe bombs and tried to blow up their schools before the summer was over. Good times.
posted by srboisvert at 11:11 AM on June 5, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 11:11 AM on June 5, 2016 [8 favorites]
I don't have kids and didn't even think of this as a thing. Mind blown.
As a kid in the 1970s, my mom was at home, and every kid on the block (and there were lots) was home. Every mother's summer vocabulary included the phrase "outside, the lot of you, come home for dinner", and that was the extent of it.
Amazing how much we've lost as a society to make the Waltons and the Kochs and the Ellises super-super-rich instead of merely wealthy.
posted by maxwelton at 11:13 AM on June 5, 2016 [21 favorites]
As a kid in the 1970s, my mom was at home, and every kid on the block (and there were lots) was home. Every mother's summer vocabulary included the phrase "outside, the lot of you, come home for dinner", and that was the extent of it.
Amazing how much we've lost as a society to make the Waltons and the Kochs and the Ellises super-super-rich instead of merely wealthy.
posted by maxwelton at 11:13 AM on June 5, 2016 [21 favorites]
Maybe so. The school year seems to have always been timed around not having air conditioning in schools.
Accommodating the agricultural schedule was a major driver of the school year also, though this is now relevant to only a tiny fraction of the population.
posted by Dip Flash at 11:14 AM on June 5, 2016 [7 favorites]
Accommodating the agricultural schedule was a major driver of the school year also, though this is now relevant to only a tiny fraction of the population.
posted by Dip Flash at 11:14 AM on June 5, 2016 [7 favorites]
And yeah, we're stupidly fortunate to be able to do either. I'm grateful for that. But how the hell did "modest summer daycare for a single kid with middle class parents" and "round trip airfare for three to Europe" end up as equivalent expenses?
When our overlords decided that procreation should be a luxury hobby for the wealthy, basically.
I was going to type up my recollections of our family's haphazard summer childcare plans, but honestly I don't even want to think about it. [shudder]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:15 AM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
When our overlords decided that procreation should be a luxury hobby for the wealthy, basically.
I was going to type up my recollections of our family's haphazard summer childcare plans, but honestly I don't even want to think about it. [shudder]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:15 AM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
Man, one of the things that still fills me with bitterness is hearing about other people's summer vacations. I've never had a summer vacation. My mother was a single parent with limited family support; she couldn't take time off, or send me to spend time with relatives.
I don't know what she did before I was old enough to look after myself at home.
I never liked summers that much. I remember them being very boring. On the weekends we could sometimes go to the pool, and I liked that, but otherwise there wasn't much to do.
Sometimes I talk with people in my department, and they'll say something like, "Oh, you've never been to X? Why not?" And I'll have to tell them, "Because not everyone has the time or the money." If I tell them I've never had a vacation, they're incredulous. You know all those families on TV and movies that go on "family vacations," and it's just like, assumed that this is something families do? I can't relate to that at all.
There is a real blindness toward the fact that these supposed "universals" of childhood experiences aren't universal or available to everybody.
Actually, I'm kind of watery-eyed now, because I had an opportunity to have my first real vacation -- to actually go somewhere for a week, have that kind of experience that people put in their photo albums -- and had to turn it down because I have to much work to do and not enough money.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:16 AM on June 5, 2016 [72 favorites]
I don't know what she did before I was old enough to look after myself at home.
I never liked summers that much. I remember them being very boring. On the weekends we could sometimes go to the pool, and I liked that, but otherwise there wasn't much to do.
Sometimes I talk with people in my department, and they'll say something like, "Oh, you've never been to X? Why not?" And I'll have to tell them, "Because not everyone has the time or the money." If I tell them I've never had a vacation, they're incredulous. You know all those families on TV and movies that go on "family vacations," and it's just like, assumed that this is something families do? I can't relate to that at all.
There is a real blindness toward the fact that these supposed "universals" of childhood experiences aren't universal or available to everybody.
Actually, I'm kind of watery-eyed now, because I had an opportunity to have my first real vacation -- to actually go somewhere for a week, have that kind of experience that people put in their photo albums -- and had to turn it down because I have to much work to do and not enough money.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:16 AM on June 5, 2016 [72 favorites]
Here in the Netherlands we've had summer camps for a long time (I'm not sure about the current situation). They were the 'go camping / go stay at a place with a big dorm for a week or two' type of deals, not the day camps. Most camps were themed or centered around a specific activity such as sailing or riding horses. I went to one every year and loved it; for my parents, it was the time when they could have an adults-only holiday.
posted by Too-Ticky at 11:18 AM on June 5, 2016
posted by Too-Ticky at 11:18 AM on June 5, 2016
Accommodating the agricultural schedule was a major driver of the school year also, though this is now relevant to only a tiny fraction of the population.That's apparently a big myth. Summer was actually not a hugely busy time for people in agriculture: they needed their kids off to plant in the spring and harvest in the fall. The real drivers of summer vacation were urban people: urban schools were poorly ventilated and sweltering, and middle-class-and-above urban people tried to get out of cities in the summer.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:19 AM on June 5, 2016 [9 favorites]
It's sad that in response to summer activities either costing more or made difficult because both parents need to work, our collective natural reaction is "get rid of summer for kids".
I recognize that I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who doesn't have to suffer much from this issue; my kids are either in the care of relatives or in camps during the summer. However I can see the difference from the school year to the summer in them. School year is for learning, summer is for exploring.
My kids have done theater camp, science camp, LEGO camp, cooking camp, zoo camp, sports camp, and a wide variety of other activities. This year one child will be an "intern" at a camp for younger kids, and will also volunteer at a local animal shelter.
The kids are freed from a constant influx of projects, studying, homework, and tests for 3 months of the year - and as a parent, I am freed from that as well. I am free to take them on vacation for any portion of those months without shame or guilt (try taking your kids out of school for a week to go on vacation - they not only miss too much, but it becomes a mark on their record).
Yes, the camps that my kids go to cost good money. In response to this issue, let's create more public camps. These exist in many urban areas. Many times those urban areas will even accept kids from outside the city.
Let summer be the time for kids to be kids, rather than adults in training.
posted by RalphSlate at 11:22 AM on June 5, 2016 [15 favorites]
I recognize that I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who doesn't have to suffer much from this issue; my kids are either in the care of relatives or in camps during the summer. However I can see the difference from the school year to the summer in them. School year is for learning, summer is for exploring.
My kids have done theater camp, science camp, LEGO camp, cooking camp, zoo camp, sports camp, and a wide variety of other activities. This year one child will be an "intern" at a camp for younger kids, and will also volunteer at a local animal shelter.
The kids are freed from a constant influx of projects, studying, homework, and tests for 3 months of the year - and as a parent, I am freed from that as well. I am free to take them on vacation for any portion of those months without shame or guilt (try taking your kids out of school for a week to go on vacation - they not only miss too much, but it becomes a mark on their record).
Yes, the camps that my kids go to cost good money. In response to this issue, let's create more public camps. These exist in many urban areas. Many times those urban areas will even accept kids from outside the city.
Let summer be the time for kids to be kids, rather than adults in training.
posted by RalphSlate at 11:22 AM on June 5, 2016 [15 favorites]
My dad is a big booster of Montessori education and offered to pay tuition for our son to attend a local preK-8 starting this coming year (son will be 4, he's currently in a traditional center daycare while we work) and I turned him down because school = before and after care and (most terrifying) summer vacations. I can't face that yet. I'm not ready. I've got this summer and next summer covered with daycare and the summer between Kindy and 1st grade will be our scramble. I've got two years and you'd better believe I am already researching.
Both my parents worked, but my dad is a professor so the weird day camp hours were okay for him. I went to a music and arts day camp and I just the other day looked up what their 6 week session now costs. About $2500.
My husband and I are both professionals with masters degrees--not management but worker bees in specialized fields. My parents, when I was my son's age, were a high school educated office worker and a junior professor. Yet they could somehow afford to send me to private school (not ritzy ones, just regular small parent-run or parochial schools) and to this summer day camp. How?? No way in shit could we as a family bringing in much less than $100k afford these things today.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:24 AM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
Both my parents worked, but my dad is a professor so the weird day camp hours were okay for him. I went to a music and arts day camp and I just the other day looked up what their 6 week session now costs. About $2500.
My husband and I are both professionals with masters degrees--not management but worker bees in specialized fields. My parents, when I was my son's age, were a high school educated office worker and a junior professor. Yet they could somehow afford to send me to private school (not ritzy ones, just regular small parent-run or parochial schools) and to this summer day camp. How?? No way in shit could we as a family bringing in much less than $100k afford these things today.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:24 AM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
unsupervised kids running around the neighborhood is likely to earn you a visit from the cops
There are still neighborhoods where the kids roam. Once they're 9 or 10 they have free rein.
posted by jpe at 11:24 AM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
There are still neighborhoods where the kids roam. Once they're 9 or 10 they have free rein.
posted by jpe at 11:24 AM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
School year is for learning, summer is for exploring.
The problem with this is privilege. If your children have learning disabilities, or are low-income, etc., having a summer to "explore" is fairly detrimental to the maintenance of what they've learned in school.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:25 AM on June 5, 2016 [8 favorites]
The problem with this is privilege. If your children have learning disabilities, or are low-income, etc., having a summer to "explore" is fairly detrimental to the maintenance of what they've learned in school.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:25 AM on June 5, 2016 [8 favorites]
"Once they're 9 or 10 they have free rein."
Which is fine but the difficult years are from when they start kindergarten and have summers off and aren't in full-time daycare, and when they're old enough to stay home alone -- so from when they're about 5 to about 10.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:25 AM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
Which is fine but the difficult years are from when they start kindergarten and have summers off and aren't in full-time daycare, and when they're old enough to stay home alone -- so from when they're about 5 to about 10.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:25 AM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
My kid gets bored stupid in summer but stressed by too many activities/camps with people he doesn't know. School year round would be perfect for him and us both.
posted by emjaybee at 11:27 AM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by emjaybee at 11:27 AM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
As a kid in the 1970s, my mom was at home...Amazing how much we've lost as a society to make the Waltons and the Kochs and the Ellises super-super-rich instead of merely wealthy.
I will need summer childcare because of my work in a field that I would most likely have been barred from in the 1970s because I am a woman. I don't consider that a loss.
posted by Ralston McTodd at 11:29 AM on June 5, 2016 [27 favorites]
I will need summer childcare because of my work in a field that I would most likely have been barred from in the 1970s because I am a woman. I don't consider that a loss.
posted by Ralston McTodd at 11:29 AM on June 5, 2016 [27 favorites]
Which is fine but the difficult years are from when they start kindergarten
No doubt. That was always the case, though, and I was only addressing the notion that kids don't roam anymore.
posted by jpe at 11:33 AM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
No doubt. That was always the case, though, and I was only addressing the notion that kids don't roam anymore.
posted by jpe at 11:33 AM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
Why do we have summer camps for kids?
Because they are awesome. Many of my best memories from adolescence came from camps.
Because children lack other opportunities to learn about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Because the crash that follows camp teaches kids not to trust hothouse environment experiences.
Because first crushes feel a little safer when you have reason to think you won't see that person again.
Because it makes singing socially acceptable.
Because a big group of people can make rain with their hands.
Because counselling is a good first taste of responsibility.
Because not seeing your parents for a week or two is a good first taste of independence.
Because pillowfights.
Because canoes.
Because campfires.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:38 AM on June 5, 2016 [19 favorites]
Because they are awesome. Many of my best memories from adolescence came from camps.
Because children lack other opportunities to learn about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Because the crash that follows camp teaches kids not to trust hothouse environment experiences.
Because first crushes feel a little safer when you have reason to think you won't see that person again.
Because it makes singing socially acceptable.
Because a big group of people can make rain with their hands.
Because counselling is a good first taste of responsibility.
Because not seeing your parents for a week or two is a good first taste of independence.
Because pillowfights.
Because canoes.
Because campfires.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 11:38 AM on June 5, 2016 [19 favorites]
My mom was stay-at-home (in the 70s) but my sister and I went to Vacation Bible School (day camp) at the Lutheran church for many summers growing up. I'm sure because my mom couldn't stand the idea of having us hanging around telling her we were bored all summer. I have no idea if there was a fee for that - I'll have to ask my mom.
posted by Squeak Attack at 11:41 AM on June 5, 2016
posted by Squeak Attack at 11:41 AM on June 5, 2016
Because children lack other opportunities to learn about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
as a little jewish kid i went to jewish summer camp, so friday night services and the hamotzi were totally unremarkable to me, even though they were things not present in my secular home life aside from high holidays. on the other hand, my friend charlotte, who is not jewish, also went to a jewish summer camp, and at age 10 she decided that these must be things that happened at EVERY summer camp and maybe did not realize the truth until college.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:43 AM on June 5, 2016 [15 favorites]
as a little jewish kid i went to jewish summer camp, so friday night services and the hamotzi were totally unremarkable to me, even though they were things not present in my secular home life aside from high holidays. on the other hand, my friend charlotte, who is not jewish, also went to a jewish summer camp, and at age 10 she decided that these must be things that happened at EVERY summer camp and maybe did not realize the truth until college.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:43 AM on June 5, 2016 [15 favorites]
Whenever I get frustrated with my teaching salary, I remind myself how much money I save by not having to work in the summer. Of course, because of health reasons this year, I'm squandering it by spending most of the day watching my kids fight over who gets to play Overwatch for hours on end, but at least they have an adult nearby if one of them bludgeons the other with the PS4 controller.
posted by bibliowench at 11:54 AM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by bibliowench at 11:54 AM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
Three months of paid vacation time for adults.
I'm tired of institutionalizing childhood as a solution to this for people too broke to avoid it. Absolutely free/low cost childcare is needed too but once you agree to pay for that it might be cheaper to offer some families a supplemental pay for watching their own kids for the summer which many prefer anyway if they don't want year round full time intuitional care for their kids.
posted by xarnop at 12:06 PM on June 5, 2016 [13 favorites]
I'm tired of institutionalizing childhood as a solution to this for people too broke to avoid it. Absolutely free/low cost childcare is needed too but once you agree to pay for that it might be cheaper to offer some families a supplemental pay for watching their own kids for the summer which many prefer anyway if they don't want year round full time intuitional care for their kids.
posted by xarnop at 12:06 PM on June 5, 2016 [13 favorites]
How do parents manage? They do one of these things:
1. Leave kid(s) alone during day
2. One parent works part-time or not at all
3. Relatives/grandparents watch kids
4. A babysitter or nanny stays with/watches kids
5. Kids stay with an unregulated backyard/apartment daycare person who may or may not be safe to use but may be all the parents can afford
6. Kids go to all-day daycare
7. Kids go to camps + one of the above when there is no camp.
My parents mixed and matched many of these. I distinctly remember my babysitter Mrs. Brown, who cleaned the house, made me lunch, watched soap operas then took a nap. She was white-haired and bent and if I had been a troublemaking child she would not have been able to manage me. She also worked for nearly nothing.
I suspect that poorer/single parents are forced to resort to number 1 or number 5 a lot. Underground daycares and babysitters are easy to find. Sittercity.com is full of listings, though they at least do a criminal background check.
posted by emjaybee at 12:11 PM on June 5, 2016 [4 favorites]
1. Leave kid(s) alone during day
2. One parent works part-time or not at all
3. Relatives/grandparents watch kids
4. A babysitter or nanny stays with/watches kids
5. Kids stay with an unregulated backyard/apartment daycare person who may or may not be safe to use but may be all the parents can afford
6. Kids go to all-day daycare
7. Kids go to camps + one of the above when there is no camp.
My parents mixed and matched many of these. I distinctly remember my babysitter Mrs. Brown, who cleaned the house, made me lunch, watched soap operas then took a nap. She was white-haired and bent and if I had been a troublemaking child she would not have been able to manage me. She also worked for nearly nothing.
I suspect that poorer/single parents are forced to resort to number 1 or number 5 a lot. Underground daycares and babysitters are easy to find. Sittercity.com is full of listings, though they at least do a criminal background check.
posted by emjaybee at 12:11 PM on June 5, 2016 [4 favorites]
which many prefer anyway if they don't want year round full time intuitional care for their kids.
idk i think stuff like summer camp is great for kids both for social development and for development of non-academic skills (art, music, drama, sports) in an environment where, if they screw up their elective, it won't haunt them for the rest of their secondary school career. doing creative stuff without the worries of receiving a failing grade for it is incredibly freeing for kids who are academic grinds, especially when the primary source of that academic pressure is coming from home.
posted by poffin boffin at 12:27 PM on June 5, 2016 [6 favorites]
idk i think stuff like summer camp is great for kids both for social development and for development of non-academic skills (art, music, drama, sports) in an environment where, if they screw up their elective, it won't haunt them for the rest of their secondary school career. doing creative stuff without the worries of receiving a failing grade for it is incredibly freeing for kids who are academic grinds, especially when the primary source of that academic pressure is coming from home.
posted by poffin boffin at 12:27 PM on June 5, 2016 [6 favorites]
thuther to earlier answer, Italy has summer "colonie", summer boarding schools at the seaside once run by the ministry of education and now by local authorities. They have been around since 1822 but got a big boost during fascism and after the war, as the urban working class need somewhere to send their children.
They usually take kids for 2 weeks, but i have known kids to reside there for 3 months, for special cases. They also take disabled children.
One of the way that it works economically it is that catering and caretaking is usually done by the same companies that do publics school, on the cheap but tried and tested, coming to around 170 euro every two weeks for kids in my town (milan) , (320euro if not a resident.)
I have been in "colonie" run by my local parish, and those took place in the mountains, and they usually rented out a whole hotel. I have no idea how much that costs.
In town summer camps, day camps, are things that are relatively new to Italy.
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 12:27 PM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
They usually take kids for 2 weeks, but i have known kids to reside there for 3 months, for special cases. They also take disabled children.
One of the way that it works economically it is that catering and caretaking is usually done by the same companies that do publics school, on the cheap but tried and tested, coming to around 170 euro every two weeks for kids in my town (milan) , (320euro if not a resident.)
I have been in "colonie" run by my local parish, and those took place in the mountains, and they usually rented out a whole hotel. I have no idea how much that costs.
In town summer camps, day camps, are things that are relatively new to Italy.
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 12:27 PM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
but really whichever method is used to remove the cost burden of summer activities from parents is fine because different things suit different people. it just seems short sighted to me to dismiss the potential for creative expression outside of an academic setting as "institutionalizing children".
posted by poffin boffin at 12:30 PM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by poffin boffin at 12:30 PM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
I'm thinking there's a reason Summer Camp is not such an established thing here in the UK, or even Italy. Because I just looked at Wikipedia and saw how long your vacation is. Ours is six weeks, so less than half as long. (And we still argue about whether it's too long at once).
posted by sourcejedi at 12:34 PM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by sourcejedi at 12:34 PM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
My mom didn't work during the summer (she was part-time otherwise) and it was really fucking boring sometimes. Yes, there were other kids around and I did have some freedom to roam. I rode my bike to the library and read everything I could but it was still boring for long stretches of the day. I grew up in Massachusetts and we had no air conditioning - not even window units - so some really hot days were spent being slow and lazy and sleepy.
I grew up in a fairly ruralish place and there was no town pool, beaches were at least an hour away and I didn't go to camp because it was too expensive.
My kids are having a completely different summer experience than I ever did. My first grader went to a bunch of day camps last year and she had a blast. We are lucky to live somewhere that has in-town rec camps that are fairly affordable ($130/week for 5 full days) and we have a nice "village" of other parents to help with the 9 am to 4 pm conundrum. The rec camps are a lot of fun and the kids spend time outside, they do arts and crafts, they swim, etc.
I think that unstructured time is great and I'm in favor of it but entire stretches of summer of it can be boring and stultifying too. My kids do get a week or so with each set of grandparents and we are pretty lazy on the weekends.
posted by sutel at 12:35 PM on June 5, 2016
I grew up in a fairly ruralish place and there was no town pool, beaches were at least an hour away and I didn't go to camp because it was too expensive.
My kids are having a completely different summer experience than I ever did. My first grader went to a bunch of day camps last year and she had a blast. We are lucky to live somewhere that has in-town rec camps that are fairly affordable ($130/week for 5 full days) and we have a nice "village" of other parents to help with the 9 am to 4 pm conundrum. The rec camps are a lot of fun and the kids spend time outside, they do arts and crafts, they swim, etc.
I think that unstructured time is great and I'm in favor of it but entire stretches of summer of it can be boring and stultifying too. My kids do get a week or so with each set of grandparents and we are pretty lazy on the weekends.
posted by sutel at 12:35 PM on June 5, 2016
Sorry, I misread. Italy has three months, as do others.
posted by sourcejedi at 12:36 PM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by sourcejedi at 12:36 PM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
Ours is six weeks, so less than half as long.Also, my hunch is that the typical working person gets a lot more paid time off. There are two issues in the US: we have a very long summer break, and parents typically can't take very much time off of work. It's kind of a perfect storm of a childcare mess.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:37 PM on June 5, 2016 [11 favorites]
I kind of think it's deliberately classist- they can fill up the program without catering to dual income families, so they don't.
That seems unlikely -- nearly 70% of couples are dual income. Can every summer program really only be targeting 30% of its potential market out of pure snobbishness?
(And of course that doesnt take into account the percentage of children who live in single-parent, single-income families, reducing that 30% figure even further).
posted by pocketfullofrye at 12:39 PM on June 5, 2016
That seems unlikely -- nearly 70% of couples are dual income. Can every summer program really only be targeting 30% of its potential market out of pure snobbishness?
(And of course that doesnt take into account the percentage of children who live in single-parent, single-income families, reducing that 30% figure even further).
posted by pocketfullofrye at 12:39 PM on June 5, 2016
Yeah, I'm a single childless woman in France with 37 paid vacation days I rarely know how to use. Parents get a few extra days of vacation, and also get three paid days they can use if a kid gets sick, five days if it's an infant under 12 months old. This is in addition to having unlimited (up to two years' worth, anyway) paid sick leave with a doctor's approval.
It's so widespread for parents to take their vacation days at the same time as school holidays that France has a special three-zone calendar for them, so roads, tourist destinations (the French tend to go to other regions of France on holiday) and public transport aren't all clogged.
posted by fraula at 12:43 PM on June 5, 2016 [16 favorites]
It's so widespread for parents to take their vacation days at the same time as school holidays that France has a special three-zone calendar for them, so roads, tourist destinations (the French tend to go to other regions of France on holiday) and public transport aren't all clogged.
posted by fraula at 12:43 PM on June 5, 2016 [16 favorites]
Unfortunately the research about most year-round schooling experiments has been decided meh. For the most part there is no increase in days of instruction and while there is less of an disruption to learning that 3 months off most of the research seems to suggest that 3 months off spaced evenly throughout the year really doesn't create that much of a learning advantage over traditional schooling options and when you factor in the increased costs of cooling older schools in the summer it's not a great option for most school districts.
However there is some pretty compelling evidence that year round schooling that actually increases the days of instruction does offer significant benefits so it would be actually useful to create year round schooling programs that have only minimal breaks throughout the year.
My daughter's Montessori program added an option for year round schooling for early childhood a couple of years back and to our massive delight expanded it to elementary this year based upon demand. For my daughter who just transitioned from kindergarten to elementary it's going to be a massive advantage because she'll have 3 months worth of a soft transition before actual elementary starts up and the summer program is about 50% outdoor education and 50% standard elementary so I'm hoping it will accelerate her reading.
It's expensive because of course we also have to do supplemental before and after care but honestly it's probably comparable in cost to stringing an endless string of 2 week day camps many of which are insanely expensive. Plus my daughter prefers continuity so having a bunch of peers doing the same thing for the whole summer will really help her. She's solid at making new friends but we've had zero crying and stress filled evenings in the 2 weeks she's been out of school. That by itself has been absolutely golden.
But I also understand my wife and I have access to resources that many people don't plus we specifically have avoided moving into high cost neighborhoods in order to get into top end public schools. Private schools still makes decent financial sense for us but I can totally understand why most families try to get into the best public school they can and then struggle during the summer.
posted by vuron at 12:50 PM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
However there is some pretty compelling evidence that year round schooling that actually increases the days of instruction does offer significant benefits so it would be actually useful to create year round schooling programs that have only minimal breaks throughout the year.
My daughter's Montessori program added an option for year round schooling for early childhood a couple of years back and to our massive delight expanded it to elementary this year based upon demand. For my daughter who just transitioned from kindergarten to elementary it's going to be a massive advantage because she'll have 3 months worth of a soft transition before actual elementary starts up and the summer program is about 50% outdoor education and 50% standard elementary so I'm hoping it will accelerate her reading.
It's expensive because of course we also have to do supplemental before and after care but honestly it's probably comparable in cost to stringing an endless string of 2 week day camps many of which are insanely expensive. Plus my daughter prefers continuity so having a bunch of peers doing the same thing for the whole summer will really help her. She's solid at making new friends but we've had zero crying and stress filled evenings in the 2 weeks she's been out of school. That by itself has been absolutely golden.
But I also understand my wife and I have access to resources that many people don't plus we specifically have avoided moving into high cost neighborhoods in order to get into top end public schools. Private schools still makes decent financial sense for us but I can totally understand why most families try to get into the best public school they can and then struggle during the summer.
posted by vuron at 12:50 PM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
Growing up, I never knew a single kid who went to a summer camp of any sort. We'd all heard of camps, of course, but they were these mysterious things that only rich kids from the north side did. Whenever I read about camps, it's seemingly something that every damned kid in the country did/does, and it continues to perplex me.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:55 PM on June 5, 2016 [13 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 12:55 PM on June 5, 2016 [13 favorites]
In Denmark, everyone has the right to 5 weeks of holidays, and most have more.
The schoolkids have July + one week in August as holidays + a christmas break, a break during spring and one during autumn, so it doesn't match up entirely. To help, most schools have 1 week of summer camp and other institutions have another week where children up to 12 can attend. Prices for these are really low, and refunds exist for low-income families. In the bigger towns and cities, a charity provides day-camp all summer for free - the schedule is announced publicly every week.
There are also private camps which specialize in sailing or horse-back riding or jiu-jitsu, or something. Some of these have public funding so normal kids can go, but not all.
Generally, I've been able to huddle through as a single parent with the help of my parents and friends (and I've brought friends' kids on vacation), but my kids have still been at camp because it's fun and part of the experience of childhood.
I loved the holidays as a child, and I still do. Weeks of nothingness are good for the soul. I don't think I could handle living without that freedom.
posted by mumimor at 12:58 PM on June 5, 2016 [9 favorites]
The schoolkids have July + one week in August as holidays + a christmas break, a break during spring and one during autumn, so it doesn't match up entirely. To help, most schools have 1 week of summer camp and other institutions have another week where children up to 12 can attend. Prices for these are really low, and refunds exist for low-income families. In the bigger towns and cities, a charity provides day-camp all summer for free - the schedule is announced publicly every week.
There are also private camps which specialize in sailing or horse-back riding or jiu-jitsu, or something. Some of these have public funding so normal kids can go, but not all.
Generally, I've been able to huddle through as a single parent with the help of my parents and friends (and I've brought friends' kids on vacation), but my kids have still been at camp because it's fun and part of the experience of childhood.
I loved the holidays as a child, and I still do. Weeks of nothingness are good for the soul. I don't think I could handle living without that freedom.
posted by mumimor at 12:58 PM on June 5, 2016 [9 favorites]
Camps were not really a thing in Australia when I was growing up - maybe a week or two at a time for some special activity, but nothing like the ritual that it is in the US. But in general this is a more manageable problem with a six-week summer break from school, and four weeks annual leave for a full-time worker. I imagine things are still damn hard if you're a single parent and/or a casual worker without leave, though.
posted by une_heure_pleine at 1:12 PM on June 5, 2016
posted by une_heure_pleine at 1:12 PM on June 5, 2016
Summer was actually not a hugely busy time for people in agriculture
Whaaaa? People have alreaday got the first cutting of hay in the barn this week most places and it'll soon be weaning time for most livestock when herds need to be separated. Plus veggie gardens are in full swing , it's already time to can first crop a lot of places. And crops need watering and weeding while livestock is moved to summer pastures places where that's a thing and needs watched. All traditional jobs for kids.
Whoever told you that summer isn't busy for agriculture lied. A lot.
posted by fshgrl at 1:14 PM on June 5, 2016 [13 favorites]
Whaaaa? People have alreaday got the first cutting of hay in the barn this week most places and it'll soon be weaning time for most livestock when herds need to be separated. Plus veggie gardens are in full swing , it's already time to can first crop a lot of places. And crops need watering and weeding while livestock is moved to summer pastures places where that's a thing and needs watched. All traditional jobs for kids.
Whoever told you that summer isn't busy for agriculture lied. A lot.
posted by fshgrl at 1:14 PM on June 5, 2016 [13 favorites]
The only camps I ever went to in the summer were the local Girl Scout camps. I want to say that costs could be offset by selling an obscene amount of cookies, which I think I managed at least twice, maybe three times.
And now I'm off to Google 'colonie' because I've never heard of that before, and all I've seen around are outrageously priced centri estivi with similar problems vis-a-vis inconvenient hours. We're lucky enough that it's not a necessity for the time being, but it's always good to know more; I'm already grasping around getting to know the school system here and it's a slog that I feel like I'm doing blindfolded at times.
posted by romakimmy at 1:19 PM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
And now I'm off to Google 'colonie' because I've never heard of that before, and all I've seen around are outrageously priced centri estivi with similar problems vis-a-vis inconvenient hours. We're lucky enough that it's not a necessity for the time being, but it's always good to know more; I'm already grasping around getting to know the school system here and it's a slog that I feel like I'm doing blindfolded at times.
posted by romakimmy at 1:19 PM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
The dude's name is Kenneth Gold, and he's a historian of education and the author of School's In: Summer Education and American Public Schools, 1840-2000 . (I was working on a post on this when Ralston McTodd posted this. Article here, and another one here.) You're welcome to contact him at the College of Staten Island and tell him that he's wrong, but he might think you're a bit of a kook.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:20 PM on June 5, 2016
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:20 PM on June 5, 2016
It really depends on what sort of agriculture that you are in.
If you are raising pretty standard grains (corn, wheat, etc) or stuff like cotton or Tobacco the summer can be pretty slow because modern agricultural methods largely depend on using irrigation for crop growth, pesticides and herbicides to keep the crop healthy, etc.
Veggie Gardens are definitely in swing but large scale produce farmers depend more on migrant farm workers instead of underaged family members.
Animal husbandry is typically pretty busy in the summer of course especially during times when drought can really negatively impact the herds but even then I'm not sure it's quite as demanding as Spring and Fall and most modern farmers don't require underaged labor to the degree they used to.
posted by vuron at 1:23 PM on June 5, 2016
If you are raising pretty standard grains (corn, wheat, etc) or stuff like cotton or Tobacco the summer can be pretty slow because modern agricultural methods largely depend on using irrigation for crop growth, pesticides and herbicides to keep the crop healthy, etc.
Veggie Gardens are definitely in swing but large scale produce farmers depend more on migrant farm workers instead of underaged family members.
Animal husbandry is typically pretty busy in the summer of course especially during times when drought can really negatively impact the herds but even then I'm not sure it's quite as demanding as Spring and Fall and most modern farmers don't require underaged labor to the degree they used to.
posted by vuron at 1:23 PM on June 5, 2016
Jeezus, haven't you people ever heard of TV?
Seriously, though, back in the 70s, both my parents were working, so they were either gone during the day or sleeping due to working graveyard shift. So we watched a lot of TV during the day, played outside with neighbors in afternoons/evenings. I never really thought I was bored too much, and if I was, it was too fucking bad, anyhow. I did do a day camp one summer, organized through our church, but it wasn't anything spectacular, to an extent I didn't ask to do it again. I don't think my parents gave much thought to keeping us kids stimulated. As I got older, I discovered the library. I remember thinking cabin/resort style summer camp being something rich white kids did on TV shows.
I do recall there being a lot of guilt going around about kids sitting in front of the TV all day. I think it's probably been replaced by internet these days. I would have gone bonkers for the kind of internet access we enjoy today.
I do recall an old episode of This American Life. These stories mostly sound like those rich white kid stories from TV when I was a kid.
posted by 2N2222 at 1:26 PM on June 5, 2016 [7 favorites]
Seriously, though, back in the 70s, both my parents were working, so they were either gone during the day or sleeping due to working graveyard shift. So we watched a lot of TV during the day, played outside with neighbors in afternoons/evenings. I never really thought I was bored too much, and if I was, it was too fucking bad, anyhow. I did do a day camp one summer, organized through our church, but it wasn't anything spectacular, to an extent I didn't ask to do it again. I don't think my parents gave much thought to keeping us kids stimulated. As I got older, I discovered the library. I remember thinking cabin/resort style summer camp being something rich white kids did on TV shows.
I do recall there being a lot of guilt going around about kids sitting in front of the TV all day. I think it's probably been replaced by internet these days. I would have gone bonkers for the kind of internet access we enjoy today.
I do recall an old episode of This American Life. These stories mostly sound like those rich white kid stories from TV when I was a kid.
posted by 2N2222 at 1:26 PM on June 5, 2016 [7 favorites]
But being in front of a screen all summer does active damage to you. Learning to swim, hike, etc. is pretty great, if you can afford it.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:28 PM on June 5, 2016
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:28 PM on June 5, 2016
The problem with this is privilege. If your children have learning disabilities, or are low-income, etc., having a summer to "explore" is fairly detrimental to the maintenance of what they've learned in school.
I understand maybe for a child with learning disabilities, who might need structured learning over summer breaks to stay caught up, but low-income? I pretty much got into college because summertime was when I was free of the pointless busy work homework and projects of my crappy public school and got to read and work on things that interested me. Including poetry, fixing cars, knitting/crocheting/making chain mail, learning to code, etc. Mostly all free or available at my public library.
I also spent a looooot of time with internet and TV and playing with my sisters. We were at home all day alone while our parents were at work. This only worked once we were all old enough, and there was a lot of chaos while we were still too little to be independent, and I don't blame any parents for anxiety about this problem. But you don't need to go to summer camp for enrichment (though it's probably nice), and summer can be beneficial even to low-income kids, who learn just like other kids from doing and experimenting. (Not sure why that needs to be said.)
Kids who are at risk of getting involved in gang activity over the summer because there's nowhere for them to go, maybe.
posted by stoneandstar at 1:29 PM on June 5, 2016 [7 favorites]
I understand maybe for a child with learning disabilities, who might need structured learning over summer breaks to stay caught up, but low-income? I pretty much got into college because summertime was when I was free of the pointless busy work homework and projects of my crappy public school and got to read and work on things that interested me. Including poetry, fixing cars, knitting/crocheting/making chain mail, learning to code, etc. Mostly all free or available at my public library.
I also spent a looooot of time with internet and TV and playing with my sisters. We were at home all day alone while our parents were at work. This only worked once we were all old enough, and there was a lot of chaos while we were still too little to be independent, and I don't blame any parents for anxiety about this problem. But you don't need to go to summer camp for enrichment (though it's probably nice), and summer can be beneficial even to low-income kids, who learn just like other kids from doing and experimenting. (Not sure why that needs to be said.)
Kids who are at risk of getting involved in gang activity over the summer because there's nowhere for them to go, maybe.
posted by stoneandstar at 1:29 PM on June 5, 2016 [7 favorites]
Every summer, low-income youth lose two to three months in reading while their higher-income peers make slight gains. Most youth lose about two months of math skills in the summer.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:32 PM on June 5, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:32 PM on June 5, 2016 [5 favorites]
But being in front of a screen all summer does active damage to you. Learning to swim, hike, etc. is pretty great, if you can afford it.
I learned to swim and hike for free. I also spent all summer in front of a screen, and now I'm a programmer doing CS research with a very active interest in film and film criticism. I'm sure screen time can have a negative impact on attention span etc., but the outcomes don't seem that horrifying. (Also, kids do occasionally get tired of screens and read books or hang out with whoever is around.)
Every summer, low-income youth lose two to three months in reading while their higher-income peers make slight gains. Most youth lose about two months of math skills in the summer.
I mean, fair enough, but are those incremental reading/math skills more valuable than learning to be a self-directed, intrinsically motivated human being who develops deep interests? There's also research on how kids who are extracurriculared and college-prepped and summer camped to within an inch of their life lack grit and motivation once they leave the rewards-based system of grade school/college.
posted by stoneandstar at 1:35 PM on June 5, 2016 [7 favorites]
I learned to swim and hike for free. I also spent all summer in front of a screen, and now I'm a programmer doing CS research with a very active interest in film and film criticism. I'm sure screen time can have a negative impact on attention span etc., but the outcomes don't seem that horrifying. (Also, kids do occasionally get tired of screens and read books or hang out with whoever is around.)
Every summer, low-income youth lose two to three months in reading while their higher-income peers make slight gains. Most youth lose about two months of math skills in the summer.
I mean, fair enough, but are those incremental reading/math skills more valuable than learning to be a self-directed, intrinsically motivated human being who develops deep interests? There's also research on how kids who are extracurriculared and college-prepped and summer camped to within an inch of their life lack grit and motivation once they leave the rewards-based system of grade school/college.
posted by stoneandstar at 1:35 PM on June 5, 2016 [7 favorites]
I was left to my own devices a fair amount when both my parents were at work but let's all please remember that children start school at age 5. Leaving a 10 year old home alone all day to watch TV? Maybe non-optimal but whatever. Doing the same with a 5 year old? Hope you enjoy CPS contacts because that is both legitimately dangerous and illegal.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:40 PM on June 5, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:40 PM on June 5, 2016 [9 favorites]
If you are raising pretty standard grains (corn, wheat, etc) or stuff like cotton or Tobacco the summer can be pretty slow because modern agricultural methods largely depend on using irrigation for crop growth, pesticides and herbicides to keep the crop healthy, etc.
Back in the day the kids would have been out weeding and hoeing the rows, picking off pests, and so on, all things that have been mechanized or replaced with chemicals. The modern agricultural work cycle has changed enormously from what it was historically.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:02 PM on June 5, 2016 [4 favorites]
Back in the day the kids would have been out weeding and hoeing the rows, picking off pests, and so on, all things that have been mechanized or replaced with chemicals. The modern agricultural work cycle has changed enormously from what it was historically.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:02 PM on June 5, 2016 [4 favorites]
Now that I'm a parent, I'm constantly surprised at how poorly the system is set up. Someone above mentioned schools that get out at 2:30 PM. Meanwhile, my friend would love to shift her work to part time (for reasons like that) but can't.
I feel like there should be some advocacy group that works to change public policy -- e.g., longer maternity leave, paid maternity leave, more part-time jobs and job shares, tax incentives for on-site daycares at big workplaces, some solution to this summer mess... the list goes on and on.
posted by slidell at 2:05 PM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
I feel like there should be some advocacy group that works to change public policy -- e.g., longer maternity leave, paid maternity leave, more part-time jobs and job shares, tax incentives for on-site daycares at big workplaces, some solution to this summer mess... the list goes on and on.
posted by slidell at 2:05 PM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
I feel like there should be some advocacy group that works to change public policy
There is Moms Rising. I'm a little meh on them after seeing them trumpet studies suggesting that women aren't discriminated against in the workplace until they become mothers.
posted by Ralston McTodd at 2:08 PM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
There is Moms Rising. I'm a little meh on them after seeing them trumpet studies suggesting that women aren't discriminated against in the workplace until they become mothers.
posted by Ralston McTodd at 2:08 PM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
" low-income? I pretty much got into college because summertime was when I was free of the pointless busy work homework and projects of my crappy public school and got to read and work on things that interested me. Including poetry, fixing cars, knitting/crocheting/making chain mail, learning to code, etc. Mostly all free or available at my public library. I also spent a looooot of time with internet and TV and playing with my sisters."
Hey that's cool that you had access to a library that was open and had funding, and materials for crafting, and the internet, but a lot of low income kids have none of those things. Your definition of "low income" may be somewhat skewed. A lot of low-income kids have no access to libraries -- they're closed, or the kids can't get to them, or they have no library card -- a great, great many have no internet access at home, and craft materials are a luxury. A lot of low-income kids in my school district can expect a single meal a day at home. They are not tinkering on cars or learning to crochet. They are sitting indoors, strictly forbidden from venturing outside where gang members may be trying to recruit them, while their parents work at least two jobs, in a house that may or may not have electricity and running water.
Lack of access to school means they're hot, hungry, unsupervised, and -- yeah -- losing skills.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:41 PM on June 5, 2016 [37 favorites]
Hey that's cool that you had access to a library that was open and had funding, and materials for crafting, and the internet, but a lot of low income kids have none of those things. Your definition of "low income" may be somewhat skewed. A lot of low-income kids have no access to libraries -- they're closed, or the kids can't get to them, or they have no library card -- a great, great many have no internet access at home, and craft materials are a luxury. A lot of low-income kids in my school district can expect a single meal a day at home. They are not tinkering on cars or learning to crochet. They are sitting indoors, strictly forbidden from venturing outside where gang members may be trying to recruit them, while their parents work at least two jobs, in a house that may or may not have electricity and running water.
Lack of access to school means they're hot, hungry, unsupervised, and -- yeah -- losing skills.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:41 PM on June 5, 2016 [37 favorites]
Yeah my reaction to the person claiming that agriculture slows down in the summer was WTF, because I only have a small garden and it's already kicking my butt.
But reading through this thread gave me an idea for next year: Garden Camp! Open dawn to dusk!
Except I probably couldn't get/keep a license if I drank beer all day while watching the kiddies, which would put a pretty big cramp in my gardening style. :(
posted by Jacqueline at 2:43 PM on June 5, 2016 [8 favorites]
But reading through this thread gave me an idea for next year: Garden Camp! Open dawn to dusk!
Except I probably couldn't get/keep a license if I drank beer all day while watching the kiddies, which would put a pretty big cramp in my gardening style. :(
posted by Jacqueline at 2:43 PM on June 5, 2016 [8 favorites]
We are about to experience our first summer of "summer vacation," and I'm dreading it a little. It's expensive, even the cheap YMCA camp our son will go to. It's also a logistical nightmare- there are other camps that look fun, but how on earth do we transport him to/from and still work our normal work hours? There are a lot of camps where that's impossible.
This is our first year too, and we are having precisely the same experience.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 2:57 PM on June 5, 2016
This is our first year too, and we are having precisely the same experience.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 2:57 PM on June 5, 2016
School year is for learning, summer is for exploring.
My kids have done theater camp, science camp, LEGO camp, cooking camp, zoo camp, sports camp, and a wide variety of other activities. This year one child will be an "intern" at a camp for younger kids, and will also volunteer at a local animal shelter.
The kids are freed from a constant influx of projects, studying, homework, and tests for 3 months of the year...Yes, the camps that my kids go to cost good money. In response to this issue, let's create more public camps...
Let summer be the time for kids to be kids, rather than adults in training.
posted by RalphSlate at 2:22 PM on June 5
I for one would like to see the public schools offer the camps you describe over the summer as part of the curriculum. Call them "academic enhancement education" so that you get the no-homework/no-exams bit, and focus on social skills and exploring art, science, music, theater, reading, with field trips, special projects, etc.
Schools could devote fall, winter, and spring to the regular curriculum of readin', writin', and 'rithmetic. A short break (say, the week before Memorial Day?), and then transition to academic enhancement programming. Do that, have a short break (maybe three days?) in the middle of it, and then another break at the end around Labor Day, and then back to readin', writin', and 'rithmetic.
posted by magstheaxe at 3:02 PM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
My kids have done theater camp, science camp, LEGO camp, cooking camp, zoo camp, sports camp, and a wide variety of other activities. This year one child will be an "intern" at a camp for younger kids, and will also volunteer at a local animal shelter.
The kids are freed from a constant influx of projects, studying, homework, and tests for 3 months of the year...Yes, the camps that my kids go to cost good money. In response to this issue, let's create more public camps...
Let summer be the time for kids to be kids, rather than adults in training.
posted by RalphSlate at 2:22 PM on June 5
I for one would like to see the public schools offer the camps you describe over the summer as part of the curriculum. Call them "academic enhancement education" so that you get the no-homework/no-exams bit, and focus on social skills and exploring art, science, music, theater, reading, with field trips, special projects, etc.
Schools could devote fall, winter, and spring to the regular curriculum of readin', writin', and 'rithmetic. A short break (say, the week before Memorial Day?), and then transition to academic enhancement programming. Do that, have a short break (maybe three days?) in the middle of it, and then another break at the end around Labor Day, and then back to readin', writin', and 'rithmetic.
posted by magstheaxe at 3:02 PM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
I learned to swim and hike for free.
I mean, that's great for you -- but I calling it free oversimplifies problems of access a lot. Maybe you didn't pay for camp, but you still
1) Lived in an area with access to places to swim and hike
2) Had transportation to those places
3) Had adults around who could supervise you
I'm assuming that you didn't learn to swim unsupervised -- or, if you did, that you aren't suggesting that sending kids out to learn how to swim and hike on their own is a solution.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:04 PM on June 5, 2016 [7 favorites]
I mean, that's great for you -- but I calling it free oversimplifies problems of access a lot. Maybe you didn't pay for camp, but you still
1) Lived in an area with access to places to swim and hike
2) Had transportation to those places
3) Had adults around who could supervise you
I'm assuming that you didn't learn to swim unsupervised -- or, if you did, that you aren't suggesting that sending kids out to learn how to swim and hike on their own is a solution.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:04 PM on June 5, 2016 [7 favorites]
If you are over the age of 25 or so, whatever your parents let you do when they weren't around is probably illegal or socially unacceptable in the year 2016. You simply can't let young kids stay home alone, or explore the woods alone, or bike to their friends' houses alone, or drop them off at the public library all day, without getting socially ostracized and possibly arrested. So your personal childhood experiences are probably not all that relevant.
posted by miyabo at 3:10 PM on June 5, 2016 [22 favorites]
posted by miyabo at 3:10 PM on June 5, 2016 [22 favorites]
I'm assuming that you didn't learn to swim unsupervised -- or, if you did, that you aren't suggesting that sending kids out to learn how to swim and hike on their own is a solution.
Well, it's a solution, though likely a more permanent solution than desired.
posted by lazuli at 3:23 PM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
Well, it's a solution, though likely a more permanent solution than desired.
posted by lazuli at 3:23 PM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
I do question whether the most vulnerable kids dealing with the most trauma and poverty most need MORE cramming of academic materials in their brains rather than addressing their complex needs that might help them learn better overall in the long term.
Hours in school is not required for successful school, Finnish schools do well with some of the least hours, and school can not replace family. Poor kids often don't even have family around and so being near adults might be a benefit-- that doesn't mean kids deserve us to see this as the ideal rather than helping families with the financial security to spend time with their kids.
How do they do it in Finland? They offer a combination of financial supports and free day care, optional to families such that while daycare is accessible it is still rarely used under 3 years of age as parents are provided financial supports to care for them if they wish, part time work options of financially supported and more, read here. Combined with 30 vacation days available to parents (6 weeks) in addition to 13 other paid holidays and in dual working families the summer could be covered by overlapping vacation days and a few camps.
I think we are overworked and over schooled and it's not actually making us smarter or our brains healthier and doesn't produce higher test scores either unless you count the fact that impoverished kids are benefited by being supervised and interacting with adults and kids in a safe environment they wouldn't otherwise have. Totally think it's needed to have free/low cost childcare but not that this is an argument that when kids suffer from poverty, instead of more nurturing and support and time for creative play-they need more information crammed in their brains.
posted by xarnop at 3:41 PM on June 5, 2016 [9 favorites]
Hours in school is not required for successful school, Finnish schools do well with some of the least hours, and school can not replace family. Poor kids often don't even have family around and so being near adults might be a benefit-- that doesn't mean kids deserve us to see this as the ideal rather than helping families with the financial security to spend time with their kids.
How do they do it in Finland? They offer a combination of financial supports and free day care, optional to families such that while daycare is accessible it is still rarely used under 3 years of age as parents are provided financial supports to care for them if they wish, part time work options of financially supported and more, read here. Combined with 30 vacation days available to parents (6 weeks) in addition to 13 other paid holidays and in dual working families the summer could be covered by overlapping vacation days and a few camps.
I think we are overworked and over schooled and it's not actually making us smarter or our brains healthier and doesn't produce higher test scores either unless you count the fact that impoverished kids are benefited by being supervised and interacting with adults and kids in a safe environment they wouldn't otherwise have. Totally think it's needed to have free/low cost childcare but not that this is an argument that when kids suffer from poverty, instead of more nurturing and support and time for creative play-they need more information crammed in their brains.
posted by xarnop at 3:41 PM on June 5, 2016 [9 favorites]
And again once you're spending the money on a larger school structure and staff- where does that money come from and why couldn't it be spent towards directly helping parents afford to spend more time with their kids if they want to?
posted by xarnop at 3:43 PM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by xarnop at 3:43 PM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
I'm 42, so I was a kid in the 70s and 80s. Looking back, I was very lucky growing up - both my parents were teachers, so they had more or less the same vacation schedule as we did. (Although my mom stayed home with us until I was in middle school and old enough to watch my sister after school until one of them got home.) Not many of the kids I knew in town went to sleepaway camp - maybe a week or so at Girl Scout or Boy Scout overnight camp but that was about it. The park district and the library had full schedules of things for kids to do in the summer and we did a lot of them! (They still do - actually they have more. But luckily again, I grew up in a town where those things are seen as important points of pride and funded accordingly.) Both my sister and I went to day camp for a couple weeks each summer. (I remember being jealous that most of the girls in my group were there for the extended hours - they seemed to bond with each other much more than with those of us who weren't.)
I for one would like to see the public schools offer the camps you describe over the summer as part of the curriculum. Call them "academic enhancement education" so that you get the no-homework/no-exams bit, and focus on social skills and exploring art, science, music, theater, reading, with field trips, special projects, etc.
It wasn't an official part of the curriculum, but I went to something like this as a kid! It was called PASS (stood for People's Alternative Summer School) I think it was a joint project of the school district and the park district (I know we met at the park district building). It was led by a few of the teachers at my grade school and it was so popular that there were two sessions a day: one morning, one afternoon. (My favorite teacher taught the afternoon session so that's the one I attended.) We did lots of cool activities, such as an "archeological dig" outside the building, working together to draw a gigantic map of town and then going to Village Hall to present it to the mayor (full disclosure: my dad was mayor at the time), playing lots of games, building things with Tinkertoys, etc. I loved it!
posted by SisterHavana at 3:59 PM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
I for one would like to see the public schools offer the camps you describe over the summer as part of the curriculum. Call them "academic enhancement education" so that you get the no-homework/no-exams bit, and focus on social skills and exploring art, science, music, theater, reading, with field trips, special projects, etc.
It wasn't an official part of the curriculum, but I went to something like this as a kid! It was called PASS (stood for People's Alternative Summer School) I think it was a joint project of the school district and the park district (I know we met at the park district building). It was led by a few of the teachers at my grade school and it was so popular that there were two sessions a day: one morning, one afternoon. (My favorite teacher taught the afternoon session so that's the one I attended.) We did lots of cool activities, such as an "archeological dig" outside the building, working together to draw a gigantic map of town and then going to Village Hall to present it to the mayor (full disclosure: my dad was mayor at the time), playing lots of games, building things with Tinkertoys, etc. I loved it!
posted by SisterHavana at 3:59 PM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
And again once you're spending the money on a larger school structure and staff- where does that money come from and why couldn't it be spent towards directly helping parents afford to spend more time with their kids if they want to?
Without arguing which is better, it is simply *much* more expensive to allow all adults more free time from work than it is to centrally offer a facility or a set of structures which allows the same adults to stay at work. It is nowhere near so simple as to redirect the money for the schools to the parents.
posted by frumiousb at 4:02 PM on June 5, 2016
Without arguing which is better, it is simply *much* more expensive to allow all adults more free time from work than it is to centrally offer a facility or a set of structures which allows the same adults to stay at work. It is nowhere near so simple as to redirect the money for the schools to the parents.
posted by frumiousb at 4:02 PM on June 5, 2016
Keep in mind that for a lot of kids the subsidized breakfast and lunch are the only guaranteed meals of the week. There is already issues where food insecurity over the weekend negatively impacts child performance because hungry kids don't learn and some teachers try to help by sending home food for the weekend.
I have no idea how a large percentage of inner city youth manage to eat over the summer without free school food.
Interesting enough issues like learning to swim have been complicated by most municipal pools getting closed down and the few that remain tend to not be in poor neighborhoods.
For many kids school is absolutely a refuge from a ton of problems. Hell it can be the only place that they are safe from predation.
posted by vuron at 4:08 PM on June 5, 2016 [8 favorites]
I have no idea how a large percentage of inner city youth manage to eat over the summer without free school food.
Interesting enough issues like learning to swim have been complicated by most municipal pools getting closed down and the few that remain tend to not be in poor neighborhoods.
For many kids school is absolutely a refuge from a ton of problems. Hell it can be the only place that they are safe from predation.
posted by vuron at 4:08 PM on June 5, 2016 [8 favorites]
Tallahassee folks: my nonprofit has summer camp slots with full scholarships open, MeMail me for details.
posted by Cookiebastard at 4:47 PM on June 5, 2016 [13 favorites]
posted by Cookiebastard at 4:47 PM on June 5, 2016 [13 favorites]
Keep in mind that for a lot of kids the subsidized breakfast and lunch are the only guaranteed meals of the week.
This is a huge issue, and though there are some summer programs (check your local listings and the USDA program page) it gets complicated for the invisible kids left home alone without appropriate care (like with an older sibling, but not enough older, or a neighbor they can call in an emergency) who can't take advantage of on-site food services because someone will notice. Some food banks try to put together weekly take-home bags that are kind of wink-wink geared to be preparable by people who can't cook - cereal and dry milk, granola bars, stuff that's better than going hungry though not exactly the protein and vitamins or adequate calories a developing body needs. If you're a year-end food bank supporter, consider kicking in another donation for the summer.
posted by Lyn Never at 5:08 PM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
This is a huge issue, and though there are some summer programs (check your local listings and the USDA program page) it gets complicated for the invisible kids left home alone without appropriate care (like with an older sibling, but not enough older, or a neighbor they can call in an emergency) who can't take advantage of on-site food services because someone will notice. Some food banks try to put together weekly take-home bags that are kind of wink-wink geared to be preparable by people who can't cook - cereal and dry milk, granola bars, stuff that's better than going hungry though not exactly the protein and vitamins or adequate calories a developing body needs. If you're a year-end food bank supporter, consider kicking in another donation for the summer.
posted by Lyn Never at 5:08 PM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
I just want to second the points just made by Eyebrows McGee and vuron. In my neighborhood, there are day camp programs whose ads emphasize "free lunch!" because they are funded to help the families that qualify for free / reduced cost lunches.
posted by slidell at 5:09 PM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by slidell at 5:09 PM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]
You simply can't let young kids stay home alone, or explore the woods alone, or bike to their friends' houses alone, or drop them off at the public library all day, without getting socially ostracized and possibly arrested. So your personal childhood experiences are probably not all that relevant.
You can, though. I know people who do it, to this very day. Just not in the milieu of the Metafilter demographic. Which is fine, and I have no beef with the complaint, but it's kind of weird to imagine how much of America is unrepresented on this site, in spite of it being so US-centric.
Hey that's cool that you had access to a library that was open and had funding, and materials for crafting, and the internet, but a lot of low income kids have none of those things.
Your definition of "low income" may be somewhat skewed
C'mon. I was *absolutely* low-income, I lived in a trailer park for many years, my family was on welfare. When I was born, my mom worked raking weeds off of beaches and my dad worked in a convenience store. They divorced when I was 13 and there was no child support, so we didn't have the benefit of two parents or two incomes. I had no health insurance for all my teen years. I grew up around a lot of people with addictions, people with very untreated mental illness, physical abuse, and people who were actually illiterate. Sometimes we didn't eat dinner, sometimes we did. This was all very difficult, unstable and frustrating, but putting me in school all summer wouldn't have solved the problem. (Yes, I got free lunches at school.)
As I mentioned in my comment, yes there are low-income students in different situations struggling with very different issues. But this is one of the frustrating things about being on Metafilter, which is that people with no experience with being urban poor speak for the urban poor, and people with no experience being poor at all conflate urban and rural poverty.
I think that there should be ways to feed and care for children during school off-months, including day cares, camps, community centers, etc., that are not funded by parents. But I really don't think that overschooling kids is the answer to any of those problems, for many reasons. Even low-income kids deserve time for undirected learning and discovery. Eliminating summer break is not going to make education funding appear out of thin air, and it's a really good way to raise kids to think that life is about jumping through hoops, and not developing any kind of higher-order soft skills for success. Keeping kids "off the streets," sure, great, but doesn't need to be equated to three more months of drills for the purpose of minimizing small educational inequities that have questionable bearing on long-term success.
Children in urban poverty do, actually, cultivate passions, aesthetics, curiosity, etc. during their free time. Many of them do actually have access to technology. They have personalities; they're not just "the poor" or "the low income" who need to be put in schools all year through gruelingly dry, impersonal curricula to make sure that they do what they're "supposed to" instead of growing as individuals. Much like the arguments that the poor should not buy enjoyable food with their EBT funds or that they should be funneled into trade schools because a "real" education is of no direct benefit to them, this point of view is frustrating. We are people, even if we only have one old basketball we found in the park to play with, or sewing supplies from the Salvation Army, or an old shitty car on blocks in the yard to tinker with when our cousin is over. Even if we don't have a permanent address so we can't get a library card, so we read shitty, age-inappropriate novels we got for 25 cents from a sidewalk sale. And maybe sports or clothesmaking or literary perceptiveness makes us who we are as adults, despite the lunches we didn't get to eat, the bruises, the hunger pangs, the sneering, the rejection and neglect. And that is important, as much as is doing as much harm-reduction as possible for these kids, giving them the resources they need for free-form and independent learning, and keeping vulnerable kids safe from gang violence.
posted by stoneandstar at 7:09 PM on June 5, 2016 [56 favorites]
You can, though. I know people who do it, to this very day. Just not in the milieu of the Metafilter demographic. Which is fine, and I have no beef with the complaint, but it's kind of weird to imagine how much of America is unrepresented on this site, in spite of it being so US-centric.
Hey that's cool that you had access to a library that was open and had funding, and materials for crafting, and the internet, but a lot of low income kids have none of those things.
Your definition of "low income" may be somewhat skewed
C'mon. I was *absolutely* low-income, I lived in a trailer park for many years, my family was on welfare. When I was born, my mom worked raking weeds off of beaches and my dad worked in a convenience store. They divorced when I was 13 and there was no child support, so we didn't have the benefit of two parents or two incomes. I had no health insurance for all my teen years. I grew up around a lot of people with addictions, people with very untreated mental illness, physical abuse, and people who were actually illiterate. Sometimes we didn't eat dinner, sometimes we did. This was all very difficult, unstable and frustrating, but putting me in school all summer wouldn't have solved the problem. (Yes, I got free lunches at school.)
As I mentioned in my comment, yes there are low-income students in different situations struggling with very different issues. But this is one of the frustrating things about being on Metafilter, which is that people with no experience with being urban poor speak for the urban poor, and people with no experience being poor at all conflate urban and rural poverty.
I think that there should be ways to feed and care for children during school off-months, including day cares, camps, community centers, etc., that are not funded by parents. But I really don't think that overschooling kids is the answer to any of those problems, for many reasons. Even low-income kids deserve time for undirected learning and discovery. Eliminating summer break is not going to make education funding appear out of thin air, and it's a really good way to raise kids to think that life is about jumping through hoops, and not developing any kind of higher-order soft skills for success. Keeping kids "off the streets," sure, great, but doesn't need to be equated to three more months of drills for the purpose of minimizing small educational inequities that have questionable bearing on long-term success.
Children in urban poverty do, actually, cultivate passions, aesthetics, curiosity, etc. during their free time. Many of them do actually have access to technology. They have personalities; they're not just "the poor" or "the low income" who need to be put in schools all year through gruelingly dry, impersonal curricula to make sure that they do what they're "supposed to" instead of growing as individuals. Much like the arguments that the poor should not buy enjoyable food with their EBT funds or that they should be funneled into trade schools because a "real" education is of no direct benefit to them, this point of view is frustrating. We are people, even if we only have one old basketball we found in the park to play with, or sewing supplies from the Salvation Army, or an old shitty car on blocks in the yard to tinker with when our cousin is over. Even if we don't have a permanent address so we can't get a library card, so we read shitty, age-inappropriate novels we got for 25 cents from a sidewalk sale. And maybe sports or clothesmaking or literary perceptiveness makes us who we are as adults, despite the lunches we didn't get to eat, the bruises, the hunger pangs, the sneering, the rejection and neglect. And that is important, as much as is doing as much harm-reduction as possible for these kids, giving them the resources they need for free-form and independent learning, and keeping vulnerable kids safe from gang violence.
posted by stoneandstar at 7:09 PM on June 5, 2016 [56 favorites]
Yeah I don't understand why we don't just have free breakfast and lunch for all kids as the default in all kids-oriented activities (school, summer day camps, etc.) because kids are horrendous little monsters when they're hungry. If nothing else, it's justifiable as an employee retention expense.
posted by Jacqueline at 7:16 PM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Jacqueline at 7:16 PM on June 5, 2016 [2 favorites]
I grew up in the 60s and 70s in the SF Bay Area. We weren't super poor, but we weren't rich either. My mom, dad, brother and I lived in a 2 bedroom apartment. When I was younger and my mom didn't work, she took in ironing to make extra money. From about third grade on, she worked at least part time.
When I was in elementary school, every spring, our school district would send home the summer school catalog. There was regular summer school and a program for gifted kids. You could choose the classes you wanted to take. I loved summer school. I took a film class, a class on logic, learned about Mexican-American culture, held mock elections, learned how to use the CCTV system, analyzed water quality, used microscopes, etc... It wasn't dry boring stuff -- it was fun. And, while I think this cost my folks some money, it sure didn't cost much because we couldn't have afforded it otherwise. The school bus came to pick us up at our school since they consolidated classes into one or two of the larger schools in the district. After school, the park between my school and house had rec counselors running games for kids. It was a lot of fun.
Now, I have a 13 y/o that lives with my ex and I have him every summer. I pay for camps for him which are somewhat like what I had growing up but are a lot more expensive. I think it is a shame that opportunities like I had are not available to lower income kids today. I had a lot of unstructured time in the summer, but summer school expanded my horizons.
posted by elmay at 8:30 PM on June 5, 2016 [5 favorites]
When I was in elementary school, every spring, our school district would send home the summer school catalog. There was regular summer school and a program for gifted kids. You could choose the classes you wanted to take. I loved summer school. I took a film class, a class on logic, learned about Mexican-American culture, held mock elections, learned how to use the CCTV system, analyzed water quality, used microscopes, etc... It wasn't dry boring stuff -- it was fun. And, while I think this cost my folks some money, it sure didn't cost much because we couldn't have afforded it otherwise. The school bus came to pick us up at our school since they consolidated classes into one or two of the larger schools in the district. After school, the park between my school and house had rec counselors running games for kids. It was a lot of fun.
Now, I have a 13 y/o that lives with my ex and I have him every summer. I pay for camps for him which are somewhat like what I had growing up but are a lot more expensive. I think it is a shame that opportunities like I had are not available to lower income kids today. I had a lot of unstructured time in the summer, but summer school expanded my horizons.
posted by elmay at 8:30 PM on June 5, 2016 [5 favorites]
Yeah, I'm a single childless woman in France with 37 paid vacation days I rarely know how to use. Parents get a few extra days of vacation, and also get three paid days they can use if a kid gets sick, five days if it's an infant under 12 months old. This is in addition to having unlimited (up to two years' worth, anyway) paid sick leave with a doctor's approval.
In Denmark, everyone has the right to 5 weeks of holidays, and most have more.
The schoolkids have July + one week in August as holidays + a christmas break, a break during spring and one during autumn, so it doesn't match up entirely. To help, most schools have 1 week of summer camp and other institutions have another week where children up to 12 can attend. Prices for these are really low, and refunds exist for low-income families. In the bigger towns and cities, a charity provides day-camp all summer for free - the schedule is announced publicly every week.
Holy cow.
Whe do we just admit that the reason we have students going hungry in the summer and losing academic skill is just because we live in an anti-human society? I mean, it literally doesn't have to be this way because in other, better countries they don't have the same problems.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:01 PM on June 5, 2016 [15 favorites]
In Denmark, everyone has the right to 5 weeks of holidays, and most have more.
The schoolkids have July + one week in August as holidays + a christmas break, a break during spring and one during autumn, so it doesn't match up entirely. To help, most schools have 1 week of summer camp and other institutions have another week where children up to 12 can attend. Prices for these are really low, and refunds exist for low-income families. In the bigger towns and cities, a charity provides day-camp all summer for free - the schedule is announced publicly every week.
Holy cow.
Whe do we just admit that the reason we have students going hungry in the summer and losing academic skill is just because we live in an anti-human society? I mean, it literally doesn't have to be this way because in other, better countries they don't have the same problems.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 9:01 PM on June 5, 2016 [15 favorites]
My parents teamed up with 2-3 other parents so there were ~5 of us, all with a barely college age sitter for the entire summer. We played such fun games as trying to break into our own houses, hide and seek throughout the neighborhood, endless card games, and some amount of video games (good old qbert). I have no idea how much it cost, but it was great. I'm not sure I can make this work now (finding other families is not easy), and it still seems expensive.
posted by lab.beetle at 9:30 PM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by lab.beetle at 9:30 PM on June 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
As a public school teacher, making less money than I did 15 years ago, I take sinister momentary pleasure at this moment - folks remember how we're not lazy and overpaid! ... *sarcasm font* And might I add how I deserve to be rated/employed based on my students' test scores for merit pay (it's $5 and I'm not joking.)
We take care of your kids AND teach them! 2-for-1 deal.
posted by beckybakeroo at 9:43 PM on June 5, 2016 [5 favorites]
We take care of your kids AND teach them! 2-for-1 deal.
posted by beckybakeroo at 9:43 PM on June 5, 2016 [5 favorites]
If you are over the age of 25 or so, whatever your parents let you do when they weren't around is probably illegal or socially unacceptable in the year 2016.
I TOLD them chores were illegal. "MooOOOOOooom", I said.
(Actually, in my anxious bobo milieu, chores seem to be straight-up unimaginable. What's the rest of the country like? The world?)
posted by clew at 12:03 AM on June 6, 2016
I TOLD them chores were illegal. "MooOOOOOooom", I said.
(Actually, in my anxious bobo milieu, chores seem to be straight-up unimaginable. What's the rest of the country like? The world?)
posted by clew at 12:03 AM on June 6, 2016
In the Netherlands, people have a right to 20 vacation days per year. People with better jobs have a bit more, the average is 25. Everyone who has children wants the same weeks off (it's illegal to take your child on holiday outside of official vacations). There's 6 weeks of summer holidays, 2 weeks of christmas and May, plus a week of autumn and spring and the occasional day when the school closes, so even though we have it a lot better than in the US, this is still a problem here. Most people manage with help from grandparents and other people, but it's not easy for everyone. Daycare (or after school care) is more affordable here for low income families, that helps, but it sucks if you're a kid who doesn't really like it there. From about 8-12 years old is tough, it's too young to stay home all day every day, and often too old to still find daycare fun. (I think the Netherlands is one of the countries where "free range children" are still kind of the norm, but even so, most people would not let a 10 year old be alone by themselves for days at a time)
Many towns here have one week "summer camps" for children that sound like camps in the US: a place where children do fun things during the day and go home during the night. These weeks are always very low cost (like, 10 euro for a whole week) and run by volunteers (often students). It's fun, and good, but still only a week, and it has the same start and end time problems as people mention here: it's from about 9:30 to 4 or so.
I have found that most people just cannot imagine how life is without a large social network. Most people I know know at least 10 people who can watch their child, if necessary. Two sets of parents, a few neighbours, friends, parents of children's friends. They generally don't realize at all how privileged they are with this. I quit reading feminist magazines because they were filled with articles like "women are so lazy I don't understand why not every woman has a full time job like me, it's not hard at all" and then mention in passing their neighbour who would not only pick up their children from school at the last minute (because supermom had a meeting that ran late) they would also help the child with homework and cook dinner for everybody.
posted by blub at 1:01 AM on June 6, 2016 [4 favorites]
Many towns here have one week "summer camps" for children that sound like camps in the US: a place where children do fun things during the day and go home during the night. These weeks are always very low cost (like, 10 euro for a whole week) and run by volunteers (often students). It's fun, and good, but still only a week, and it has the same start and end time problems as people mention here: it's from about 9:30 to 4 or so.
I have found that most people just cannot imagine how life is without a large social network. Most people I know know at least 10 people who can watch their child, if necessary. Two sets of parents, a few neighbours, friends, parents of children's friends. They generally don't realize at all how privileged they are with this. I quit reading feminist magazines because they were filled with articles like "women are so lazy I don't understand why not every woman has a full time job like me, it's not hard at all" and then mention in passing their neighbour who would not only pick up their children from school at the last minute (because supermom had a meeting that ran late) they would also help the child with homework and cook dinner for everybody.
posted by blub at 1:01 AM on June 6, 2016 [4 favorites]
Guess I was lucky we lived in a wealthy area but were poor ourselves... also, Britain is densely populated enough that if you live in an urban area there's likely a library within walking distance.
My dad did shift work and my mom was a cashier and so I had long stretches of time to myself, either because Dad was asleep or because the house was empty. I needed that alone time for my own sanity, since we had only a 1-bedroom apartment and I would never have had that time or space for solitude otherwise.
I read, watched TV, listened to music on a succession of thrift-store portable record players dating back to the 1960s, attempted crafts with whatever materials were to hand, went for long walks. It was 3 miles to my school and I would often just get up and walk all the way there and all the way back for no reason other than I enjoyed the walk.
Of course, I was over 9 years old by then, and in the UK we only had 6 weeks of school holiday, which wouldn't have seemed like enough but for the weeks sprinkled throughout the year.
Before that we lived in remote Canada and my mom didn't work outside the home (yeah you could earn enough in the 70s for that), plus there were friends' houses I could go to, so it was just never a problem.
It really is too bad that what should be the most fun time of the year for a kid should have to become such a problem because of a combination of difficulties.
posted by tel3path at 2:55 AM on June 6, 2016
My dad did shift work and my mom was a cashier and so I had long stretches of time to myself, either because Dad was asleep or because the house was empty. I needed that alone time for my own sanity, since we had only a 1-bedroom apartment and I would never have had that time or space for solitude otherwise.
I read, watched TV, listened to music on a succession of thrift-store portable record players dating back to the 1960s, attempted crafts with whatever materials were to hand, went for long walks. It was 3 miles to my school and I would often just get up and walk all the way there and all the way back for no reason other than I enjoyed the walk.
Of course, I was over 9 years old by then, and in the UK we only had 6 weeks of school holiday, which wouldn't have seemed like enough but for the weeks sprinkled throughout the year.
Before that we lived in remote Canada and my mom didn't work outside the home (yeah you could earn enough in the 70s for that), plus there were friends' houses I could go to, so it was just never a problem.
It really is too bad that what should be the most fun time of the year for a kid should have to become such a problem because of a combination of difficulties.
posted by tel3path at 2:55 AM on June 6, 2016
We were poor, but we had one incredible advantage - my grandmother lived with us. This meant that if both of my parents had to be out of the house for any reason, she could appear to take care of me for the purposes of any sort of law enforcement/emergency/nosy neighbor (despite the fact that she was not and could not - her presence was really all that was required.) My mom's job wasn't full time, but during summers I'd be more or less by myself maybe 6-7 hours a day. I can't remember a time before knowing how to make myself a peanut butter sandwich or microwave some canned soup, if I got hungry.
I was simply trusted not to get into too much trouble. Lucky for mom and dad I was a child of order and obedience, I can't imagine what they'd have done if I'd had any penchant for mischief at all.
It's a shame we've all collectively left behind the multi-generation household, it really saved my parents on many, many, many occasions.
posted by gloriouslyincandescent at 4:41 AM on June 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
I was simply trusted not to get into too much trouble. Lucky for mom and dad I was a child of order and obedience, I can't imagine what they'd have done if I'd had any penchant for mischief at all.
It's a shame we've all collectively left behind the multi-generation household, it really saved my parents on many, many, many occasions.
posted by gloriouslyincandescent at 4:41 AM on June 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
"There were so many day camps I couldn't go to because they all fucking started at 9 and ended at 4."
"the upcharge for the hour and change needed to actually be able to drop your kid off early enough to make it to work and another upcharge for the hour and change needed after the camp because--shocker!--your work day doesn't end at 2:30."
I just grabbed two of the comments pointing out how summer camp hours and work hours are incompatible, but none of the comments mentioned anything about busses, which I found curious. Growing up in L.A. in the 70s I went to day camp through sixth grade. All but one year was at the local Jewish Community Center, but in both cases I was picked up, just like the school bus. My mom must have left for work before the bus came because I missed the bus so many times. (Those days I would go home and watch tv all day or get into trouble somewhere.) Anf all summer you'd see the yellow camp busses driving around.
So, is this something that was unique to L.A.? Something that has been cut due to budgets? Or are kids just not allowed to be unsupervised? I don't have kids but obviously most people don't have a parent or guardian with the flexibility to shuttle kids to and fro during work hours in this day and age! Tbh, I don't even know how regular school busses work anymore, either, so it might be related. I'd imagine that increasing camp costs just a little to budget for busses would actually increase the number of campers, because it seems like there's a big group of parents who might could swing the cost if they didn't have to take the kids and pick them up. Or am I missing something?
posted by Room 641-A at 5:58 AM on June 6, 2016
"the upcharge for the hour and change needed to actually be able to drop your kid off early enough to make it to work and another upcharge for the hour and change needed after the camp because--shocker!--your work day doesn't end at 2:30."
I just grabbed two of the comments pointing out how summer camp hours and work hours are incompatible, but none of the comments mentioned anything about busses, which I found curious. Growing up in L.A. in the 70s I went to day camp through sixth grade. All but one year was at the local Jewish Community Center, but in both cases I was picked up, just like the school bus. My mom must have left for work before the bus came because I missed the bus so many times. (Those days I would go home and watch tv all day or get into trouble somewhere.) Anf all summer you'd see the yellow camp busses driving around.
So, is this something that was unique to L.A.? Something that has been cut due to budgets? Or are kids just not allowed to be unsupervised? I don't have kids but obviously most people don't have a parent or guardian with the flexibility to shuttle kids to and fro during work hours in this day and age! Tbh, I don't even know how regular school busses work anymore, either, so it might be related. I'd imagine that increasing camp costs just a little to budget for busses would actually increase the number of campers, because it seems like there's a big group of parents who might could swing the cost if they didn't have to take the kids and pick them up. Or am I missing something?
posted by Room 641-A at 5:58 AM on June 6, 2016
While a few schools around here have gone to year-round calendars, I'm not sure that it would really be practical to do that on a large scale around here. Most of the schools don't have A/C, and I know my wife's classroom routinely can get to the mid-80's even before we start getting to the higher summer temperatures. Teaching when it's 90+ in a classroom probably isn't going to result in much learning anyways because the kids aren't going to function well in that, and in fact may be dangerous (especially when there's issues with the water supply in the school because one tap in the school tested barely above the limit for lead on the non-flush test, so pretty much all the sinks and water fountains in the school are off). Finding money to put a/c into the school is a laughable situation, and needless to say should probably come after finding money to actually fix the lead problems.
Even with a year round school, as noted, that generally doesn't actually mean a higher number of school days. So all that really does is just move the problem to other parts of the year.
posted by piper28 at 9:39 AM on June 6, 2016
Even with a year round school, as noted, that generally doesn't actually mean a higher number of school days. So all that really does is just move the problem to other parts of the year.
posted by piper28 at 9:39 AM on June 6, 2016
Man I totally LOVED summers as a kid.
But... we lived in a small town, both my parents were teachers (so had summers off with us!), and a good number of my friends had a stay at home parent... so it was basically 3 months solid of traveling, playing with friends, and generally being allowed to roam freely under little to no supervision. We'd be gone for hours and show up again some time around dinner.
Now my wife and I are looking at child care costs, and realizing that with the before school & after school care, plus summers, we're not saving a dime over what we used to pay for day care. Summers are still fun for my son - he gets lots of time with friends, and lots of fun activities, but he's supervised (which is probably a good thing!), and he's not spending time with mom and dad (which I'd prefer was different... but hey, I didn't choose teaching as a profession). The summer break that I remember is not the summer break that he'll remember.
It wasn't really until I had my own kid that I realized how lucky I was to have had the summer breaks I grew up with - they just seemed normal to me, it never occurred to me that everyone didn't get that kind of experience.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:30 AM on June 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
But... we lived in a small town, both my parents were teachers (so had summers off with us!), and a good number of my friends had a stay at home parent... so it was basically 3 months solid of traveling, playing with friends, and generally being allowed to roam freely under little to no supervision. We'd be gone for hours and show up again some time around dinner.
Now my wife and I are looking at child care costs, and realizing that with the before school & after school care, plus summers, we're not saving a dime over what we used to pay for day care. Summers are still fun for my son - he gets lots of time with friends, and lots of fun activities, but he's supervised (which is probably a good thing!), and he's not spending time with mom and dad (which I'd prefer was different... but hey, I didn't choose teaching as a profession). The summer break that I remember is not the summer break that he'll remember.
It wasn't really until I had my own kid that I realized how lucky I was to have had the summer breaks I grew up with - they just seemed normal to me, it never occurred to me that everyone didn't get that kind of experience.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:30 AM on June 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
I went to a bunch of summer camps as a kid in the 90s, and we always had to sign up to arrive early in the morning and leave late to work around our parents' schedule. Sometimes that cost extra, sometimes not.
posted by quaking fajita at 10:36 AM on June 6, 2016
posted by quaking fajita at 10:36 AM on June 6, 2016
In regards to bussing:
My son's day camp is supposed to have bussing in theory. Except that they pick the kids up at one of two drop-off points instead of at home, you have to wait with your child until the bus comes and you have to be there when the bus arrives in the afternoon. Once you factor in all those conditions it is less convenient then dropping him off myself.
And... I just received an email from the camp business manger that the camp is not bussing this week anyway. At 12:28 PM. On the first day of camp. Which started at 9:00 AM.
I want to add that I have to provide all his food for the day - beverages other than water, breakfast, lunch and snacks, some of his sporting equipment and other sundries. If his camp provided bussing plus the aforementioned items, we could not afford to send him at all. Instead we would be cobbling together a work-from home-spend-time-with-relatives-stopgap-with-a-couple-of-weeks-at-former-daycare-plus-vacation schedule that would leave all of us miserable.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 11:21 AM on June 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
My son's day camp is supposed to have bussing in theory. Except that they pick the kids up at one of two drop-off points instead of at home, you have to wait with your child until the bus comes and you have to be there when the bus arrives in the afternoon. Once you factor in all those conditions it is less convenient then dropping him off myself.
And... I just received an email from the camp business manger that the camp is not bussing this week anyway. At 12:28 PM. On the first day of camp. Which started at 9:00 AM.
I want to add that I have to provide all his food for the day - beverages other than water, breakfast, lunch and snacks, some of his sporting equipment and other sundries. If his camp provided bussing plus the aforementioned items, we could not afford to send him at all. Instead we would be cobbling together a work-from home-spend-time-with-relatives-stopgap-with-a-couple-of-weeks-at-former-daycare-plus-vacation schedule that would leave all of us miserable.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 11:21 AM on June 6, 2016 [2 favorites]
It's a shame we've all collectively left behind the multi-generation household, it really saved my parents on many, many, many occasions.
I definitely see the utility of this. It's a shame that both of our sets of parents live in small towns without enough economic activity to sustain us overeducated fools. I also know people our age in my mother's small town and the economic reality that they paint is so much different than my mother seems to think (big surprise). Also, neither grandparents want to move near to us. I'm so jealous of my friends whose family helpers are both near, healthy enough to help, and sane enough to be a pleasure. We likely won't get grandparents nearby until they are so infirm they need care.
I have a good network of friends with families but they almost all have a parent helper (or multiple family members) and they don't need to do a trade with us for childcare so they don't.
I think the future "middle class" for my daughter will not be just a two-income family to support the healthcare, education and housing that the family needs but will be a three-income family where the grandparent or grandparents need to move in but keep earning so that they can all try to squeak by.
posted by amanda at 11:36 AM on June 6, 2016 [4 favorites]
I definitely see the utility of this. It's a shame that both of our sets of parents live in small towns without enough economic activity to sustain us overeducated fools. I also know people our age in my mother's small town and the economic reality that they paint is so much different than my mother seems to think (big surprise). Also, neither grandparents want to move near to us. I'm so jealous of my friends whose family helpers are both near, healthy enough to help, and sane enough to be a pleasure. We likely won't get grandparents nearby until they are so infirm they need care.
I have a good network of friends with families but they almost all have a parent helper (or multiple family members) and they don't need to do a trade with us for childcare so they don't.
I think the future "middle class" for my daughter will not be just a two-income family to support the healthcare, education and housing that the family needs but will be a three-income family where the grandparent or grandparents need to move in but keep earning so that they can all try to squeak by.
posted by amanda at 11:36 AM on June 6, 2016 [4 favorites]
I do question whether the most vulnerable kids dealing with the most trauma and poverty most need MORE cramming of academic materials in their brains rather than addressing their complex needs that might help them learn better overall in the long term.
This, absolutely. I despise the idea that somehow, kids need to "work for" their community supervision and noontime free lunch, like some kind of fucking kiddie welfare program. Give them a break from multiplication tables and let them develop as individuals. And give them a fucking peanut butter sandwich and a safe room and maybe some internet access to do it!
The most frustrating thing is, exactly, there is not a lot of strong proof that the incremental gains/losses of low-income students is what actually holds them back, since low-income kid makes it to college on good grades, gets totally demoralized and drops out one year later is one of the popular narratives my university's retention research group is concerned about. From what I've seen in education/econ research, there are a lot of factors outside of just raw math/reading skills, and parental engagement is huge. We could do our best to replicate the benefits of parental engagement without making sure that for vague moral reasons students are cranking out five-paragraph essays all summer so they get confused when they hit college and middle-class kids are living in a separate universe from them.
posted by stoneandstar at 6:26 PM on June 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
This, absolutely. I despise the idea that somehow, kids need to "work for" their community supervision and noontime free lunch, like some kind of fucking kiddie welfare program. Give them a break from multiplication tables and let them develop as individuals. And give them a fucking peanut butter sandwich and a safe room and maybe some internet access to do it!
The most frustrating thing is, exactly, there is not a lot of strong proof that the incremental gains/losses of low-income students is what actually holds them back, since low-income kid makes it to college on good grades, gets totally demoralized and drops out one year later is one of the popular narratives my university's retention research group is concerned about. From what I've seen in education/econ research, there are a lot of factors outside of just raw math/reading skills, and parental engagement is huge. We could do our best to replicate the benefits of parental engagement without making sure that for vague moral reasons students are cranking out five-paragraph essays all summer so they get confused when they hit college and middle-class kids are living in a separate universe from them.
posted by stoneandstar at 6:26 PM on June 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
Part of why I work part time and in a school (and have done stay-at-home mom) is so that I can be with my daughter on most of her days off and each afternoon. (It's absurd the number of extra days off sprinkled throughout the year; a two-hour early dismissal here, an in-service there...) The school I work at this year had a different spring break than mine, and even trying to sort out the three days I was working and my spouse was working from home, such that he could actually work most of the time, was all sorts of finagling. (She ended up going out to her grandparents for half of it, at her request.)
A lot of parents either sign up for the before and after care at camps or find ways to trade with friends such that you drop your kid off with them when you leave for work and they deliver both kids to camp on time. (The hard part is figuring out what to trade that isn't simply taking the time off to do that half the time.)
When I was a kid I remember spending a lot of time at my parent's workplaces -- I wonder how many places allow that now.
posted by Margalo Epps at 7:35 PM on June 6, 2016
A lot of parents either sign up for the before and after care at camps or find ways to trade with friends such that you drop your kid off with them when you leave for work and they deliver both kids to camp on time. (The hard part is figuring out what to trade that isn't simply taking the time off to do that half the time.)
When I was a kid I remember spending a lot of time at my parent's workplaces -- I wonder how many places allow that now.
posted by Margalo Epps at 7:35 PM on June 6, 2016
I feel bad every time someone asks me "So what are you guys doing this summer?". Like I'm a huge failure because I have nothing planned for us or our kids, there are no "plans" to take big road trips or cruises or go out of town, there is no money for any of that. I've splurged on season passes to the local amusement park, but that won't keep them entertained for long. I remember when I was about 11 we did a big road trip for a month, from Toronto to Calgary, then back through the US, visiting Yellowstone etc. It was EPIC. I can't even begin to imagine what something like that would cost, a month off, all that gas, all those hotels? Sad I can't do that for my kids.
posted by Hazelsmrf at 8:22 PM on June 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Hazelsmrf at 8:22 PM on June 6, 2016 [3 favorites]
I had forgotten about Vacation Bible School; we did do that. One year when I was teaching, I met a family whose kids were going to VBS at all the local churches because it was all they could afford.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:59 PM on June 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:59 PM on June 6, 2016 [1 favorite]
Yeah I don't understand why we don't just have free breakfast and lunch for all kids as the default in all kids-oriented activities (school, summer day camps, etc.) because kids are horrendous little monsters when they're hungry.
The city school district where we live has free breakfast and lunch for all K-8 students in the public school system, and over the summers gives free breakfast and lunch at sites throughout the city for all children under 18. No income qualifications or paperwork necessary.
Granted, that probably says more about the economic plight of our area than the good-hearted-ness of our elected officials, but I still think it's great.
posted by chainsofreedom at 7:03 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]
The city school district where we live has free breakfast and lunch for all K-8 students in the public school system, and over the summers gives free breakfast and lunch at sites throughout the city for all children under 18. No income qualifications or paperwork necessary.
Granted, that probably says more about the economic plight of our area than the good-hearted-ness of our elected officials, but I still think it's great.
posted by chainsofreedom at 7:03 AM on June 7, 2016 [4 favorites]
Ugh. My son is on the spectrum on the less independent side, verbal but with severe delays, all his interests aren't age appropriate - skewing younger. There is no summer camp or program that will take him not costing an arm and a leg.
He goes to extended school year (ESY - because if not continually stimulated and reinforced all the skills gained regress) that used to be 5 days a week all day from the second week of July until the third week of August. The district has cut it to half days, four days a week, from the second week of July to the second week of August. But hey, there's an all day/ all week preschool for kids who parents could find outside daycare/babysitters.
I have a 2 week period in June and a three week period in August where I have to sell organs to find a program or sitter, where I have to build my own curriculum to keep his skills present, and still work more than 40 hours a week to pay for a 1 bedroom apartment.
This school system doesn't work anymore. It just doesn't. It doesn't take into account single parents. It doesn't take into account the amount of hours parents have to work to afford basic necessities. It doesn't take into account that we don't have the big family support systems of 5 or more aunts and uncles living in or around the same area who could step in. It doesn't take in to account how few programs for special needs are out there anymore because places like Easter Seals, the Arc, New Horizons, etc. have closed down any programs they can't get 100% federal funding to cover costs.
Something desperately needs to be done.
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 11:46 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]
He goes to extended school year (ESY - because if not continually stimulated and reinforced all the skills gained regress) that used to be 5 days a week all day from the second week of July until the third week of August. The district has cut it to half days, four days a week, from the second week of July to the second week of August. But hey, there's an all day/ all week preschool for kids who parents could find outside daycare/babysitters.
I have a 2 week period in June and a three week period in August where I have to sell organs to find a program or sitter, where I have to build my own curriculum to keep his skills present, and still work more than 40 hours a week to pay for a 1 bedroom apartment.
This school system doesn't work anymore. It just doesn't. It doesn't take into account single parents. It doesn't take into account the amount of hours parents have to work to afford basic necessities. It doesn't take into account that we don't have the big family support systems of 5 or more aunts and uncles living in or around the same area who could step in. It doesn't take in to account how few programs for special needs are out there anymore because places like Easter Seals, the Arc, New Horizons, etc. have closed down any programs they can't get 100% federal funding to cover costs.
Something desperately needs to be done.
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 11:46 AM on June 7, 2016 [5 favorites]
> If your children have learning disabilities, or are low-income, etc., having a summer to "explore" is fairly detrimental to the maintenance of what they've learned in school
Many school districts have year 'round programs for kids with developmental delays or other disabilities. A friend's son, who had autism, had his summer camp paid for by their district, as he needed to continue working on his social skills.
This should be available for every child who needs it.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:36 PM on June 7, 2016
Many school districts have year 'round programs for kids with developmental delays or other disabilities. A friend's son, who had autism, had his summer camp paid for by their district, as he needed to continue working on his social skills.
This should be available for every child who needs it.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:36 PM on June 7, 2016
Sorry 80 cats, I didn't see your comment.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:37 PM on June 7, 2016
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:37 PM on June 7, 2016
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posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:01 AM on June 5, 2016 [3 favorites]