Category: News

As a first time parent, I’m often astounded by how fast the hours of the day go. No matter how hard I try, between work, trips to day care, chores, food shopping, preparing meals and most importantly spending time with the kids (wait, don’t forget sleep and shower!), there just never seems to be enough time during the day to get everything done in the quality way I want to. I know, I know… I’ve got to let some of it go, and I certainly have (you should see my closets), but I continue to be troubled by one particular parenting challenge. How do I make sure that we connect as a family every day?

I’ve become fascinated by “The Family Dinner.” Not just because it was a tradition that I grew up with (some of the time), but because of the benefits that the family dinner can bring to children. There are countless studies that show that having a family dinner can deliver significant emotional and psychological benefits. In fact, there are studies that show increased resiliency and self-esteem connected to the simple (and sometimes not so simple) act of eating dinner together as a family.

As a Summer Camp Director… resiliency and self esteem are kind of “my thing.” I work year round with an incredible team, developing programs to help build 21st century skills like these through the Summer Camp experience. However, I am always looking for ways to help our Camp families extend this learning outside of Camp. So, naturally when I read this, I was intrigued by the power of a family dinner. What a great way for families to connect to each other and continue the learning done at Camp in their own home… every day of the year (or even just a few days a week).

I believe, however, that the success of the family dinner isn’t just getting everyone there or even what to eat. I believe that in order to maximize the benefits of the time spent as a family around the dinner table there is a critical factor that most families may not address…. What on earth do we actually talk about? How do we take the family time beyond “how was your day?” to meaningful conversation that will help shape more confident and contributing members of the family and greater community? A lofty goal for an hour a day I know… but it is something I believe can be done and something my husband, Dane and I have set as a priority in our parenting of our twins.

Recently I came across an incredible resource and encourage everyone to check out: The Family Dinner Project. The site contains countless pages full of specific and developmentally appropriate conversation topics, along with fun dinner games, recipes and a fantastic FAQ section written by founding member and local psychologist Anne Fishel, PhD. It is quickly becoming one of my favorite parenting websites to date, and also has a tremendous amount of practical information that can be carried over to my life as a parent (as well as my life as a Camp Director). It has given me the answer’s I’m seeking and hope that you too will find it helpful. Also, FYI, Dr. Fishel has recently published a book called Home for Dinner: Mixing Food, Fun, and Conversation for a Happier Family and Healthier Kids that is to be released in January. You can pre-order it on Amazon. I anticipate it will be a great resource for all parents searching to bring families together each day…. and a fun fact? The book’s forward was written by our consulting psychologist and friend, Michael Thompson, Phd.

What routines/traditions does your family practice around mealtime? Do you have other resources you’ve found helpful in planning your family dinners?

In this piece, Friedman interviews Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president of people operations for Google — the guy in charge of hiring for one of the world’s most successful companies, and a model for companies in the 21st century.

Bock states that Google has determined that “G.P.A.’s and test scores are worthless as a criteria for hiring… We found that they don’t predict anything.” He also noted that the “proportion of people without any college education at Google has increased over time” — now as high as 14 percent on some teams. This is an interesting proposition, given that I am currently looking at colleges for my daughter, most of which retail at well over $50,000 per year…Bock tells us that for ALL POSITIONS AT GOOGLE, they look for five “hiring attributes” (character traits) which have nothing to do with GPA, SAT scores, or college alma mater: “the No. 1 thing we look for is general cognitive ability, and it’s not I.Q. It’s learning ability. It’s the ability to process on the fly. It’s the ability to pull together disparate bits of information.” Thinking quick on your feet, being able to take various pieces of knowledge and put it into a tangible plan. This is stuff that campers and staff learn through experience at summer camp each and every day- especially at Everwood, with our dynamic camp program full of group activities and electives.

At Everwood Day Camp and our resident Camp, Camps Kenwood & Evergreen we specialize in teaching the skills that will be most important for kids to master in the 21st Century, yet are the most difficult to assess. Education thought leader Will Richardson wrote an interesting piece on “The Immeasurable”, and the challenges associated with teaching them in a formal school setting. At some point, I hope that Richardson comes to understand that many of these skills can be mastered during out of school time through experiences like Camp. Recently I was reading through Richardson’s blog, and came across this gem, in which I substituted the word “CAMPS” for “schools” to fit my thinking:

“We have a case to make, I think, for valuing the immeasurable over that which can be easily measured, and that the powerful role that CAMPS can play now is not delivering that narrow curriculum (which is now in a million places) but in developing the skills and dispositions or the “opportunity to participate in civic and deliberative discussions” which, at the end of the day, is kinda hard to machine score. It’s not an easy case to make in this world of competition and ranking and sorting. But it is where our real value is now. How we articulate that value and move it into the mainstream thinking is where our collective laser focus needs to be.”

Since it’s opening, Everwood Day Camp has been an allergy friendly campus, accommodating the needs of our campers with peanut and tree-nut allergies, as well as gluten and dairy allergies. A prime focus of our mission is the health and safety of the campers and counselors in our care. Therefore the decision to be allergy friendly was a simple one. We are a community where we take care of each other and being allergy friendly is one way that we do that.

By providing peanut and tree nut free snacks, and gluten and dairy alternatives everywhere in campus that food is served (including our cooking program), all of our children are able to fully participate in our camp program. Our families have all agreed to forgo lunch items that contain peanuts and tree nuts, and our counselors are diligent about double checking lunches. Our two registered nurses are incredible resources and work with all our families of children with allergies and train our staff to ensure a safe and healthy environment for all our campers.

In 2010 Everwood Day Camp was founded, and as former overnight camp directors, we knew the task of creating a camp community from scratch needed to be carefully considered, and intentionally driven. We were faced with many decisions, and some situations that were a bit unique to us. We knew we were only going to have our staff and campers on our facility for 7 hours a day, not 24 hours.

So, in order to create a integrated and focused summer camp community, we had to do something powerful. We had to do something great, it had be consistent, and it had to be something that our campers and counselors were accountable for each and every day. Focused on 21st Century Life Skills, our mission and philosophy were clear, but how would we communicate this mission to our kids and our staff?