Now is the winter of our parenting discontent.   The gloom is about more than just endless snow days with cooped-up kids.  Across the land, the cautionary education documentary Race to Nowhere is screening in school auditoriums full of unnerved parents.  In counterpoint, Amy Chua’s best-selling Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is splashed all over the media.  Chua’s paean to Chinese-style hardcore parenting intrigues some but appalls many.  And, for untold numbers of families, the kitchen table has morphed into a nightly homework battleground.

Are American parents getting it all wrong?  Are we pushing our kids too hard and making them depressed and sick?  Or, are we neurotically over-protective of their self-esteem?  Are Chinese kids going to grab all the brass rings because their moms are tough as drill instructors?   

Take a deep breath, and think summer camp.  Not soccer camp, or computer camp, or any of the thousands of other “specialty” camps.  An antidote to all this stress lies in the century-old traditional American sleep-away camp.  

Old-fashioned summer camps are all about plucking kids out of the daily grind, plunking them down in rustic settings, taking away their electronic devices, and giving them opportunities to go out and play.

My two sons couldn’t wait to go back each summer to Birch Rock, a non-profit boys’ camp in Maine.  The mission of this 85-year-old camp is to build character. Boys learn to “help the other fellow", undergo cabin inspections and sit up straight at family-style meals in the lodge.  But the reason Charles and Harry went back year after year, is that camp is wildly fun.  Picture happy boys fanned out across the hillside and lake, pedaling mountain bikes, paddling canoes and striking flint against steel to get a spark.  And for heart-pounding, shriek-inducing fun, nothing beats a cross-camp Capture the Flag game. 

Race to Nowhere poignantly reminds us that a child has only one childhood to live.  One on-screen middle-schooler sits at the piano and says she feels hers is being stolen.  Kids who spend seven hours a day in school, gulp dinner as they dash out the door to a team practice, and return to slog through homework until midnight—all of this before they reach high school—rightly feel they are thrust into the rat race too soon.

Listening to anxious and resentful kids in the movie is heartbreaking.  Seeing the faces of their parents is disturbing.  Mothers and fathers look battle-weary and sorrowful.  The kids are clearly struggling, but if they—if we—let them ease up, how are they going to get into the “right” high school and the Ivy League university and land a prestigious job?

In the late 1800’s, visionary educators created summer camps to give children a healthy escape from life’s pressures.  Now more than ever  in our hyper-competitive, media-driven environments, children need the chance to find respite in the natural world.

Chua, the Tiger Mom, writes, “What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it.”  As a camp enthusiast, I’d counter that what makes life fun is trying new things.  Campers can take a crack at myriad pursuits:  kayaking, archery, swimming across the lake, acting in silly skits, hiking up a mountain.  Sampling things without worries of “messing up” unlocks creativity.  What a profound relief it is to have permission to have fun, rather than pressure to excel. 

Chua does make a terrific point when she writes,” Chinese parents assume strength, not fragility.”  In fact, parents who send their kids to camp assume the same thing.   It takes guts for a child to leave home and all that is comfortable and familiar, to try a radically different way of life in the woods.

Michael Thompson, author of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, is writing a new book on kids and camping called Homesick and Happy. 

Thompson says this about his research, “I was struck by the fact that summer camp provides something in short supply in our fast-paced worlds:  respected ritual, time for the generations to get to know one another, and the opportunity to take a nap or read a book after lunch each day.  I hope camps like these can maintain their traditions in the face of the frantic, competitive zeitgeist of modern America.”

Thompson writes on his blog, “This generation of parents is having a hard time letting go of their children.”   This generation also frets that downtime is wasted time.  So the long, satisfying summer at camp is now cut short for computer classes or lacrosse drills.  Or parents decide not to drive their kids and camp trunks north at all.

I remember how hard it was to take my 9-year-old son to camp.  I worried he’d be homesick.  I cried as I waved goodbye and drove away.  But I wanted him to see that it was his life to live, and his independence to enjoy.  He and his younger brother found a supportive, joyous community at Birch Rock.   They discovered that life and learning are full of unexpected pleasures.  And I took pleasure in thinking of them in their little cabins before lights out, books in hands, computers a thousand miles away, listening to the call of the loons.