No single homesickness prevention strategy is as powerful or simple as practice time away from home. Indeed, now is the perfect time for parents to arrange for their child to spend a long weekend with friends or relatives.  The key is to simulate a camp-like separation from home by eschewing phone calls, refraining from pick-up deals, and encouraging hand-written correspondence.

All people spending time away from home and family feel some pangs of homesickness.  For children at camp, my research suggests that 80% aren’t bothered by these normal feelings of missing home.  The other 20% do experience distress.  For some, the basic functions of a camper—eating, sleeping, and participating in activities—become difficult and the emotional pain seems unbearable.

Fortunately, even the most intense homesickness is largely preventable.  And the cornerstone of prevention—practice time away from home—is actually fun when spent gradually.  Here’s how it works: Children learn to cope with distress out of necessity.  When they’re enjoying life and feeling happy, that’s wonderful.  But in that state, they’re not learning much about coping with negative emotions.

Along comes a stressor, such as misplacing a favorite toy, getting teased by a sibling, slogging through homework, or being transported to a place without parents, and things get interesting.  Depending on the child’s temperament, past experiences, and interpretation of the event in question, negative emotions, such as anxiety, depression, frustration, and anger ensue.  Whereas a small percentage of children give up and do nothing, most devise some way of coping.

For the frustration that results from a misplaced toy, the child might initiate a search or turn to another toy.  For the anger that’s ignited by a teasing episode, the child might fight back, walk away, or tell a parent.   For depression that accompanies a difficult homework assignment, perhaps the young person tells herself that it’s for her own good or will help her get a better grade.  And for feelings of homesickness that accompany exposure to a novel environment, children teach themselves to stay busy, make friends, and keep time in perspective.

Naturally (and I mean that literally), arranging practice time away from home prompts children to develop previously untapped coping skills…different things they can think or do to help themselves feel better when it hurts.  Most parents are surprised when I tell them that younger children are at no greater risk for intense homesickness than older children. Indeed, chronological age is a far less accurate predictor of homesickness intensity than…you guessed it…previous experience away from home.

It’s not all automatic, though.  Parents play an essential role in coaching their sons and daughters on the best ways to cope.  Luckily, there’s an inexpensive DVD-CD set that gives new camper families all the information they need to prepare, including guidance on the most powerful coping strategies for homesickness. The newly updated edition of “The Secret Ingredients of Summer Camp Success” is available online from the American Camp Association’s bookstore (ACAcamps.org/bookstore).  Nestled among other valuable camp prep tips, such as how to pack a trunk and what to tell the camp nurse, is plenty of wonderful advice from actual campers on how to best prevent homesickness. Strategies include:

• Spending practice time away from home (of course) without parents or phones.
•  Arranging a play date with another camper in your area, to spark social connection at camp.
•  Counseling parents to refrain from making pick-up deals, such as “If you feel homesick, I’ll come and get you.”  (You can guess how that inevitably concludes.).
•  Counseling parents to refrain from sharing their own anxiety or ambivalence, such as “Have a great time at camp.  I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”  (Try “You’ll have a blast!” instead.).
•  Gathering lots of information about the daily schedule and facilities at camp.  The more you know before you go, the more at home you’ll feel.
•  Ensuring that new campers participate in preparation for camp, such as shopping and packing together with their parents.
• Posting a calendar on the wall that indicates opening day and the session length.

Learning to cope with homesickness will not only make future separations from home easier, it also helps children develop an important life skill: emotion regulation.  Like camp itself, the preparation for camp builds character, confidence, and self-esteem.  Just don’t expect your son or daughter to be able to regulate the joy they’ll experience.  Nothing puts an indelible smile on kids’ faces better than the “I did it!” feeling that results from successfully completing their first overnight camp stay.

P.S.: You can enjoy the well-deserved break from full-time parenthood.

Dr. Christopher Thurber is a board-certified clinical psychologist, father, and the co-author of “The Summer Camp Handbook.” He created a homesickness prevention DVD-CD set called “The Secret Ingredients of Summer Camp Success” that lowers the intensity of first-year campers by 50%, on average.  Visit CampSpirit.com to learn more.

Beneath Amy Chua’s personal struggle in Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother lies a deeper ambivalence about learning: What on earth should we do with our children outside of school, during unstructured free time? Chua is at times conflicted but wryly proud of her intense, authoritarian solution, a luxury reserved for high-achieving, high-functioning parents. At the end of this best-seller, I felt rattled by Chua’s belief that education happens only in connection to school or homemade settings that are rigorously academic.

So entrenched is this education–school link that year-round school is routinely proposed as the answer to educational deficits among US youth. Ironically, summer holds the potential to endow children and adolescents with the life skills and values they need to become healthy adults with important careers that make meaningful contributions to society. Formal schooling has tremendous value, but one key to a complete education is a high-quality camp experience.

Research on the benefits of summer camp has conclusively validated 150 years of conventional wisdom. Camp does accelerate the development of young people’s social skills, self-esteem, independence, spirituality, sense of adventure, and environmental awareness. Astute camp directors know that combining community living away from home with a natural setting and a recreational premise creates hearty, happy, healthy children who know how to work together, win with humility, and lose with grace. They become resilient, motivated, and emotionally intelligent.

In the United States and around the world, visionary adults have created excellent children’s camps; our challenge now is to give camp to many more children. For every child who attends summer camp in the United States, there are about five who do not. Ethnic minority children, including Chua’s own biracial children, are especially under-represented at US camps.

Since biblical times, wise adults have outlined the youthful precursors to successful adulthood. Every decade or so, a new group of adults laments the shortcomings of that generation’s youth and restates their vision about how those young people can overcome their failings. Most recently, The Partnership for 21^stCentury Skills recast the optimal outcomes of youth development as aptitude in: professionalism/work ethic; oral and written communication; teamwork/collaboration; and critical thinking. If corporate America is smart enough to understand that applied skills are essential for success, when will parents wake up to the importance of summer camp?

Summer camp was predictably absent from the recommendations in Are They Really Ready to Work? (co-authored by The Partnership). Yet the report, published in 2006, suggests a variety of action steps that camps have been taking since the mid-1800s. These include: teaching young people to make appropriate choices concerning health and wellness; offering activities that nurture creative thinking and socially skilled problem-solving; and providing opportunities for leadership.

Some would have us believe that fun learning is an oxymoron anywhere beyond preschool. If we stay fixed in that mindset, summer camp is doomed, along with our children’s mental health. Happiness is not a quaint byproduct of leisure; it’s the driving force behind success. We do our best — at work, at play, and in relationships — when we’re having fun. From that standpoint, summer camp becomes the perfect complement to traditional education. To Harvard University’s president, Charles W. Eliot, this was clear in 1922 when he declared, “The organized summer camp is the most important step in education that America has given the world.”

Parents should know that Eliot’s wise words pale in comparison to the words of enthusiasm that young people routinely use to describe their camp experience, such as:

• “At camp, I make friends easily.”
• “At camp, I get to try new things…stuff that might not be cool at school.”
• “At camp, the pressures of school disappear and I can just relax and have fun.”
• “At camp, I can be a leader by setting a good example for my friends.”
• “At camp, I feel close to nature and to the planet.”
• “At camp, I get to be myself.”

Parents might be surprised to know that it is this last response, “At camp, get to be myself,” that holds the most transformative power for youth.  When boys and girls find their authentic voices in a safe, nurturing, and challenging environment, they experience a rush of self-confidence.  This self-confidence then carries forward into other domains at home, school, and beyond.  It fuels their willingness to explore and learn, which is a key predictor of later success.

A high quality camp experience does more than halt summer learning loss; it provides experiences that accelerate development in the very direction employers crave. To quote one of my former leaders-in-training from Camp Belknap, “What I learned at Princeton and in medical school never could have prepared me to be chief resident at Johns Hopkins. It was my experience at summer camp that earned me that spot. I’m confident it’s also what will make me a good parent.”

What more could moms and dads possibly need to hear to convince them of the necessity of enrolling their son or daughter in summer camp? Although many US schools need serious improvement, we have less of an educational deficit than many believe. We have summer camps, created a century and a half ago by professional educators to bolster classroom education. It is now a moral imperative that we fulfill our commitment to our children by embracing the complementary relationship between schools and camps.

A version of this article was originally published in the 2011 November/December issue of Camping Magazine. Reprinted by permission of the American Camp Association.  ©2011 American Camping Association, Inc.

Dr. Christopher Thurber, a frequent contributor to camping publications and health blogs, works as a clinical psychologist at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. He is the co-author of The Summer Camp Handbook and the host of the homesickness prevention DVD entitled The Secret Ingredients of Summer Camp Success. Learn more on Chris’s website: CampSpirit.com.

During the last few months, I have had the chance to talk with several speakers who strongly affected their audiences. I started to think about the remarkable leaders with whom I have worked over the years and how they have made huge differences with their incredible wisdom, insights, and actions. I contacted some of them and asked them to comment on working in education in these difficult times. I asked them to share some take-away messages, so that, if they were speaking, what would they want their audience to remember? Read the first installment in the series: school safety.

Students are more than grade-point averages. Often they are faced with many barriers to effective education. Dealing with the whole child, and not just the academic child, can help facilitate learning. Safe and healthy students learn more. Here are some “Tips from the Trenches” about the value of supporting students.

Howard Adelman and Linda Taylor, codirectors of whole child partner Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA:

• “School improvement policy and practice continues to give short shrift to addressing barriers to learning and teaching and re-engaging disconnected students. As a result, critical factors interfering with student performance, progress, and well-being continue to be marginalized at schools.”
• “The time is long overdue for moving in new directions for student and learning supports. This entails reframing student and learning supports into a unified and comprehensive system that is fully integrated into the school improvement agenda at every school. And, developing, implementing, and sustaining such a system calls for revamping operational infrastructures to redeploy and weave school and community resources together.

Brian Law, school counselor at Valdosta (Ga.) High School and 2010–11 president of whole child partner American School Counselor Association:

“If I could mandate three laws about education, they would be

• Enacting stricter anti-bullying laws in the schools, mandating teacher training to recognize the signs of bullying of all students, and requiring reporting of bullying incidents;
• Funding school counselors in K–12 at a ratio of 1:250; and
• Mandating graduation plans emphasizing college and career readiness that begin in elementary school.”

Donna Mazyck, executive director of whole child partner National Association of School Nurses:

“As noted by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, school nurses play a vital role by enabling children’s health and learning. A school nurse in a school building saves principals, teachers, and clerical staff a considerable amount of time by addressing health concerns of students. A school nurse in the building saves

• Principals almost an hour a day.
• Teachers almost 20 minutes a day.
• Clerical staff more than 45 minutes a day.”

Judith Kullas Shine, president of the American Council for School Social Work:

• “Schools exist not only to instill facts and figures into developing brains, but to help parents to shape their children into whole human beings who understand how we depend upon each other to make the world work.”
• “When making decisions about services and programs we must think first and always about the students we serve and their needs. We cannot abandon them in favor of political expediency or balanced budgets.”
• “Students cannot learn, cannot achieve, if their basic needs of food, shelter, emotional support, and safety are unmet.”
• “One role of the school social worker is to ensure that each student has these needs at least minimally met in order to provide them with the opportunity to self-actualize.”

Marleen Wong, assistant dean and clinical professor at the University of Southern California and former director of Crisis Counseling Services for the Los Angeles Unified School District:

• “Educators are becoming more aware that the challenges of education are not only behavioral, but are linked to the exposure to violence and trauma in their students’ lives. Research has shown that students exposed to community or in home violence, as victims or witnesses, have lower rates of attendance and graduation from high school, lower reading scores, and high rates of expulsion and suspension.”
• “My work is with the development of the next generation of professional social workers with advanced degrees, who can work to prevent violence and provide early intervention for youth who live in troubled and chaotic environments.”

Harold Shinitzky, sports psychologist, co-author of Your Mind: An Owner’s Manual for a Better Life, and motivational speaker based in Clearwater, Fla.:

• “As a preventionist, we have learned from the research that our students need basic reading, writing, and math skills as they transition from junior high to high school.”
• “The keys to success include self-discipline, self-worth, and selflessness.”
• “Self-discipline is the capacity to be resilient and steadfast. Never give up.”
• “Self-worth is believing in yourself, your value, your rights, and your dreams.”
• “Selflessness is developing an attitude of gratitude. Help make the lives of others better.”

Bill Stencil, manager for psychological services and flexible content expert for Humanware/SEL with the Cleveland (Ohio) Metropolitan School District:

• “Collaboration leads to good decision-making.”
• “Take the time to do it right the first time.”
• “We as adults must model our expectations.”
• “Don’t just tell them what they did wrong, instruct them on the appropriate behavior.”
• “My five guiding principles: Self-discipline, consistency, communication, persistence, and compassion.”

Christopher Thurber, board-certified clinical psychologist at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, consultant, and co-author of The Summer Camp Handbook:

• “More than ever, young people need kind role models who take time to listen. Pop culture is replete with hyper-sexualized and superficial role models that leave young people interpersonally stranded.”
• “When adults emulate unselfish behavior, both in and out of formal academic settings, they set a sterling example for young people to follow.”
• “And when those same adults stop wondering “What should I say?” and simply listen, then the message to young people is clear: “I care about you. And I can tolerate your distress, whatever the cause.” It’s at that moment that we educators discover that most young people are smart enough to solve their own problems.”

Barbara Wand James, project director at the Texas Homeless Education Office and 2002–03 president of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth:

• “Kids who are homeless do not create their situations. They can’t help it if their parents can’t find work and can’t give them the things they need to be successful in school, such as eyeglasses. Sometimes they will fall asleep in class—it’s hard to stay awake when they had to sleep in a car and fear for their safety. In spite of all these and more challenges, homeless kids want to succeed.”
• “It’s up to us as the grown-ups to change our schools and systems to make it possible for them to succeed and break the cycle of homelessness.”

Scott Poland, professor at the Center for Psychological Studies, Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale-Davie, Fla., and past president of whole child partner National Association of School Psychologists:

• “Schools are the safest places children go, but one violent death on a school campus is one too many.”
• “We must end the ‘conspiracy of silence’ that allows weapons in school and for homicidal and suicidal threats to go unreported to adults.”
• “Schools need to form safety task forces that involve students and get a commitment from all students to improve school safety.”
• “Massive secondary schools face a particular challenge to develop positive relationships between all students and staff members.”
• “Every student needs to know that school staff care about their hopes and dreams.”
• “It is time that schools face the fact that suicide is the third leading cause of death for students and that talking about suicide does not plant the idea in their head.”
• “Schools need to form a task force for suicide prevention and link with community resources. Staff and students need to be provided with key information about the warning signs of suicide and that suicidal thoughts are situational.”
• “There is help available for suicidal students. Youth suicides can be prevented if everyone knows what to look for and where to go for help!”

^{© 2013 Stephen R. Sroka, PhD, Lakewood, Ohio. Used with permission.}