In middle school, I counted the days between the start of the school year on Labor Day and the end of the school year on the first Friday of June. We started after Labor Day because the tourism season for resort towns in Wisconsin ran through Labor Day, and businesses needed teens to help staff the swimming pools and go-kart rides.
When that first Friday in June arrived, I was free from school for about 85 days. A family vacation to the North Shore of Lake Superior and a trip to Detroit to see extended family were standard. The other 70 days of the summer were spent at summer camps like the YMCA, making friends, and swimming the sunny days away.
Thirty years later, my son’s plan remained the same. We took a few mini-vacations to Wisconsin or Ohio to see family and friends. Besides those trips, he spends the rest of the summer attending camps through the Urbana Park District. He loves their art and nature camps.
When I tried to register him for summer camps this year, I encountered a problem. The majority of the summer camps in the area don’t have programming for teenagers. The Urbana and Champaign Park Districts’ primary offerings are for kids up to 12. There are few offerings for kids up to 14, and those hours are mostly 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. I work from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily, so even if there were offerings for teens, I couldn’t transport him to camp because of work.
I can’t leave him alone during the day because Illinois law says leaving a 14-year-old alone for an unreasonable amount of time is considered neglect. I’m not going to dive into what is an “unreasonable amount of time” because that is different for everyone. I’m fine leaving my son home alone for a day, but not for weeks on end during the summer.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has camps and labs over the summer, a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that their options cover a variety of interests. The Grainger College of Engineering has camps for teenagers, but most geared towards high school sophomores to seniors, no middle school students. The Gies College of Business offers programming using their Makerlab, but the offerings are only a half-day and rather expensive.
There needs to be more offerings for 13- to 15-year-olds during the summer. Checking resources like ChambamaMoms has helped me find some options for my son. Still, most options for his age group have limited times (9 a.m. to noon or 1 to 3 p.m.) or dates (some are only a few days, while others might run a few weeks over the summer). Along with the limitations, the costs of these programs are high and likely out of reach for many families.
I’ve spoken to other parents about their summer plans, and several are in the same situation. Parents who have multiple kids struggle to make plans because of the different limitations placed by the camps. Other parents told me they are going to send a kid to stay with grandparents for part of the summer, since that’s their only option. Parents who aren’t as lucky to have family nearby are still trying to plan for the summer. The school year ends over the next couple of weeks, so time is short.
My son is on some waiting lists for programs currently at capacity. But I am going into the summer with few plans and knowing things could come down to the last minute is stressful. Waiting to hear from the programs isn’t ideal, but that happens. What matters is that my son is excited about the camps and programs he is registered for.
I’m not blaming the current camps for their age limitations. Programming for students in grade school is hard enough, and adding middle school programming would be another hurdle. I also know that staffing at some of the camps is a problem. Only a couple of years ago, the Crystal Lake and Sholem pools had to curb hours because they couldn’t hire enough lifeguards, so I assume camp staffing is also a problem.
I wish there were more options for families with kids in the 13- to 15-year-old age range. And with a world-class university and towns the size of Champaign-Urbana, it’s disappointing that options are limited.
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