I don’t think that my kids appreciate how good they have it when it comes to summer camp. When I was their age, there was just one kind of camp: the kind with a mosquito-clouded lake, flatulent horses, and songs the other campers all seemed to know. No one asked what your interests were; it was assumed you had always dreamed of expressing yourself in the form of a lanyard keychain.
Digital Vision
I'm not quite sure how they dug up my class picture...
Now my children can choose between DJ camp, computer gaming camp, and, I kid you not, LEGO camp. They literally have camps just for the stuff you had to leave at home when you were at camp. I can’t wait for the letters home: “Today we programmed mosquitoes for our lake in Minecraft. Since I did so well, my counselor said I could join some of the older campers tomorrow and help them figure out how to design virtual horses that pass gas....”
Soap opera
With five kids, two dogs, and a cat, I’ve had to adjust my standards for what constitutes a clean house. Are the dust bunnies hidden behind piles of mismatched socks? Then it’s clean. Are the dirty dishes all within a yard of the sink? Clean. Do the roaches scatter within 2 seconds of the light coming on? We’re good. Three seconds is bad. At least we’re doing our part to fight allergies and asthma, according to a new report, which I’m sure is around here...ah, right under that wet towel!
Dr. Robert Wood, chief of allergy and immunology at Johns Hopkins Children's Center, Baltimore, wondered why studies seemed to show that dirt and bacteria protect rural children from developing allergies when other studies implicate roach droppings and animal dander in promoting allergies in urban settings. How can city dirt be so bad when urban music is so much better than country?
As it turns out, it’s all about the timing. A review of exposures and allergy and asthma symptoms among 467 children in four cities demonstrated that kids exposed to increased levels of mouse and cat dander, cockroach droppings, and house-dust harboring Firmicutes and Bacteriodetes bacteria enjoyed protection from wheezing so long as that exposure occurred in the first year of life. The implications are clear: Either we need to develop a strain of bacteria-encrusted urban cats that harbor mice infested with cockroaches, or I should tour America’s cities giving housekeeping tips.
Too cool
The study that I’ve been waiting for since 7th grade is finally out! We now have scientific proof that being a...what did they used call me...a geek? Nerd? Dork? Weirdo? Dweeb? Wonk? Bookworm? Poindexter? Grind? Hey-you-with-the-glasses? Well, anyway, over the long run we do better than those cool kids with their admittedly impressive vocabulary of insults.
Publishing in Child Behavior, University of Virginia psychologist Joseph Allen evaluated 184 adolescents’ use of “pseudomature behavior” to impress their peers. He questioned kids, their families, and their peers over 10 years, as the subjects matured from age 13 to 23. Early on, those kids who experimented with cigarettes, alcohol, and sex were indeed rated as “cool” by their peers, who also secretly seethed with resentment. (Dr. Allen did not report that last part, but I just know, okay?)
By age 22, however, those same kids were experiencing increased trouble with alcohol, substance abuse, and criminality compared to their peers. Their classmates, in the meantime (at least those who hadn’t managed to get out of that dusty little town and pursue their dreams in the big city), rated the “cool” kids as being less socially competent and less mature. Whether they were also starting to lose some hair and get a little thick around the middle is, again, unreported, but we know, because we may wear glasses, but we can see just fine, thank you.
The whole truth
I just finished reading the scariest article I’ve seen in a while, at least as a parent. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology claim to have proven that children as young as age 6 years cannot only tell when an adult is lying to them, but they also can tell when we’re simply not giving them the whole truth. Go ahead and give that a moment to sink in. Yep, it’s bad, real bad.
My only hope comes from the underlying experimental design. The subject of subterfuge was a pyramid-shaped toy with knobs and buttons, not, say, the human reproductive tract. And the uninformative “teacher” was a puppet, not a real person who might convincingly sell, say, the idea that a chubby elf could deliver billions of presents in a single 24-hour period. Of course, if they do reproduce this experiment with valid human liars, then the implications are clear: Only 6-year-olds should be allowed to vote for Congress. I just hope my own kids don’t catch on until after I tell them about camp.