Caught In Between: A New Spin on Traditional Day Camp for Children with Developmental Delays

For this week's camp blog post, I sat down with Alison Goodman, program coordinator of the new Tadpoles Program at , to discuss the benefits of summer camp for children with developmental delays. Having been diagnosed as Learning Disabled with Attention Deficit and Auditory Processing Disorders as a child, Alison provides an interesting perspective to this popular topic. Her thoughts are below.

When most adults reminisce about their days at summer camp they remember learning how to swim, making new friends or winning a sports game. However, when I look back at my camp experience, I remember it as a place that enabled me to gain confidence in myself and connect with my peers.  Growing up as a child with special needs, summer camp played a crucial role in my development and helped transform me into a successful and assertive adult. 

As a child, I was diagnosed as Learning Disabled, specifically with Attention Deficit and Auditory Processing Disorders. Although I interacted well with my peers in school, I constantly faced multiple hurdles in my academics. My teachers and administrators evaluated me according to rigid state and nationwide standards and failure to match the norm resulted in me falling behind my peers. As I fell farther behind academically, my self-esteem suffered as well.         

No matter how challenging my school year was or how insecure I felt, when summer arrived and camp began, I was surprisingly transformed. For me, camp was not about being in gifted classes verses self-contained classes - it was a time when I was on an equal playing field with my peers. While I excelled in swimming and crafts, my peers were successful in softball and basketball.  Each day, a new activity was completed and conquered by the wholeness of the group and I modeled behaviors off of my peers. The focus of camp was to be yourself and have fun!

Camp provided me with daily, natural experiences that fostered the growth of my language, academic and social development. As a result, I began to excel in school and ultimately went on to obtain a graduate degree in Early Childhood Special Education in order to give back to other children with special needs. When I look back at my own childhood, I realize that camp was a crucial factor that helped me overcome my developmental delays and I wouldn’t be where I am today if not for those endless summer days spent at camp.  The core of the camp experience provides the ideal environment to assist children with special needs and provides the perfect setting to allow them to grow.

As a result of this insight, I collaborated with Rolling River Day Camp in East Rockaway, New York and a multidisciplinary team of specialists to create the Tadpoles Program, a preschool camp program for children with language and sensory delays. The goal of this group is to provide children with extra support in their first years of camp and to allow them to gradually transition into a traditional camp setting over time. The Tadpoles Program focuses on building the foundations of pragmatic language skills by providing children with natural social skills opportunities in a structured, safe setting. Furthermore, this delicate balance between a traditional camp and a center-based summer program allows parents to feel confident that their children’s sensory and language development needs are being attended to and that they are receiving daily reinforcement of the skills developed throughout the year.  

Contrary to common belief, children with developmental delays who are not qualified to attend a center-based summer program can benefit from a typical camp experience, just like I did as a child. Children can work to maintain or even accomplish some of their IEP goals in a fun, carefree setting. For example, a seemingly simple cooking activity such as making cookies can help a child develop their fine motor skills, improve their sensory integration as they knead the dough and enhance their language development as they learn the social norms of sharing and taking turns. Additionally, a half hour at the playground can work on developing a child’s gross motor skills, sensorimotor function and coordination, as they climb up a ladder or crawl through the tunnel.

Ultimately, summer camp is an ideal learning environment for all children no matter their age or ability level. As proven by my personal experience, the life skills learned at camp are invaluable and have a positive impact on all children that will stay with them for years to come.