After having just listened to This American Life Podcast, "Notes on Camp", I was struck by the preponderance of overwhelmingly positive camp adventures, experiences, and valuable life lessons that apparently can only be learned at sleepaway camp. While I can not argue that for many people camp is a wonderful place to learn valuable social skills, try new activities, and learn a lot of valuable life skills such as sportsmanship, camaraderie, and cooperation, overnight camp is certainly not a place where everyone can and will thrive. 

In fact, it is not uncommon to hear successful and socially-adept people categorize their camp experience as being among the worst and most socially traumatic experiences of their lives. While it is unfortunately rather common for any group of people to scapegoat those who are in any way different from the majority, this can be a particularly traumatic experience when one is in the tender grip of preadolescence, and is very much under the influence of the predominant opinion of one's peers.

Those children who may have the most difficult time at sleepaway camp are those who are in any way different from the predominant majority either in their interests, their appearance, their developmental level, their acculturation level, or simply those kids that are late bloomers. Additionally, children who are particularly anxious and/or attached to their caregivers may also have a hard time adjusting to a different social order of overnight camp. This does not mean that there is anything socially or otherwise wrong with the children who do not do well at overnight camp. It may simply mean that these folks may thrive in a different, less-intense, social environment.  For instance, some children may fare better at shorter-term specialty camps like drama, art, physics or sports camp. Others may find the structure of day camp more appealing, since day camps allow the campers an opportunity to temporarily escape the constant surveillance of others and one can get a short reprieve from the social forces of what is "cool" and what is "not cool".  

While overnight summer camp may be a great option for some children, others can do just as well learning valuable life skills often exclusively associated with overnight camp from other organized activities. So if you are one of the many people who hated their camp experience, know that you are not alone, and take heart in the fact that the social hierarchies of overnight camp are rarely substantiated in adulthood.

I have sometimes been asked the question: What defines psychological health? I believe that part of the answer lies in mental, or psychological flexibility--the ability to shift one's expectations, coping strategies and emotional responses depending on the situation at hand. In fact, this month's issue of Psychology Today touched on this very point in this interesting article about the characteristics of happy people.

The article points out that "the ability to shift mental states as circumstances demand...[is]...a fundamental aspect of well-being". Mental flexibility is the ability to recognize the particular demands of a situation, and being able to meet those demands in a satisfactory manner, without relying too heavily on just one way of being or coping. For example, we may sometimes find ourselves relying heavily on one or two "inherent" coping strategies to deal with certain situations, yet we may discover time and time again that these strategies may not be getting us the results that we want. Perhaps instead of repeating this pattern, we may want to notice what those strategies are, uncover when and how we first learned them,  and learn to implement alternative ways of handling the situations at hand which may yield different results. 

While shifting our "go to" behavioral and cognitive patterns may seem scary and overwhelming at first, the potential for growth in this experience is undeniable.
Furthermore, attempting to be more psychologically flexible comes with little risk, as the  old ways of handling situations are never eradicated, they are simply  better understood and perhaps expanded upon. The experience of trying alternative ways of thinking, acting and even feeling in various situations can be viewed as an opportunity to introduce more varied tools to our psychological tool kits which may better prepare us to handle whatever life throws our way.