Hi everyone,

    I’m looking for a bit of advice and guidance here. We just wrapped up eight weeks of summer camp during which we had a couple of issues that we hadn’t experienced before. During one week of camp, we had to send two different campers’ home and ask that they not return for separate behavior issues. One child was essentially a bully who wouldn’t listen to staff when we tried to correct their behavior and then we trying to talk with their parent the child became verbally abusive to us. While we haven’t needed to in the past we now realize we need language that establishes the line in the sand of what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior for our campers.

The second camper we had to send home was neurodivergent but had trouble properly regulating their emotions which led to them going after the other campers including attempting to chase another camper because said camper was asked to not kick the wall and pushing another smaller camper to the ground. We’ve had neurodivergent campers before that have had meltdowns which we know how to handle but we don’t have the knowledge for how to handle situations that escalate beyond that. We’re a small staff that relies heavily on teen volunteers to help us with camps and we just unfortunately don’t have the staffing to support campers with more complex behavior issues. As a neurodivergent adult I want to make our camps a welcoming space to all but there’s only so much we have the ability to handle. Any advice about policies you have or any trainings you know of would be greatly appreciated.

Best,