ADDitude's Complete Guide to ADHD Summer Camps

How to choose the right camp for your ADHD child.

by Phyllis Hanlon

Melissa Bailey's 11-year-old son, Jake, diagnosed with attention deficit disorder three years ago, does well in school but is often excluded by his classmates. Bailey sent Jake to Camp Northwood, a New York camp designed to help kids like Jake find peers, feel accepted, and increase their confidence. "For the first time he actually made friends. He participated in all sorts of activities, and came home feeling awesome about himself."

Monica Rappaport found an outdoor adventure camp designed for kids with ADHD and mild to moderate behavior disorders for her 12-year-old son (ADHD and bipolar). He spent 16 days team-building, canoeing, camping, and hiking across northern Michigan and, says Rappaport, "He came back a new person. His self-esteem was the highest I have ever seen it."

Lisa Bernstein chose a mainstream, four-week, overnight camp, but took extra care in packing her ADHD son's bags, listing the contents of each one on an index card. Bernstein also armed the camp staff with suggestions about how to make things go more smoothly. She reports that, although her son "came home with significantly less clothing to unpack, he brought home an abundance of wonderful, happy memories."

At the mention of the words "summer camp," questions come to mind for parents of ADDers: Will my child make friends? Who will make sure he takes his medication? How can I make sure he doesn't fall behind academically over the summer? What if he doesn't behave appropriately? Virtually all camps specializing in ADD and LD children share a set of staffing and structural characteristics that address these (and other) parental worries. And these are the areas about which you'll want to ask detailed questions of each camp you consider.

Similarities aside, parents still must choose among a broad range of ADD/LD camps, camps that differ in the activities they offer, their mission, and educational goals. Here, we look at four types of ADD/LD camps. We've asked experts for tips on choosing a camp - and invited readers to share their experiences. It's our hope that this article will be a good place to start. Then, it's up to you to determine what camp best suits your child's needs, your family's schedule, and your budget.

Characteristics of the best ADD/LD camps

The areas outlined below distinguish the best ADD/LD camps from their "mainstream" brethren and, for the most part, should relieve you of your main concerns about sending your child off, away from your parental eye.

• Highly trained staff. ADD/LD camps often employ counselors who are, in fact, trained psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists, teachers, or speech and language pathologists. In the best specialized camps, 20 percent or more of a camp's supervisory staff must have a relevant bachelor's degree or at least 24 weeks of experience working with ADD/LD kids. Pat Hammond, director of standards for the American Camp Association (ACA), says, "We want camp staff to be up-to-date in their field, to be able to work effectively and understand the kids they serve."

• Individualized attention. While most mainstream camps have counselor-to-camper ratios ranging from 1:6 to 1:10, ADD/LD camps pride themselves on much more individual attention. Even the camps that serve high-functioning kids often have two or three counselors for every seven to 10 children per cabin. Such a high staff-to-camper ratio allows counselors to build mentor relationships, teach social lessons and life skills in an everyday context, and maintain behavioral standards. In fact, many ADD camps say their large staffs allow for the warmth and sense of community that are the hallmarks of their programs.

• Social skills instruction. While kids with ADD often have average to above-average intelligence, they may need help making friends. Virtually all ADD camps provide social skills training, with a focus on team building. Social skills are integrated into daily activities (e.g., helping one another while navigating a rocky trail, discussing behavior after a soccer game).

As Dave Stoch, director of Camp Kodiak, in Ontario, Canada, says, "We teach social skills all day long in everything we do," to approximate a real-life context. Some camps offer formal social-skills sessions, but counselors are also trained to look for "teachable moments" - instances to reinforce positive behavior or catch and redirect social errors.

• Enhanced medical services. ADD/LD camp directors told ADDitude that as many as 80 percent of their campers are on medications; substantial medical staffs are the norm. Summit Camp, a four-week, therapeutic-recreation camp in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania, has five full-time nurses and a full-time pediatrician on staff. At ADD camps, the logistics of administering medication are in place. While some camps use services such as CampMeds or Meds On Call, to package a child's individual doses, others may train staff or counselors to deliver and track medications throughout the day.

• An educational component. In contrast to mainstream recreational camps, where it is unusual to find campers engaged in formal educational activities, most ADD/LD camps build three to 12 hours of reading, math, or study skills into the weekly schedule.

In activity-based camps, the educational goal is to reinforce a camper's recent learning, not to teach new skills. To accomplish that, camps generally employ trained teachers, who may get a copy of a child's IEP - and even talk to his teacher - to develop an individualized plan of instruction. At camps where education - language-based learning, reading, or dyslexia remediation - is the primary focus, instruction is more ambitious.

• Campers without "big issues." With the exception of these programs that address behavioral training, most ADD/LD camps accept only children of average to high intelligence who don't have serious behavior problems. Camps don't tolerate kids with drug or alcohol problems. Camp staff typically spend several hours with a prospective camper before accepting him or her. Their goal is to weed out those who are either too low- or too high-functioning. "We want to make sure that we can provide a peer group for every child who attends our camp," says Jonathan Jones, executive director of SOAR, a success-oriented adventure program with 10 different locations.

Summer Camps, Part 2

What types of programs are available?

No two are exactly the same, but, generally, ADD/LD camps focus primarily on one of four main goals. Here's what they are like:

• To Make Friends and Learn to Be a Friend: Camps that promote social skills and personal growth

These camps may be the right choice for children who crave normalcy, friends, and a peer group. Many children who attend camps such as these feel marginalized during the school year, or have difficulty making friends. Counselors are trained to encourage positive relationships among campers and foster self-esteem. Camps stress that they're not merely recreational, nonetheless, campers spend much of their time in traditional camping activities, from ropes courses to nature hikes, kayaking to rock climbing, all under the watchful eye of trained, attentive counselors. One camper wrote home from Summit Camp: "Dear Mom and Dad, You gave me something I never really had (except at home): FRIENDS! I am very thankful and grateful. I love you. Bonnie."

• To Develop Leadership and Life Skills: Outdoor Adventure Camps

Like personal-growth camps, adventure camps incorporate team-building into their curricula. Adventure campers usually leave base camp for more experiential settings - white-water rafting on swift rivers instead of canoeing on calm lakes, horseback riding through mountain ranges instead of nature hikes in the woods. It all adds up to a short-term, high-impact experience that is especially popular with teen campers. Adventure camps create their high-octane programs to promote good decision-making and build self-esteem. In addition, they help kids learn to make decisions, plan, and execute, consciously teaching life skills. For example, counselors at SOAR accompany campers while they do their own laundry at the laundromat, or help them plan their own meals and shop for supplies for a four-day hike.

• To Get an Academic Boost: Educational Summer Sessions at Year-Long ADD/LD School

Some schools that specialize in learning disabilities run remediation and enrichment programs during the summer. Such classroom-based programs may be a wise choice for children with dyslexia or other language-based learning disabilities who may regress academically given only a few hours of academics each week. Although these summer programs are not camps per sé, the strong educational component is generally tempered with time spent outside the classroom.

For example, at Landmark College's High School Summer Session, students can balance their 19 hours of class time a week with activities like orienteering, tennis, or trips to local theaters and attractions. Depending on the institution offering the course of summer study (whether a high school or college), students' ages range from 9 to 19.

• To Modify Behavior and to Improve Learning Skills: Summer Treatment Programs (STPs)

Developed more than 20 years ago at the University at Buffalo, STPs cater specifically to the needs of AD/HD children. Now offered at 10 sites across the country, these 8-week day camps give children ages 5 through 14 intensive behavioral training that they will carry with them throughout the subsequent school year.

Behavior modification sessions are taught by developmental specialists in both individual and group settings. A significant portion of each day is dedicated to age-appropriate games and activities that improve learning skills, academic performance, and self-esteem. STPs put particular focus on the individual - children receive daily feedback, as well as a report at the end of the session, which details interventions made during camp and recommendations for future treatment. According to one study, more than 95 percent of parents report a positive impact on their children, themselves, and their families.

Mom and Dad are key components of the program because, as STP founder William Pelham, Ph.D., says, "When you teach a child with ADD how to get along with others, you also have to teach the parents to maximize the gains in a family setting and beyond." During special evening sessions, parents are taught everything from how to handle problematic behavior to how to help with homework.

Finally, many families opt for traditional, mainstream camps. If your child makes friends easily and can handle a less-structured curriculum, a mainstream camp may be just what's needed for him to just feel like an ordinary kid. Keep in mind that ADDers make up to 20 percent at some mainstream camps, so managing medications is rarely a problem. And almost every camp these days has at least one full-time nurse on staff.

If a child has an intense passion for, say, soccer or swimming or drama, use the summer to bolster these skills, along with a sense of competence and identity. There's a camp to suit virtually every interest or hobby these days. An added benefit - attending a mainstream camp offsets any stigma that can build up during the school year for a child who is taken out of class for special accommodations or trips to the school nurse for meds.

How do you choose?

Now that you've got the basics, it's time to find the right camp for your child. While no one approach guarantees a happy camper, keep a few things in mind. First, solicit your child's input. "Children function best at what they like," says Andrew Adesman, M.D., director of the division of developmental and behavioral pediatrics of Schneider Children's Hospital in New Hyde Park, New York. "The other ten months of the year, they are forced to go to school. Don't mandate that they spend the summer doing uninteresting things."

Once you've narrowed your choices, share the camps' information with your child's teacher and ask for her opinion, advises Michele Borba, Ed.D., an educational consultant and author of the social-skills primer Nobody Likes Me Everybody Hates Me. "A teacher will be well-equipped to assess the fit between your child and the camps' programs."

In the end, make your decision by considering all the options available to children with ADD but not by considering only your child's ADD. "The bottom line is, you want your child's camp experience to be fun and positive," says Dr. Borba. "Yes, it can teach your child new skills, but the most important thing it will do is boost your child's confidence in being away from home and handling life without you around. That's a plus for every child."