Relationships: 'Helicopter parents' go to camp

Punxsutawney Phil peeked out last week to predict another six weeks of winter, but parents of school-age children know that summer is coming up fast. The evidence? A knee-deep pile of camp forms, most due within weeks.

The list of forms has grown exponentially over the years, offering anyone paying attention a checklist of seismic societal shifts: behavioral contracts, medication and allergy forms, forms with two sets of addresses for Mom and Dad.

But none of these is what's giving camp directors a big fat headache. That would be a seemingly innocuous sheet called "Cabin Request."

This form was conceived, wisely, to allow the youngest campers to name one friend or sometimes a sibling with whom they'd like to share a cabin as they make the scary and exhilarating leap to away-camp. After that, on more confident bus rides into the wild a summer or two later, many leave that form blank -- assuming their parents let them.

Most do. But a growing number of hovering parent are taking the friendship form up a notch, creating something called "friendship chains." With chains, each child in a group of school or neighborhood buddies requests a different child in the same circle. Anne chooses to bunk with Olivia who chooses Beatrice who chooses Lise and so on. The result is that children have a camp experience shared with their closest friends.

In fact, they don't have much of a camp experience at all, but something more like a long and elaborate birthday party.

"We don't discourage friendship chains," said Paul Danicic, executive director of the YMCA of Minneapolis' 85-year-old Camp Menogyn. "We say, 'We recommend that your child sign up with one friend.' We do this because it's great to come up with a friend, but six? How would you like your kid to be the one kid out?"

"We will not put more than four campers together in a cabin who know each other," reads the cabin assignments section from Trout Lake Camp in Pine River, Minn. "It is important to us that campers become acquainted with others outside their friendship circles and that individual campers feel comfortable and accepted even though they have not come with someone they know."

Camp Chi, an overnight camp in the Wisconsin Dells area, also "strongly discourages friendship chains," limiting campers to "two friends only."

The problem is growing. Or would that be shrinking? "Every year, I say I'm just going to eliminate friendship requests," said Todd Gedville, entering his 10th year as recreation director with Vernon Township. The day camp near Chicago caters to children ages 4 to 7.

"Half the time, I think it's the parent who wants the friendship request," Gedville said. "How many 4-year-olds are thinking about this? It's [the adults'] comfort level. They worry that their child will be miserable all day if they are not with a specific friend."

A deeper concern

Especially a parent putting a cherished child on a bus, or an airplane, and saying goodbye to the daily hum of communication for days or weeks. What could it hurt if they were surrounded by friendly faces?

Don't worry. They are.

Any camp worth its salt is staffed with directors and counselors whose kid radar and sensitivity are so keen they'd never let children falter, whether the challenge is making a friend in the same swimming group or surviving together in the Boundary Waters with only as much as they can carry on their backs.

But these friendly faces are also wise enough, and just distant enough, to not move in too quickly. They've seen what barriers our kids are capable of busting through if given the chance. And what safer place to experiment with possibilities than summer camp?

Ultimately, if we don't want our children to be afraid of their own shadows, we can't be afraid of ours.

What better self-reliance tool to nurture in a scary world than that?