Categories Good SOIL Jim Vitale December 13, 2024

Why overnight camp | Part 6: Camp cultivates bravery, grit, and the courage to try new things

By Jim Vitale

This article is part of our “Why you should send your child to overnight camp” series. The series introduction explored the current research on outcomes for overnight campers and offered a list of the most important outcomes. Here, we go more in depth with one of those outcomes.

 

The Tower

I was an anxious kid (and let’s be honest: I’m now an anxious adult). But I remember one particularly anxiety-ridden experience my freshmen year of high school. I attended a military (JROTC) high school and we were given the option of attending a summer camp experience: one week with other JROTC students from around the country coming together to learn more about leadership.

I didn’t want to go, but my parents insisted (you see both my older brothers had gone and so there was no way I was getting out of it). While it would help me gain points in the school’s military program, I think the real reason my parents sent me was that they knew it would build character.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the whole experience led to some of the worst homesickness of my life. I wasn’t enjoying myself very much, and I just wanted to go home. But I couldn’t. Only two other kids from my school came with me, and I didn’t really know them. But I forced myself to befriend them, lest I be completely alone that week.

The anxiety of the whole thing came to a head on the day we had to repel. We were brought to a 50-foot-tall tower and told we would need to climb to the top and repel down the side. I started to panic. They showed us how to do it (one of the military instructors even did it Australian-style, running down the side of the tower face-first). I panicked more. They even gave us the option to “helicopter repel”, which meant that instead of kicking off a wall as you went down, you just glided 50 feet down without touching anything. Maximum panic.

There were hundreds of us who needed to do this and we could only go one or two at a time. So we sat in 100 degree heat, awaiting our turn. Anyone who wanted to could go first, but everyone was required to do it. I did not volunteer. I waited and waited and waited until they started looking for the ones who were hanging back. Finally, someone shouted, “You’re up, Vitale!”

At the time, I didn’t know the phrase “nothing to it but to do it,” but that would have been my mantra in that moment. There was no getting out of it. I climbed the ladder, doing my best not to look down. I got to the top and clung to the railing, looking at my feet. An instructor asked me if I was alright and I (rather unconvincingly) let out a, “yeah I’m fine.” They hooked my harness to the ropes and gave me the all-clear. Next, I was supposed to turn around and lean backward, trusting the rope with my life as I lowered my whole body backward out into nothing but 50 feet of air.

It was probably good that I had no time to think about it. Other kids were waiting their turn and the instructors were doing a good job of keeping people moving. If I had time to think, I’d probably still be up there.

Nothing to it but to do it.

I let myself lean backward. I was okay.

Kick. I dropped five feet. I was still okay.

Kick. I dropped another five feet. The rope didn’t break.

Kick. I dropped another five feet. I didn’t plunge to my doom.

This all took about three seconds during which time my mood went from utter panic to exhilaration. This was not scary—well it was, but it was fun, too! I kicked my way to the bottom. Unhooked my harness and walked away from the tower in gleeful excitement about what I had just achieved.

 

Grit

Of all the character traits we have explored in this series on overnight camping, the most imperative might be grit.

Grit. Bravery. Resilience. Sticktoitiveness. The ability to fail well. Whatever you call it, it seems to be an important skill. In fact, according to University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist Angela Duckworth, “bouncing back from failure turns out to be one of the best lessons a kid can learn. That skill…matters more to a child’s ability to reach his [or her] full potential than intelligence, skill, or even grades.”

That’s a bold claim. But it makes sense if you think about it. All the intelligence in the world won’t matter much if you don’t have the bravery to apply it where it is needed. In a study she conducted, Duckworth found that the youth and young adults who did best in various challenging circumstances (like in spelling bees or at West Point) were not necessarily the ones with the highest IQ but rather the ones with the most grit. The majority of people who experienced success were the ones who were willing to push through their failure, rather than quit.

There’s a stereotype out there that suggests that kids are less resilient today than they used to be (personally I find it hard to trust any statement that claims anyone is more or less of anything than they used to be, but I digress). Dr. Laura Markham disagrees. She writes, “So are kids today really less confident than they used to be? I haven’t seen any convincing research to support that claim…But I don’t think it’s news to any parent that our natural desire to protect our children from discomfort often prompts us to step in to solve things for our kids. And we certainly know that the more practice kids have in solving their own problems, managing their lives, and overcoming obstacles to meet their goals, the more confidence and competence they’ll develop.”

We don’t need to worry about some epidemic of cowardice or shame ourselves as parents and caretakers for wanting to step in and help our children (which is our job!). And, it might also be good for our children if we let them manage their own problems from time to time. It is in learning to face their own challenges head-on, to fail, and to get back up that builds the skill of resilience. It’s not something they can learn about in theory—it can only be learned in practice.

I remember calling my mom from the military camp and telling her how much I wanted to go home. She struck a good balance, neither telling me she’d come get me nor telling me to “suck it up.” Instead, she validated my homesickness, acknowledging that this might not be the most fun experience of my life, and reminded me that she’d be coming to get me in just a couple days…you can put up with almost anything for just a couple days, right? She also told me a story about her first semester of college and how she often called home in tears, asking her dad to come get her. Simply hearing that she had a similar experience to mine gave me comfort.

My mom didn’t rescue me, but she didn’t abandon me either. She let me experience the discomfort and offered me encouragement throughout.

Our role as parents and caregivers isn’t to solve all of our children’s problems. On the other hand, it isn’t to let our children struggle without support either. We are meant to strike a middle ground—one where we let them fail while also teaching them what good failure looks like, where we let them struggle but also remind them that we’re here if they need us.

Without experiencing the victory of successfully repelling down a 50-foot wall and without the compassionate support of my mother, that week of military camp might have been nothing but a miserable experience. Did it turn out to be my best summer ever? No way. I didn’t enjoy it and I never went back. But in retrospect, I can see how it helped to build grit. I can see how enduring that hard experience equipped me to endure others.

In her article for Scholastic, Jennifer Fink writes, “Unlike IQ, which is relatively fixed, grit is something everyone can develop.” She then lays out some different ways to cultivate grit in kids: give them a challenge, promote perseverance (encouraging kids not to give up), give them a nudge (don’t force them, but encourage them to try new things), welcome boredom and frustration (don’t bail them out every time they need something), let them fail, and model resilience.

We would add another item to this list: send them to camp. In their National Camp Impact Study, the ACA marks willingness to try new things and grit as key outcomes of overnight camps. Youth who come to summer camp face new challenges almost every day, but do so in the safe and supportive environment of camp. Whether it’s climbing the ropes course, canoeing, spending a night away from home, or learning to resolve a conflict, youth who go to camp encounter a multitude of new challenges. And we, as camp staff, are there to support them—not solving their problems for them necessarily, but providing support and encouragement as they learn.

At Camp Mount Luther, we know that resilience doesn’t develop overnight (or even in a week). It takes years and lots of uncomfortable experiences to build grit. But we believe that a camp experience can go a long way in building a foundation for lifelong resilience.

Send your kid to camp and see for yourself!

 

Read more entries in this series