When I was in sixth grade, I was bullied pretty consistently by one specific person. I walked around the hallway each day for several months fearing that he would corner me and attempt to intimidate me. He never hit me or physically attacked me in any way, but the threats were so consistent that it ate away at my ability to reason. He threatened that if I ever told anyone, I’d be in serious trouble. So I didn’t. Eventually it stopped, but the remnants of that bullying still lives on in me today.

When I was a summer camp counselor, I bought fully into the “zero tolerance” approach that’s very common in schools today. Any time I witnessed any bullying, I would take the bully aside and, well, bully him. I’d use threats that he would be sent home from camp, that his parents would be disappointed in him, and told him that I was disappointed in him. Sometimes this worked, and I’d pat myself on the back. Sometimes it didn’t, and I would consider the bully a lost cause, figuring that I’d at least tried my best. I used this approach through 2006, and thought myself a proper crusader against bullying.

Fast forward to 2011, when I took the job here at Vanderkamp. I had read countless books on child development at this point, and had begun to believe fully that most problems that happen between children can be prevented before a cure is ever necessary. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of curse, as they say! The major steps we take at Vanderkamp to prevent problems between summer campers are as follows:

1) Supervision. If there are always counselors present, then bullying is far less likely. Since our sleeping arrangements are set up so that kids are almost never fully alone, would-be-bullies have almost no opportunity to pick out their prey.

2) Enthusiastic participation. My counselors and I are constantly excitedly engaged in all of our summer camp activities. Not only does this make the activities simply more fun, it also ups the ante for us in terms of how we are supervising. It’s one thing to stand idly by with one’s eyes on a soccer game, and it’s a totally different thing to be in that game as a physical and spiritual presence.

3) Constant, growth mindset affirmation. All staff members here are trained to constantly be seeking the good in people and pointing it out. When children are constantly being built up by people whom they look up to, they are far less likely to feel the need to assert themselves by bullying others. Most research points to bullying being a manifestation of a loss of control in a child’s life. When a child accepts that a hierarchy exists where some people are better than others, he or she will naturally try to find people worse than him or her. If, on the other hand, a child is constantly affirmed in a way that values virtue, the child will be more likely to try to demonstrate virtue. Since bullying is very clearly going to garner negative attention, almost all children will opt to take the readily available positive attention instead.

4) The “No Discount” policy. “No Discount” is a phrase that’s uttered any time someone says something to put down himself, someone else, or an activity. It simply means that we strive to accept everyone at their full value – that we don’t want to take away from anyone or any thing. This creates a natural, self policing, positive culture. Children are free to point out if a counselor is discounting something (typically their own singing voice!), and are free to point it out to each other as well. It’s a very easy and non-confrontational way to point out when a conversation is trending toward the negative. The “No Discount” policy acts as a first responder to any potentially tense situation. It immediately de-escalates things regardless of whether people say they were “just kidding.” When people know that put-downs are unacceptable, they are a lot less likely to do them. When staff and children are empowered with a tool to help snuff out mean behavior at its roots without having to make a judgment call as to whether it was “only a joke,” teasing never spirals out of control.

Now last summer, we did not have any instances of bullying, so the “What do you do when it actually occurs?” question can only be answered hypothetically. But here’s a simple fact: bullies come about not because they are inherently bad, but because they come from very difficult life situations. We believe the Christian response to bullying can be found in the way Jesus treated people from tough walks of life. We believe that bullies, most of all, need to be shown compassion. You see, bullies are used to being mistreated. They expect it. It’s par for the course in their lives. They often fully believe that some people are the bullies, and some people are the bullied. When caught and bullied by an adult, they will accept it, and often humble themselves before the adult. But when the adult is gone? They seek to fill the role of the bully. Instead of trying to threaten and intimidate these bullies, we will seek to ask them questions. What makes you want to be mean to him? Have people been mean to you? How did that make you feel? Would you want someone else to feel that way? Has anyone treated you that way here?

Loving them for who they are, even if it's a pipe cleaner monster!

The root cause of bullying is not an inherent evil in any child. The root cause is the terribly difficult things going on in that child’s life. One can’t scare the difficult circumstances out of a child’s life. One can’t threaten, or cajole, or bribe that child into compliance. As always, the answer starts with love. Now if we believe a child will continue to make things unsafe for others who come here, we are unequipped to have that child stay at summer camp with us. But we’ll make sure that any child who comes here leaves feeling loved, even if he or she has to leave early because he or she never resonates with the environment we create.

Send your child to Vanderkamp this summer to see what all the fuss is about. Regardless of how tough your child’s life has been, Vanderkamp is the safest summer camp in central New York.

It’s an interesting life, being a director who works at a summer camp that has a rather tribal song about Chocolate pudding, that serves chocolate pudding every week, and even sells t-shirts that say, “Chocolate pudding, Vanderkamp’s favorite dessert!” The pudding mania has grown so thick at our summer camp that a particularly strange species has emerged from the depths of Vanderkamp lake. That creature? The pudding monster.  Here are some survival tips if you encounter a pudding monster:

This pudding monster is repelled with frozen pudding and flash photography

1) Pudding monsters are driven by 1 thing: their love of pudding. If you hear one screaming “pudding” while running through camp, point in any direction and say, “pudding,” and you should be okay.
2) Will occasionally mistake any brown substance for pudding, so pointing towards mud works too.
3) Due to long, dark hours in pudding pits, pudding monsters have sensitive eyes – flash photography scares them away.
4) Pudding monsters show up around noon on Wednesdays, but due to the heat, only survive for about an hour before the pudding melts off and they return to their normal selves. Stay ready with a camera during FOB and you and your pudding will be safe.
5) Pudding monsters can be distracted with frozen pudding, a.k.a. ice cream.
6) Pudding monsters are totally safe for summer campers – only your pudding is in danger.

Following these 6 simple guidelines should keep you and your pudding safe at camp this summer. Pass them along to your friends, and remember, pudding monsters are just people who are strange enough to put pudding on their faces and in their hair.

We’ll have opportunities for kids to learn to raise chickens, plant vegetables, nurture the plants along, harvest the fruits, learn to prepare meals, and of course, eat what they’ve made! In a day and age where it’s decreasingly common for people to know where their food comes from, we certainly won’t be having that problem this summer. Where else do kids have the opportunity to make an egg salad with eggs that were laid that morning, and lettuce taken fresh from the ground? Come to camp this summer and join the fun!

The Vanderkamp Center is a Christian Summer Camp and Retreat Center just around the corner from Syracuse, Rome, and Utica – and an easy drive from Rochester and Watertown as well! We hope to see you soon!

Recently, an excellent article was published at Psychology Today which summed up nicely what a lot of parents want for their kids from summer camp. The article posits that Summer Camps make Kids Resilient. As you can probably suspect, we at Vanderkamp agree kids who come to summer camp here will leave more resilient than when they came. We agree that camp makes kids more confident, that it helps them form a new identity, that it helps them learn all sorts of skills that are essential for a happy life, and that it helps them find a place to feel like they really belong. These are all wonderful attributes of camp that I certainly attest to noticing as a camper, counselor, and a director of a summer camp. But there’s one throw-away line in the beginning of the article that really stood out to me, and that I disagreed with:

“Children at camp can’t be treated like customers if they are going to get anything out of the experience. They need to be treated like students whose caregivers, the counselors, know what the kids need to grow.”

I simply can’t sit by and let this piece of so called common knowledge slip by uncontested. The implication here is the same one that’s implicit in most of the common ways that adults interact with children: Adults know best, and children are lumps of clay to be molded and sculpted by our wise hands. At Vanderkamp, we certainly agree that the adult has a very real role in keeping children emotionally and physically safe, but I don’t think we’d suggest that we need to “not treat them like customers” or that we “know what the kids need to grow” at the expense of making them feel pushed around.

And this is at the heart of what we’re fighting for in our methods here. Take this passage from Matthew 19, 13-14:

“Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. Does this sound like Jesus suggests that adults know what is best for children to grow, or does it sound like the opposite? Jesus says the children should come to him because the kingdom of God belongs to them, not so that the kingdom of God will belong to them later. Now, we don’t let kids run a-muck and just do whatever, but we do provide lots of choice between activities, and we constantly honor children as though they were our own, or guests in our home. I’d say we honor them MORE than we would any typical customer!

A father approached me at a Church I visited two weeks ago, and said, “It’s amazing. [My daughter] came back from camp so much more confident last year. She had only ever done a 1 night sleep over before, and we were blown away when she asked to stay for another whole week! She’ll definitely be coming back this summer for two weeks again. I’m not sure what happened there!”

Confidence can be built without coercion! We’d argue that confidence is built through the natural interactions, and through growth mindset language, and an overall more intentional approach.

But back to the original question. Does summer camp at VK prepare kids for the real world? We think so. But we don’t model it after the real world. What we’re striving for here is something better: what the real world could be like if everyone were to agree to live peacefully, interact lovingly, and look out for one another. The real world is not like this now, but we’re not shy about letting kids have a taste of what it could be like if it were. Our hope is that they’ll not only become personally resilient, like the article suggests, but that they’ll take it one step further, and become so dedicated to the culture here that they go back out into the real world and try to make it more like camp.

I’m only one person, but that’s how I was called to want to change the world.

My hope is that the personal growth that stems from being unconditionally loved will rekindle the fire in them that Christ knew was there when he spoke in Matthew 19. I know children are capable of changing the world after observing it with my own eyes, but I believe it starts with recognizing that while we might know how to keep children safe, we don’t always know better than they do. We think that by providing a nutrient rich environment for personal development, and creating an emotionally and physically safe culture, that kids can do the rest. And you know what? So far it seems to be working. So yes, it camp does prepare kids for the real world, but what’s more? It prepares them to want to change it.

Vanderkamp is a Christian Summer Camp and retreat center located near Syracuse, NY, on the North shore of Oneida lake. Contact us with any questions!

One of the coolest things about summer camp is watching everyone let their guard down and just get a little bit silly every once in a while. We really believe that taking a retreat from the outside world means unleashing our imaginations to their fullest potential. In this picture, our Sneak-A-Peek girls decided to imitate our chickens, and hilarity ensued.
From time to time, a summer camper or staff member will get an idea – “Hey, let’s all be chickens!”, or “Should we all go gather some leaves and branches and pretend to sneak up on that group over there?” A day at summer camp here is always full of fun and safe surprises. You never know when you might encounter a chicken crossing like this on the way to the lake for swimming!

You see, real confidence stems from the ability to do whatever silly thing you want, and know that no one here at camp will judge you or call you a name. The “No Discount” policy ensures that campers can be as silly as they want to be without fear of bullying or teasing. And the staff? We don’t mind joining in (okay, causing) the silliness when the mood strikes us, either!

It’s all about emotional safety. When kids feel like they are emotionally safe, they let loose in the most imaginative ways.  There’s real power that comes from being in a community where each person is free to be exactly who they want to be.

So if you or your child is thinking about summer camp this year, don’t hesitate – register today or contact us.  Just 45 minutes from Syracuse and less than an hour from Rome and Utica, Vanderkamp is the perfect place to get away without really having to go away. Looking forward to seeing you this summer!

Every night at summer camp we have a contemporary worship service, but my favorite nights are Sunday and Thursday, when we sing around the camp fire. Here you see some of my favorite camp people singing, “Oh my God, this love, how can it Be?!?” To be honest I don’t remember the name of the song off hand, but this part really sticks out in my mind from this summer – campers and staff alike genuinely smiling and enjoying each other – asking in song “How can this love be?”, and REALLY meaning it. During summer camp here, we really strive to create a community where we all marvel at the love shown to one another. And you know something? I think we’ve done it.

Vanderkamp Center is a retreat center and summer camp located near Syracuse, NY. Online registration has begun, so we hope to sign up today!

Last week, we received news of an incredible blessing: the Walmarts of Cicero and East Syracuse responded to a grant proposal we’d written to convert a portion of our summer camp into a community garden that would help supplement our kitchen with organically grown produce, and also help people in this area get healthy food.

Our summer campers will have the opportunity to eat organic food taken directly from the farm each day, and will also be able to give back to their community by helping to distribute this food to food banks near their homes. We’ve had an outpouring of support from many of partners – C&J Farms have agreed to donate seedlings to us once again, North Riding has pledged manure for fertilizer, and Matthew 25 Farm has pledged to give us their leftover seeds.

Donations of these items are absolutely amazing, but what will really make this project go is volunteer support. We can only do so much on our own. We’re calling out to people in our community to help in any way they can – whether it’s helping to build the fence, put in the irrigation system, build a shed to house the tools, or to come up during summer camp and help weed and harvest veggies, we can use your support. Volunteers will get to take a share of this delicious and nutritious food with them, as well as the satisfaction that they are helping both a camp and an area in need.

Read more details at the page dedicated to this project, or contact us if you have any questions or would like to help. This is a big project, but it represents the first step in utilizing these 850 acres to the best of their potential. Won’t you join us?

Tell me and I forget
Show me and I remember
Let me do and I understand
- Confucius

Words uttered in roughly 500 BC, and held in the hearts of many teachers ever since. Unfortunately, many institutions working with children seem to have forgotten them. You may be surprised to know that I count myself in those ranks from time to time.

Summer Camp has the potential to be so valuable to a child because it’s one place where adults seem to be able to restrain themselves from standing around lecturing to kids. Times when a camp counselor does get up and talk are often immediately followed by campers actually being able to experience what was being demonstrated or talked about.

When I teach archery classes, for example, common sense requires I demonstrate bow safety, and give a brief tutorial on how to use a bow and arrow safely. Thankfully, I am aware that campers will learn archery much more effectively if I physically have a bow and arrow in my hands, so I at least skip the “Tell me and I forget” phase. I also get that they will learn better by practicing than by hearing me drone on and on, so immediately following safety instructions, they get the opportunity to shoot.

The first time I instructed a group of campers, however, I was frustrated to see that many of them were holding the bow in the wrong hand, or upside down, or making mistakes in any number of ways that I know I covered in my instruction. I tersely went from child to child and corrected various mistakes, and then turned them loose. I’d think, “What happened to Show me and I remember? “ But I was being very silly – they WERE remembering, just not at the pace that I, someone who had shot a bow and arrow a hundred times, expected them to.

Last summer, I observed and instructed perhaps 15 archery groups, and kept track of just 1 thing: was there improvement from round 1 to round 2? In every single case, I observed, Yes: more arrows hit the target than did not.

Let me do and I understand

Now this probably seems obvious. It stands to reason that children will improve at things over time. I think it’s a credit to instructors of physical activity that we at least understand no amount of class work on basketball will make up for practicing basketball. Shouldn’t we apply this common knowledge about practicing hobbies, and apply it to more important things, like learning about God, or being a good person?

Tell me and I forget

One of my long standing frustrations with those who try to guide children along their faith journeys is the use of the “tell me and I forget” model. In Sunday School, as a child, I was told all manner of stories. I may have remembered some of the content of those stories, but most of the messages, and the point behind those stories, I forgot completely. I treated Sunday School as a class without homework or tests that gave me information I was indifferent to, and learned about as much as one can expect under those circumstances.

What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. – Philippians 4:9.

Sadly, like many people, when I found myself leading a Bible Study as a camp counselor, I slipped right back into the model that once bored me. I ignore the message from Philippians to let campers practice what I was preaching. Instead, I’d empathize with the children, figuring that they were bored, and I’d rush through things. When I became a camp director, I had what I considered an epiphany:

Show me and I remember

I decided I needed to work with my counselors to create a community where children could observe us acting in all of these Christian ways. “If they see US doing it, they will know how important it is,” I thought. And to some degree, I was right. Children did notice, and many of them even emulated what they saw. I believe that Show me and I remember can turn into Let me do and I understand if the adults are wise enough to give children the freedom to try and act on what they remember. But I’m coming to believe that it isn’t enough. That’s why, this summer, our faith curriculum will try and enact:

Let me do and I understand

We’ll be incorporating hands on, challenging, group building activities that directly relate to the faith theme of the day. Every day, during Bible Study time. Summer Campers will be exposed to the messages of the gospel while also being encouraged to see what it means to live out those messages directly afterward. My camp counselors and I will continue modeling loving Christian behavior as passionately as possible, while also giving children the opportunity to engage in an intentional activity to help them understand what it means to live as a Christian in this world. Our goal as a Christian summer camp is so much more than giving a one hour spiel about God each day – it’s to show children what it would be like to live in a Christian community, encourage them to be the ones who actively create that community here, and give them the practice they need in creating such communities so they can do it anywhere.

Vanderkamp Center is a Christian Summer Camp and Retreat Center less than an hour from many major cities in Central New York, including Syracuse, Rome, and Utica. Contact us today for more information!

Can you believe the beauty of this world? Deep in the recesses of the woods at Vanderkamp, there is a phenomenal beaver dam that is more than 8 feet tall. Beyond it is a lake that houses at least two beaver families. It’s said that beavers are the animals that have the 2nd biggest impact on their environments. The first? Humans, of course!

On one day during our camp outrageous, we hiked out to this wonderful beaver dam to observe these incredible creatures in their natural habitat.  One of the most satisfying things we do during summer camp is take time and really explore the depths of our 850 acres. Wonders like these seem to be around every corner. On this day, we actually swam into the heart of the beaver pond itself, and saw some amazing wildflowers growing on the root system of an upturned tree. It’s pretty fun to think that beavers take a retreat from the rest of the world just like our summer campers do!

Did you know that such a beautiful place was just 45 minutes from Syracuse, Rome, and Utica? We’d love to see you at summer camp this year!

“Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me: Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.” ― Shel Silverstein

One of the things I remember hearing frequently as a child was, “You can be anything you want to be when you grow up.” I remember deeply considering whether I’d rather play for the Mets when I grew up, or be Superman. I really believed I could be whatever I wanted to be for quite some time. Then all of a sudden, I didn’t.

What happened to that 6 year old who practiced baseball every day in pursuit of a likely unattainable dream? It’s hard to say. Perhaps it was just the natural realism that sets in over time. I do remember distinctly thinking that a lot of the kids from my home town were likely to play in the Major Leagues, since I was surely going to, and a lot of them were better at baseball than I was! A healthy sense of realism is useful for a lot of aspects of life, and maybe, even for one’s dreams. But what about one’s character? Should someone ever think he or she is incapable of being a better person?

Recent research shows that so-called “realism” might be causing psychological harm to people everywhere. Take the common gender stereotype that males are supposedly superior to females when it comes to spacial reasoning. I remember hearing about this in primary school, when I was learning chess, and even in college. One of the most common areas tested is mental rotation: one’s ability to see an object and give an answer as to how it would look when rotated X number of degrees. For ages, men have outscored women on this test, and women have “realistically” self-identified at being poorer than men at spatial reasoning. Recently, however, researchers found a remarkable trend:

“When confidence was taken into account, the sex difference in mental rotation scores almost completely evaporated” – Psychology Today.

Tests forever had shown men were better than women, but when testers manipulated the confidence of the subjects, they found no difference whatsoever. Pretty startling, right? It’s sad enough to believe one is bad at something, but it’s far worse when that belief will actually impact one’s performance! Of course, one’s self perception of one’s spatial reasoning ability isn’t necessarily going to make or break one’s life.

But what about all of those other areas in life where people lose confidence? Children hear evaluation on various aspects of their worth all the time. Sometimes directly, via grades or trophies, and sometimes indirectly, by receiving praise for certain behaviors and discipline for others.

At Vanderkamp, we’re determined to address two principle conclusions from these studies.

A) We want to make sure we are helping summer campers pursue virtue.
B) We want to do whatever we can to instill confidence in summer campers that they ARE virtuous.

Perhaps the biggest tool at our disposal to achieve these ends is an affirmation-based approach to adult-child interaction, or what is typically known as “behavior management.” We demand that our camp counselors be in a state of constant interaction with kids so that they can observe virtuous behavior, and praise it. The results we see are amazing. Not only do summer campers know that we value virtuous behavior, they know that they are virtuous. In glaring contrast to many adult-child interactions, our camp counselors are mostly checking in with children when they are doing something right, as opposed to something wrong.

At Vanderkamp, we are calling for an end to the unintentional approach so commonly used in this day and age, where well behaving children are typically ignored while effort is spent on those children causing distractions. The reactionary model of behavior management (i.e. a child does something bad, and then is punished) is so often a failure in stopping so called “bad behavior,” but worse, it makes children self identify as being inherently bad.

All children perform virtuous actions, and if adults demonstrate that they notice those actions and appreciate them, the children will gain confidence that they can be good. If all adults took an affirmation-based approach, we could put an end to any child saying or thinking the heart-breaking phrase, “I’m just a bad kid.”

Children come to summer camp and feel like they’ve reset adult perceptions of them. Campers are challenged to be better people not because we threaten them or tell them they are bad, but because we point out the amazing things they do, and show them that they are capable of being exactly who God wants them to be: their perfect, virtuous selves.

It doesn’t matter if you’re from Syracuse, Utica, Rome, or anywhere in Central New York; Vanderkamp offers true retreat as a safe place to grow in confidence that you are and can be whatever you want to be when you grow up – and right now.