Hiking Out: children

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In a word: Relationships

A word cloud formed from blogs on the value of overnight camp for campers and counselors conveys the essence of camp, and perhaps, of life : relationships.

Relationships with friends and campers and counselors, and yes with parents too.

Relationships with counselors who live in the moment and serve as valuable role models for children.

Relationships among campers who learn and grow to meet their potential, who arrive with trepidation and leave camp with memories and lives changed through the relationships they form each summer.

Relationships between children and parents who give the gift of summer camp knowing a child can gain more self-confidence and responsibility in a few weeks of summer fun than nearly anywhere else in life.

Look into an overnight summer camp experience for your child this year.

For more blogs on camp visit: Summer Camp

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake Book Group Discussion Guide

Discussion Guide for The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

By Aimee Bender

I enjoy leading book groups. When I lead, I write up a discussion guide to use. Feel free to ask your own questions or discuss your own observations or reactions in the comments section.

I have moved this discussion guide to my new blog, Group Reads which is a collection of discussion guides. You can find a guide for this book at The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.

Stop by and see what other guides might interest you!

Kindnesses Shared and Received

We love our ceramic menorah that we unwrap each December and fill with colorful candles each evening during Hanukkah. As the Shamash candle is lit, we begin singing the blessing in our own multi-tuned rendition. My husband wasn’t schooled in religious tunes, or if he was didn’t retain them. And my religious tunes are limited to Herald Angels and Little Towns. Consequently, our prayer sounds much like a smaller rendition of Hogwarts school song.

Each of the 8 nights we add an additional candle, sing our prayer and enjoy the menorah for a moment or through dinner or while homework is being done. We love to watch the candle lights flickering and speculate where all that wax ends up. But we rarely focus long on the Maccabees or the blessings we remember in our own lives.

This year I thought we could think about what brings light into our lives and how we reflect that light. Each day of Hanukkah, we will each be observant for kindnesses we share and kindnesses we receive. Then when we light the candles we will each share a kindness from that day for each candle lit—one kindness each on the first night, two the second night and so forth. I imagine that this will be fairly straightforward on day one. However, I presume that by day 4 or 5 we will have to work to not just remember what we have done that day (for some of us a harder task these days than for others), but we will need actively be observant for moments when we can offer a kindness— from a word, to a hand, to a hug. I am sure it will take concentration to look for opportunities. Perhaps we will hold open a door or let the shopper with just one item to purchase step in line in front of us, or even refrain from a disparaging remark that was clamoring to be spoken. Eight is such a good number for creating a habit of being observant to where we can give a kindness and be mindful of saying thank you when we receive a kindness.

Stay tuned and I’ll let you know how well this works or doesn’t. Let me know what traditions you enjoy in December to show thanks for what you have received or be cognizant of what you share.

Suture Necessity: Humor

Humor is a great accompaniment to receiving sutures. As the physician assistant sutured my finger laceration, he told me this was his third career (not humorous) and told me about his experience slicing his own finger (very humorous).

I had ended up on the receiving end of the needle and thread by carelessly attempting to slice frozen bread with a very sharp knife and without a cutting board—something I have been told on multiple occasions not to do. Maybe this time the lesson will stick.

As I tightly gripped my pointer finger against my thumb, my daughter ran for a bandage and extolled the virtues of applying pressure and using elevation in such situations. I had no desire to release my finger as I’m not a fan of watching blood pour out of my hands. But when I finally got the nerve to take a peak at the incision, I knew immediately that a Band-aid brand adhesive wasn’t going to cut it so to speak.

I headed to the ER, my husband cleverly picking the older car to drive in case I was dripping blood, although my daughter had thoughtfully handed me an old bath towel to wrap my hand in just to avoid difficult to remove bloodstains.

“Well, I hope the chili you made for dinner is bloody good,” my husband commented wryly as we sat waiting in the ER. Doubtful we would get any tonight as the waiting room was mostly full and no one was moving anywhere quickly.

The admitting nurse thoughtfully asked if my finger was still attached (which it was) while my daughter texted me to take the pressure off and get the blood flow going to move up my place in the ER line. As the TV show Chuck was about to start, I was okay sitting in the waiting room for a bit and watching TV. So I kept the pressure applied as my hand began leaking blood onto my towel wrap. Unfortunately halfway through Chuck, someone decided that the assorted menagerie of patients would prefer Monday night football and switched channels. I think we should have taken a vote and raising a bloody hand should have counted extra. In any case, I missed the second half of Chuck and so I have no idea if Chuck and Sarah managed to capture the bad guy or not. Now it was clearly time to remove the pressure and get seen sooner rather than later.

In the examining room, the nurse told me that day old blood stains were as hard to remove from crevices around fingernails as from white Ts. I didn’t believe her, but was glad she thoroughly cleaned my hand in any case.

Then after a lengthy wait with only the sound of a screaming child in the background, a physician’s assistant came in for suturing. Apparently only on Grey’s Anatomy do plastic surgeons hang around the ER.

“So do you know how to sew?” I asked.

“She means can you sew well,” my husband clarified.

He didn’t answer directly but did tell us about the time he cut his finger on a bread knife at a salad bar, tossed the knife and bread behind the salad bar and then while walking over to meet his friends at their table, passed out in the middle of the restaurant where everyone, but his friends saw him go down.

Clearly he had empathy as well as a more entertaining story. Guess I’ll find out if he also can sew when I get these 5 sutures removed.

Quick Tips for Writing a Camper

The rest bell rings and campers race to the mailboxes to see what awaits. Samantha Saylor arrives first and grabs the stack of envelopes from the S box, quickly reading through the addressee names.

“Santos, Smith, Santos, Strickland, Surrey, Santos, Smith, Shen, finally Saylor!, Santos, Santos, how many friends and family does Santos have?!, Shen, Sargent, another one for Saylor, Santos, Steinberg, Santos”

Samantha hands the stack to the anxiously awaiting Strickland and heads off with her two letters. The high point of mail time has passed—sorting through the envelopes and finding the envelopes with her name on them. Even opening and reading the mail can’t eclipse the excitement of reading through the addressee names.

So take this as your first tip in writing your camper—mail, any mail, is better than no mail. And the contents of the letter or postcard are far less important than the fact that correspondence has been received. Still, writing about your commute to work, or grocery shopping will pale in comparison to a note including a funny story about trying to pick blueberries in the rain or fixing the leaky faucet and getting soaked in the process.

Here are some quick tips for writing your camper this summer:

Write short, frequent letters rather than long occasional notes
Include interesting flat items such as a newspaper comic or a photo
Sprinkle in a few riddles
Take some time to doodle
Include a short, funny story. Nothing happened on your commute to work or in your office? Find a few short jokes to include (there are plenty to be found on-line) or relate a story from your childhood.
Comment on your camper’s most recent letter—great job on learning how to serve in tennis or how cool that her cabin mate is from Montana.
Include a game like hang man, tic tac toe, or 20 questions on a second sheet of paper that the two of you can send back and forth over the summer to play.
Remember to write so your camper can read—many of the under 12 set cannot read cursive and that goes for many teens as well these days. 4 paragraphs of loopy handwriting will quickly be scanned for the signature at the end.

P.S. post scripts and post post scripts are always a big hit!

Homeschooling on the Road for Everyone

“You never want to take an RV trip, right?” came somewhere between, “You want to have kids, right?” and “no mushrooms on pizza, right?” in our pre-marriage assessment of our compatibility. We both responded with a resounding, “No, not me, tent camping, great, an RV definitely not.”

Well two kids later and a decade of enjoying mushroom-free pizza and there we were driving on the Mass Pike in a 29 foot RV, starting out on a 7 week journey around the country.2 out of 3, not bad.

In hindsight, our 2 month RV exploration of the U.S. was one of the best experiences we have ever enjoyed as a family—and one we wholeheartedly recommend to anyone seeking time with your family learning about the expansive country we inhabit.

So how did we come to find ourselves debating a drive-through campsite versus a back-in campsite at RV campgrounds around the country? We had often mused about traveling around the country as a family and after talking to friends who had taken similar trips, we broke our vow of no RV trips and started researching the choice between a Class C and a Class A while picking up lingo such as 5^th wheel and 30 amp hookup. Simultaneously we considered the merits of withdrawing our children from elementary and middle school for 2 months and home schooling them on the road, or opting for a summer trip. The summer meant more national parks would be accessible and there would be more amenities at campgrounds. Spring or summer, what better way for all four of us to learn about our country, our culture, our natural resources than first hand. In the end we decided to go in the spring to give us a chance to home school for a short time span as well as be able to spend more time in the desert (although less time in the mountains).

Our next step was to outline a basic route. I bought a large map of the United States, tacked it up on a bulletin board and the whole family had fun adding push pins to destinations of interest—everything from National Parks to friends’ homes, from a cool space museum to an ancestor’s home. I also wanted to incorporate destinations that integrated well with the curriculum I had created including the Civil War, the geology of caves, and regions of the country. Our daughters connected the push pins with a string, mimicking a possible driving route around the country. As the number of push pins escalated beyond 100 and the string started resembling a high frequency sound wave more than a smooth oval, we realized we had selected sufficient potential sites to visit and must narrow them down. Eliminating places like Big Bend National Park (too far off a reasonable route) or Yellowstone (closed in the spring) wasn’t easy, but we knew we had to stay within our time constraint of 7 weeks and create time to experience our destinations, not just drive through them.

By the time March 3, our date to pick up the RV, rolled around, we had a rudimentary route outline, a full home-schooling plan, bags full of AAA maps, and a web site to blog our adventures. At the RV rental agency Wendy, our rental specialist, gave us the full tour of our new home for the next 2 months making sure to emphasis that cruise control is not the equivalent of auto pilot. She showed us the RV systems which my husband noted carefully, while I, on the other hand, entered her 800 number into my cell phone and made a mental note that we wanted to stay at a campground with staff for our first camping experience. We realized we needed to factor in additional time to ‘camp’: time to change the oil, buy septic deodorizers, make campsite reservations and of course, time to de-winterize the RV (after all we were leaving New England in March, we couldn’t have running water until we were far enough south to keep the water from freezing). With the tour of systems over I was beyond excited and equally nervous!

Now it seemed to me it was time for the driving lesson. What? No lesson?! We just hop in and go? You’re kidding, right? Wrong, that’s it; we were set (yeah right). My husband would drive the RV home while I would follow in our car. He got in the cab and was there awhile, I presumed adjusting the seat and mirrors, double checking driving controls etc. Then he got out of cab and went into rental office. When he returned with the serviceman. I stepped out of the car with a quizzical look. “Just learning how to operate the radio,” he called to me. “The radio! I hardly think you should be listening to the radio for your first RV driving experience!” Don’t worry, no problem, … and we were off!

Cell Phone Etiquette for Kids

We can all benefit from better cell phone etiquette. So parents, it’s up to us to teach our children cell phone etiquette from the first time a child uses a cell phone.

When your child buys or receives his or her first cell phone, talk with your child about cell phone responsibility. Specifically, cell phone responsibility falls into three areas:

Cell Phone Safety: NO phone/digital use while driving. Make it clear with your child that cell phones are not to be used while driving—no talking, texting, emailing or any other digital distraction while driving is acceptable. Teach this precept when your child first starts using a phone and again when your child starts driving (presuming the phone precedes the driver’s license).
Cell Phone Etiquette: Cell-phone communication does not pre-empt in-person communication. Specifically, no phone use at a dining table, no phone use when interacting with a store clerk, carrying on a conversation with a friend or listening to a teacher.
Cell Phone Care: The cell phone is the responsibility of the owner—if it breaks or is lost it’s on you. In other words, if your child lends his or her phone to a friend and the phone is broken, dropped or used inappropriately, your child takes responsibility. Think before lending your phone

Think of it as an easy version of the S-E-X talk-- it's the S-E-C talk for cellphones. Set these cell phone habits – safety, etiquette and care—from day one and we’ll all be happier and less annoyed by inconsiderate, irresponsible cell phone users.

-free zone

My life has become a series of –free zones. My driver’s seat is a cell-free zone. The dinner table is a telephone-free zone (cell or land). I attempt to keep a computer-free zone in my family room and kitchen immediately after school to ensure I can focus on my children as they return home. Each of these zones is intended to reduce my multi-tasking.

I recently read, not to my surprise, that multi-tasking is an oxymoron. We cannot focus on two disparate tasks simultaneously. A condition that is abundantly clear as I attempt to write amid the chatter in the orthopedists’ waiting room. There’s the toddler dancing around the mom and continually chattering until the mom says, “behave or I’ll call daddy and then you’ll be in trouble.” (I didn’t think parent’s used this threat anymore). Then a quiet pause for 30 seconds or so followed by, “okay, call daddy.” Several other people waiting chuckle along with me. See, even in writing I have been completely unfocused by trying to blog while listening to idle chatter.

Sure, there are plenty of –free zone established for the comfort and safety of the public—smoke-free zones, cell phone-free zones, even backpack-free zones to improve security or minimize shoplifting. But my –free zones are more personal—an attempt to reduce the clutter in my mind and allow me to live in the present. Just this morning I found myself creating a daily to do list while I was in the shower, then I paused and thought to myself, the shower should be a list-free zone. Perhaps I have created a whole new compulsion— -free zones. Maybe I’ll create a –free zone-free zone…

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