Bernard O'Shea: Five things I’ve learned about summer camps

"Summer camps are supposed to be the reward we give ourselves for surviving the school year. A place where children can run free, learn wholesome skills, and burn off all the energy your children have stored up over the last few months like ready to explode solar roof panels."

"You ask what they learned in camp today and they respond, “That I have power within me.” You’re thrilled, confused, and slightly afraid."

You sign up thinking it’ll be a week of peace and productivity. 

Finally, time to work on your stuff — you know, that big life goal you wrote in a notebook during a moment of optimism in March. 

Instead, you spend the week Googling “can children survive on cereal bars alone” while driving to a pitch that the satnav can’t find with a forgotten swimming bag on the passenger seat.

Here are five things I’ve learned — through trial, error, and one memorable glitter explosion in the back seat of the car.

1. The lunchbox is a source of deep emotional conflict 

You try your best. You really do. The lunchbox is balanced: one main, one fruit, one treat, one yoghurt. You even cut the sandwiches into triangles. 

But the thing comes home like a forensic exhibit. Everything’s been rattled around, melted, half-sucked and then rejected. 

A rice cake is wedged into the zip. The grapes are warm. The sandwich has been reassembled in a shape unknown to bread. 

When asked why they didn’t eat, your child says they “didn’t have time.” You suggest putting in a banana tomorrow. 

They look at you like you’ve just asked them to lick a radiator. You start adding up the cost of uneaten lunches across the week. You could’ve sent them to Spain.

2. Getting to camp each morning is basically an airport run 

You start the week full of hope and sunscreen. Bags are packed the night before, hats are labelled, you’re confident. 

By Wednesday, you’re operating a crisis zone. The water bottle is missing. So is one runner. The clean socks are all too small, and no one knows where the towel went. 

Drop-off time is somewhere between 8:30 and 9:15, but no one really knows. 

The WhatsApp group is 78 messages deep and full of things like “Just checking — is it inside today or outside or both?”, and “Does anyone know if today is the teddy bear picnic or was that last week?” 

You’re sweating before you leave the driveway. It’s the same stress as trying to get through airport security with small children, only instead of passports, you’re clutching a roll of duct tape and a travel-sized bottle of SPF 50. 

You finally screech into the car park, fling open the door and shout, “GO, GO, GO!” like it’s a military extraction. They forgot their lunch.

3. Crafts are beautiful... until they become weapons

Craft time is fantastic for our childrens' “creative development.” But what comes home is part expression, part accidental assault risk. 

Your child hands you a papier-mâché “castle,” and five seconds later you’re bleeding from a pipe cleaner that poked through the side. 

One afternoon they emerge clutching a glitter-covered plastic bottle full of buttons and string, beaming. “It’s a rain shaker!” they announce. 

It rattles like a bomb, and leaks glitter into every fibre of your car seats. By Thursday they’ve made a “wand” that doubles as a truncheon. 

Friday’s creation is just… wet paper. “It’s abstract,” they say. It reaches peak creative ambition when your middle fella asks, “Dad, where can we buy pure hydrogen?”

4. You learn surprising things about your child 

There is your child. The one who, at home, grunts in response to questions, and gets stage-fright ordering an ice cream. And then there is Camp Them. 

Camp Them is a leader. A storyteller. A dancer. You overhear one of the teenage instructors saying, “He’s gas craic — we’re thinking of giving him a mic on Fun Day.” 

This is the same child who yesterday told you you’re “ruining their life” for suggesting shorts instead of tracksuit bottoms. 

They now have a best friend named Flame. They call themselves “Thunderbolt.” 

You ask what they learned in camp today and they respond, “That I have power within me.” You’re thrilled, confused, and slightly afraid.

5. You briefly think 'I could run a camp' 

The camp leaders are 19, full of positive energy and don’t seem to age or sweat. 

They get 40 kids to form a silent circle while holding pool noodles. You wonder, “How hard can it be?”

You make a mental list:

• Rent a field
• Get a few games
• Hire teenagers with guitars
• Make €12k in a week

Then you remember this morning, when it took you 45 minutes and a bribe to get your child to wear shoes. 

You realise you’ve lost two lunchboxes, cried in the car park twice, and are one ham sandwich away from losing the run of yourself. 

You abandon the idea and go back to your real dream: a silent coffee in your own house, where no one is asking you what the rules of dodgeball are.

Summer camps aren’t relaxing. They’re a logistics operation disguised as a week of fun. But somehow, they work. 

Your child comes home sunburned, exhausted, and very proud of a drawing that looks like a hedgehog who’s been left tied up on the Holyhead ferry during his stag weekend with an incredibly bad hangover.

That night, you see them curled up, glitter still stuck to their eyebrow, a string bracelet on their wrist, muttering something about foam swords and “that one time Flame fell in the paddling pool.”

And you think: Yeah. That was a brilliant camp.

But what am I going to do with them next week?