When Did Camp Become an Expectation Instead of a Gift

Article by psychotherapist Nechama Drookman: “What once felt like a privilege begins to feel like a right, and its absence feels like an injustice.”

By Nechama Drookman, M.A., B.Ed., RP

As camp season approaches, parents across our community find themselves immersed in a familiar process.

Which camp is the right fit? Will my child thrive there? Will they be accepted? Will they feel included? Will they be happy?

Months of applications, interviews, recommendations, shopping lists, and planning often go into what appears to be a simple summer decision.

And understandably so.

Few would dispute the value of summer camp. It offers children opportunities for growth, independence, friendship, confidence, and lasting memories.

In many ways, camp offers a useful case study through which to examine a much larger question.

Parents today invest significant resources creating opportunities they believe will enrich their children’s lives. We strive to give our children every advantage we can, yet the standard of what constitutes an advantage continues to rise. In many communities, sleepaway camp has become the standard rather than the exception.

Yet if we work so hard to provide our children with enriching experiences, why do those experiences not automatically translate into happiness, fulfillment, and well-being?

In recent years, anxiety among children and adolescents has continued to rise. Research over the past decade has documented significant increases in anxiety despite children having greater access than ever before to resources, opportunities, and comforts. (Twenge et al., 2024; Lurie Children’s Hospital, 2025).

I am not suggesting that camp or material comforts cause anxiety. Human development is far more complex than that. Still, the contrast invites reflection.

If a child’s well-being were simply a product of having more, should we not be raising the most content generation in history?

Perhaps the problem is not our desire for our children to be happy, but our definition of happiness and well-being.

Somewhere along the way, happiness became confused with pleasure. Pleasure comes from getting what we want; happiness comes from learning how to live with what we have.

And perhaps nowhere is this confusion more visible than in the opportunities and experiences we have come to view as essential for childhood.

Perhaps the interesting twist in all of this is that camp itself is often one of the very opportunities that contributes meaningfully to a child’s growth and development. Yet it also reflects a broader phenomenon: how yesterday’s luxury can become today’s expectation.

The Rebbe was an advocate for Jewish summer camps and viewed them as powerful environments for children’s educational, social, emotional, and spiritual development. The Rebbe repeatedly emphasized the unique value of camp and even made a rare trip outside of Crown Heights to visit Camp Gan Israel, underscoring the significance he placed on the camp experience.

Anyone who has worked with children can see the immense benefits camp can provide. Children often return more independent, more confident, more socially connected, and more mature. Some children experience more personal growth in a few weeks of camp than they do during months of the school year.

Perhaps that is precisely why opportunities such as camp deserve to be viewed as gifts rather than guarantees. Camp is a gift—but only when it is experienced as one.

That is what makes camp such a useful case study.

Somewhere along the way, a gift became an expectation.

The shift is subtle but profound. When blessings become expectations, gratitude fades. What once felt like a privilege begins to feel like a right, and its absence feels like an injustice.

Imagine a child being told that camp is simply not possible this year. Perhaps circumstances make it impossible, another family need takes priority, or a different decision needs to be made.

Would the child be disappointed? Of course. Disappointment is both natural and emotionally healthy.

The deeper question is whether that child could still find gratitude, fulfillment, and a sense of well-being within the reality they were given—or whether self-worth has become so attached to certain experiences that it disappears when those experiences are unavailable.

—Nechama Drookman, M.A., B.Ed., RP, is a Toronto-based Registered Psychotherapist and founder of Comfort Psychotherapy. Holding university degrees in Education and Psychology, she has over 28 years of experience in education and mental health, she has worked as a teacher, educational administrator, mentor, public speaker, vice principal, and principal. Individuals seeking therapy services or professional consultation may contact her through comfortpsychotherapy.com.

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