A DAD'S LIFE:Summer camps have become a necessity, not a luxury, writes ADAM BROPHY
YOU KNOW your kids have too much when the sun is beating down, you suggest the beach and they shrug their shoulders and go, “Meh”.
School’s out one week and we’ve been swimming, boogie boarding and cycling. They’ve been painting and baking, seen a couple of new release DVDs and hung upside down from the climbing frame until their faces looked like they’d fall off. Half the class has come to hang out, the other half has been visited and we’ve had the drama of a first sleepover away from home. In one week. There are nine of these to go. I don’t think I have the creative capacity to survive this summer.
Last year was the first time kids’ camps became an option and we availed of only one, a kayaking week in Lough Hyne. This year the camps may prove saviours, necessities rather than options.
Back in the day nothing happened, summer adventure-wise, until you hit 12. At that point you dragged your collection of stonewashed jeans to Kerry or Donegal where you whispered as Béarla for three weeks and attempted to seduce a lovely girl from an exotic spot like Charleville. Ultimate goal: to go home with your first snog taken care of.
Along the way you might find the means to construct a complete sentence in Irish. You would overdose on céilídh, eat loaves and loaves of buttered white sliced pan and take part in rather intensely competitive basketball leagues. And speed skipping contests. For some reason, the Gaeltacht experience in the 1980s was heavily dependent on basketball and skipping like Sylvester Stallone in a Rocky training sequence.
But the fact was, there was no real option to farm us off to a variety of camps before we were old enough to catch the train to Gaeilge bootcamp. There wasn’t any need, Ireland in the 1980s still had the mammies at home and we all lived in estates. Once cornflakes had been ingested in front of Hong Kong Phooey and The Great Grape Ape, it was on to the Grifter and off you went for the day. You may or may not return for a spot of light lunch, but whether you did or not the mammy wasn’t on to the station to report you missing. She knew you’d roll in eventually, when the need for lasagne and a bowl of Angel Delight became overwhelming.
So, while the 1980s remain beige in my memory, they are attaining a utopian hue. I doubt my mother had a social diary for my sisters and me, but I have a separate column on each page of my business diary to remind me what the brats are up to on any given day, and the logistics involved in maintaining their schedule. What time to pick up and drop off, where that should take place and whether or not I will be chauffeuring additional chattering pre-teens on those days.
Although work does become secondary to their requirements, it still has to be done and so the available camps become a necessity rather than a luxury. Otherwise, anarchy reigns and the missus and I wind up taking work calls in a wardrobe, the only part of the house you may find peace.
The variety available is staggering. We have pony camp, gym camp, aqua camp, tennis camp and, for the kid who wants it all, adventure camp. Fancy treading the boards? Try performing arts camp. Is your kid a little pale with a fondness for bits and bytes? Check out science, language and technology camps.
But as the camp market becomes more competitive, each one makes wilder and more outlandish claims. If you look at enough websites or brochures, you’ll quickly come to the conclusion that if you deny your child the opportunity to attend, you are, in effect, denying them a future.
It also becomes quite obvious that despite claims that all “instructors” are qualified and certified to their gills, the people minding your kids on the archery and samurai sword-wielding camp are disaffected teens scratching together their minimum wage to enjoy themselves at the weekends. Next week they’ll be “hot-air balloon experts”, the week after “ancient pottery and artefacts consultants” at archaeology camp.
So, while it may sound as if the mammy was negligent not having a notion where we were from morning to night all those years ago, aren’t we as bad palming our lot off into the hands of jaded teens for the sheer bliss of a couple of quiet hours every day?
abrophy@irishtimes.com