The summer camp that my kid really loved last summer and wanted to to multiple sessions of this summer has just announced that they are only doing one session this summer. It’s a bit longer than any of the multiple sessions they did last summer, but it doens’t line up neatly with the timing of any of the other summer camp type things around here. If we send him to that one, then we’re going to be scrambling to figure out what to do with him the rest of the summer.
I go into this amount of details not because I think anyone reading this care about the particulars of the summer camps my kids may or may be attending, but because some bullshit like this happens every single summer and I am sick of it.
And yes, I am fully aware of how privileged I am to be able to afford to send my kids to summer camps, and to have the flexibility to be able to get them to and from all the various places.
Still, it is just crazy that so many families have to go through this same ridiculous rigamarole every summer. Everyone one I know is already scrambling to figure out their plans for their kids for June and July. Never mind August, because no one around here offers any summer programming in August and that month basically turns into Thunderdome.
No one should have to deal with this. It makes no sense for schools to take three months off every year. I know there are all sorts of historical reasons we have this stupid schedule, but none of those reasons makes any sense anymore; they only thing keeping us on the summer break system is that it is baked into all the logistics and regulations around the US educational system.
And yet, here we are, running around trying to figure this shit out in January, because if we don’t do it now then all the camps will fill up.
The kids of course look at us like we are crazy—even moreso than usual—when we are asking them all these questions about does this camp sound okay or would you rather do this other one. For them, that might as well be twenty years from now. Why the hell are you asking me about summer, they ask. It’s the middle of winter.
And they’re right. It is ridiculous, but there seems to be no way to change it.