We have all started to pore over the lists sent home from our children’s overnight camps. Eleven pairs of underwear, 18 shirts, 16 pairs of shorts, a thousand pairs of socks, and all for just 21 days.
And don’t forget the journal for deep thoughts, the cameras, the hacky sacks, flashlights and frisbees.
Well, my dear first-time camp parent, I’m here as a wizened and street-hardened second-time camp parent to share the facts.
So here you have it: What Not to Pack for Your Overnight Camper
- Anything at all; let them pack themselves. Mostly. Packing your bags is a rite of passage, a first test of independence. If your children can read a list, then they can make a stack of too many swim shirts. (And you can always check how they did when they’re not looking.)
- Precisely half the clothes requested by the camp: If your child is a boy (and I know this from personal experience), he will wear one of three t-shirts and probably the same pair of shorts every single day. I, at least, verified this in the daily delivery of photos from camp. If your child is a girl, she is too busy sharing with and borrowing from every girl in her bunk to wear her own clothes too often, anyway. I know this from personal experience, too.
- Expensive water bottles: They’re like flushing money down the drain, my friend.
- Your own anxieties: Don’t worry – your kid will have plenty of their own. You don’t need to send them with your own concerns about homesickness (it’s natural) and unmatched clothes (also natural), or the fear that your children won’t make friends (they will). You are brave. You are bold. You are the reason our people have made it this far, and your kid will be okay.
- Secret cookies, SnakPaks and potato chips: I remember seeing a movie in the ‘90s where a kid snuck an entire salami into camp. I assume it was not a kosher salami, but I always thought it was hilarious. But in this age of strict allergy policies, I don’t think anyone would think it was as funny as I do…
- Childhood stuffies (without their knowledge): It just about killed me when Darby went off to camp without it. I almost slipped it into his bag. But if I can trust him to pack all the rest of his items, then I can trust his decision to leave his best friend at home. And, yeah, he did okay. Sniff.
- Toothpaste — Just kidding. Darby, please remember to brush your teeth.
- A camera: this one comes straight from my camper. For his birthday just a month before he went to camp last year, we bought Darby a super hipster CampSnap screen-free digital camera. I was bursting with sentimentality as he unwrapped it, remembering the hours I spent examining prints from my own camp experience, mailing them off to friends, sharing them and trading them. But as Darby says, “I had too much fun to worry about taking pictures.” What more could I wish for my Zoomer baby? And, again, camp sends home literally hundreds each day.
- Walkmans, discmans, dozens of AA batteries and ten rolls of film: The items that seemed so vital to my own sense of self – those are things that my child doesn’t need.
Add envelopes, stamps, and personalized stationery to the list of outdated camp supplies. Letters home come in the form of hand-written notes, scanned and delivered to a digital inbox in a matter of moments.
But the more camp changes, the more it stays the same. Campers still sing silly songs, get extremely dirty, break rules (but not too many) and make friends for life. We, the parents, still fret and cry and laugh over stories we will never fully understand and never be fully prepared for — no matter how many swim shirts we remember to pack.
