In his This Life column, July 19, 2013, in the New York Times, Bruce Feiler addressed “The Care-Package Wars.” This topic was close to my heart.
Last summer was the first summer our oldest grandson went to sleep away camp. You read the post on the best care package for last year (it WAS the best, according to our grandson). This grandma learned a lesson from killing herself gathering items in a few weeks last year. I started early for this summer. I put a cardboard box in my closet and, during sales during the year or when a new toy or new version of a toy was advertised, I bought it and put it in the box. My grandson asked that this year’s package be smaller, so all I did was buy more smaller items. By June, the box was overflowing. Yes, this Grandma is over the top, so you can imagine!
Two weeks before camp started, my daughter got an email from camp. No care packages anymore! What! TWO WEEKS NOTICE! They must not know that there are over the top Grandmas out here, prepared, ready, and now frustrated. It is not that I could not bring all of the items as presents when I visit during the year, but these were camp specials, selected to be perfect for a camp package.
My daughter, who knows me well, knew I was going to be upset. But she is smarter than all of us. Like some of the parents that Bruce Feiler wrote about, she had a plan. She said there was no prohibition against our grandson bringing everything in the package to camp in his bus carry ons. Quickly and expensively (with not a complaint at the cost, ok, with a very small complaint), Grandpa sent the care package contents up to our grandson. Our daughter was wonderful and we got to watch our grandson open the package on Face Time. This turned out to be even better than his opening the package at camp!
So what was Bruce Feiler’s experience with this new no camp package rule. I loved learning the origin of “camp packages:”
In almost every way, the camps were exactly as I had romanticized them. Except one: care packages are now strictly banned. In camp after camp, directors described how they had outlawed such packages after getting fed up with hypercompetitive parents sending oversize teddy bears and bathtubs of M&M’s.
And they’re not alone. Across the country, sleep-away programs of all sizes are fighting back against overzealous status-mongers.
Not taking this in stride, parents have turned to increasingly elaborate smuggling routines, from hollowing out Harry Potter books to burrowing holes in tennis balls to get their little dumplings a taste of the checkout aisle. We have entered the age of the care-package wars, where strong-willed camps and strong-willed parents battle over control of their children’s loyalty and downtime. . . .
For as long as American children have attended summer camp (around 150 years), parents have sent them stuff. The term “care package” originated after World War II when the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe (CARE) began sending food relief across the Atlantic. The group bought up surplus 10-in-1 food parcels from the American military, which had prepared them for an invasion of Japan . . . . With such widespread popularity, the name “care package” (the acronym was lowercased in popular usage) quickly carried over to any shipment of supplies to service personnel, college students, inmates or anyone away from home. By the time I went to summer camp in the 1970s, care packages were a rare but treasured joy, as my bunkmates and I would pass around Toll House cookies, beef jerky, Mad magazine and Richie Rich comics.
Camps offer all sorts of justifications for their restrictions: candy and other sweets make children too full to enjoy meals; they promote jealousies; they attract vermin. But an overriding reason is that some parents simply can’t be contained.
Jim Gill, a co-owner of Fernwood Cove, in Harrison, Me., said when he bought the camp in 2004, he instituted a policy of one care package for each of the three weeks of camp. Then he cut back to two, and now he’s at one. “And I’m just about to eliminate them entirely,” he said. “They create such a distraction from the values we’re trying to promote.”
Kevin Gordon, the director of Camp Kupugani in Leaf River, Ill., also bans care packages. But when parents disregarded his warnings, he posted this clarification on his Web site, “A parcel will be considered a care package if it arrives in any of the following: a box, a padded envelope, any envelope of any type or size that appears to include anything more than one letter.” All other items will be disposed of at the camp’s discretion, he wrote, “especially Gummy Bears, which Kevin will eat!”
While most parents sign contracts that they will obey these rules, they mostly ignore them. I heard more techniques for getting Twizzlers into camps than getting nail files into prisons. Other tips include taping gum into the pages of magazines, stuffing chocolate bars into socks and pulling Tampax out of their cylindrical wrappers and replacing them with candy. . . .
As in all game theory, this move from parents created a counter-response from camps, which now have intricate screening mechanisms that rival what the White House uses to test for ricin. The Web site of Camp Kabeyun in Alton Bay, N.H., warns parents that boys are required to come to the office during rest hour and open packages with a counselor, who reviews the contents and confiscates food and candy. “Their time in the office opening packages in the office is time away from their cabin mates and counselors,” it says.
Not all camps have succumbed. Bobby Strauss, the director of Camp Wigwam in Harrison, Me., which I attended, told me he’s a “dinosaur.”
“We firmly believe that there are fewer nicer things in life than getting a care package from home while at camp,” he said. He encourages families to send no more than three a season, make the contents as healthy as possible, and to include enough for the bunkmates and counselors to enjoy together.
Still, Mr. Strauss agrees with every other director I spoke with: care packages are not necessary for campers to have a good experience. Dr. Thurber, an author of “The Summer Camp Handbook,” said his research found care packages make no difference in separation anxiety. If parents must send something, he added, they should send a board game or deck of cards that help the camper make friends.
As for his children, who are attending camps this summer, he won’t be sending them packages. “I’ll be sending handwritten letters,” he said, “and asking them to hand-write me some in return. They give me a narrative of my child’s experience. As a psychologist I know that the way we understand life is by storytelling. I don’t want my children to be sitting around eating junk food. I want them to be telling stories.”
Now, that is mixing apples and oranges. I still sent our grandson cards and letters and emails each day.
Okay, I admit that the care package was as much for me as our grandson. It gave me a project. It gave me an opportunity to show our oldest grandson how much I thought of him and loved him. Did he use every item he brought with him to camp? He says yes. Was it the best camp package ever? He says yes. I want to believe him.
So where does this Grandma go from here with the no “camp package” rule. As Bruce Feiler noted: “Some [grand]parents simply can’t be contained.” The cardboard box is in the closet still. This year it will be filled again, but now that I know the rule, the collection will be mailed earlier and more cheaply for the “camp package” items to go to camp with our grandson at the beginning of camp. We can again watch him open the package on Face
Time before he leaves with
Joy,
Mema
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