By Melanie Kwestel

It’s that time of the year when school is out and the proverbial swimming hole is calling. Aunts always look forward to time with their special nephews and nieces, but what if said children are going to summer camp instead of making s’mores with you?

Summer camp can be a formative, positive experience for children. It helps them develop an identity separate from their parents or other adults, creates resiliency, and enables them learn how to get along with peers. Some children can’t wait to get on that camp bus. Others need a little push. Regardless of where on the spectrum your favorite children lie, there are ways to make the experience more powerful and fun for them.

1. Help the little darlings plan. Talk to them about camp and the things they will do. If they seem a little hesitant, reassure them that parents and Savvy Aunties are in their corner. Choose a special gift that you can send to camp as a reminder of your presence. It could be a stuffed animal, a baseball cap, even a funny toothbrush.

2. Communicate! Stay in touch. Send email, faxes, and snail mail. As anyone who has ever been to camp knows, mail call can be the best part of the day – if you’re the one getting the mail. Check with the children’s parents about how to communicate. Most camps do not download attachments to email, for example. You can also send packages with rainy day activities and books. Here, too, it’s best to check before mailing; many camps do not allow food packages and will return them to senders.

3.Visit! If parents allow, tag along on visiting day. Yes, it’s a long drive. And yes, there will be traffic on those country roads. But it’s all worth it for those big smiles and giant hugs. However, remember one important rule of visiting day: the amount of clinging is directly proportional to the amount of anxiety your niece or nephew has about camp. The most successful visiting days are those where the family picnics together, laughs a lot, and then wonders why campers are so anxious to get back to friends after an hour or two. This is especially true as campers get older. One year my very savvy nephew said, “Wow! Great food. Thanks for the candy! You can go home now.” Of course, I didn’t leave, but I was thrilled that he was having such a good time.

4.Develop a secret code. Find something that the two of you will have in common all summer long. One year my niece and I decided on the moon. “I’ll think of you whenever I look at the moon, and you think of me,” she announced. When she came home (after a wonderful summer) she said that she never missed me, because she knew she could see me before she went to sleep.

5. Attitude is everything! This is perhaps the most important piece of advice. Over the years I’ve found that the most successful campers were those whose parents (and aunts) went to summer camp and loved it. They were predisposed to like camp because their parents had such great stories about their own experiences. So keep the bug and mice infestation stories to a minimum, leave Cropsey out of your tales, and emphasize the good. Even if you cried yourself to sleep for eight solid weeks, there’s no reason to assume your nieces and nephews will do the same. Hopefully, they will love it. And how will you know? They’ll be too busy to write!

Melanie S. Kwestel is the director of communications of Chai Lifeline, an organization that brings hope and joy to seriously ill children and their families and the Savvy Auntie of seven nieces and nephews and 23 great nieces and nephews.

Photo: diofdl via Flickr cc
Published: July 1, 2014