Our Value as a Behavior Change Camp

Summerland at Camp Pocono Trails is a healthy habit camp for campers that overuse screens including video games, social media, discord, and/or inappropriately overuse the internet. We also help kids and young adults build self-esteem, social skills, and more. If your child’s issues are not screen related, this is not the best program for your child. 

Parents often contact Summerland Camps frustrated at the high cost of treatment and are looking for an affordable boot camp or therapy camp.  Most wilderness therapy programs are priced at around $45,000 for the entire program which only lasts 60-90 days.  Therapeutic boarding schools and residential treatment centers (RTC’s) are similarly priced at $10,000 to $15,000 per month with little to no aftercare.

Summerland Camps offer a superior service with a reasonable pricing structure.  If you are looking for an affordable boot camp or wilderness therapy program, you may wish to consider Summerland Camps as a more effective, lower-priced option.  We provide group sessions but in a positive and motivating format.

It is important, however, to understand that the Summerland program is 100% voluntary. First and foremost, this is a traditional, fun summer camp. We do not accept aggressive campers or campers that would disrupt the fun summer experience for others. That being said, a certain amount of resistance is to be expected. We simply ask that campers understand why they are attending and that they agree to give it a try. If your camper is refusing an intervention, this is not the camp for them.

Our focus is on health and wellness. Campers learn how to manage screen activity and practice soft skills that will be needed to reach independence successfully.  Group therapy may cover topics such as dealing with bullies, making friends, and finding ways to cope apart from screen-based activity. Every camper at Summerland is screen free for the duration of camp.

CLICK A BUTTON BELOW TO COMPARE SUMMERLAND CAMPS TO OTHER PROGRAMS:

Campers enjoy a full challenge and ropes course at our private 350-acre campus.

The Cost of Failure

Consider the cost of doing nothing.  If you send your child off to college not prepared to deal with unstructured time, how likely will they be in the 60% that fail to graduate college?  Consider the cost of wasted tuition, wasted time, and the cost of supporting your child back at home if they fail to thrive.  Investing in Summerland Camps is insignificant compared to the cost of failure.

At Summerland Camps, we focus on teaching coping skills and developing insight – something no pill has the ability to do.  We also take a positive approach.  We don’t see your child as “broken” – they simply need to learn new skills and develop new habits.  Punitive programs that seek to tear a child down and rebuild them can result in a child simply pushing back harder than before.

A Clinical Program with a Summer Camp Setting

Be careful about choosing any program that lacks a clinical underpinning.  An affordable boot camp is not so affordable if the program makes no long-term changes.  As you can see on the Summerland Camps website, we are proud of our motivating, positive, and scientifically based strategy for long-lasting change.  The Summerland Camps strategy was developed by gathering scientific research on what works for troubled teens.  A so-called affordable boot camp would not save families any money if the child returns home with no behavioral plan.  You have to ask yourself, “If my child is going to be resistant to the program, and if there is no therapy component, how likely is it that the program will make any long-term change?”  At Summerland Camps, we’ve put a ton of time and effort into this very issue.  You cannot find a more positive or motivating therapy program.

Outpatient programs in a hospital setting can be expensive too- and like outpatient therapy, don’t provide a total reset opportunity.  A child can just drag their feet through the day and never fully engage anyone in the program.  The best opportunity for change is a total immersion experience where relationships with peers and the family are completely reset.  Only separation of several weeks in a new environment will achieve this end.  While an affordable boot camp can provide a reset opportunity, without therapists there is no clinical approach to address the underlying issues.

At Summerland Camps, we have developed an effective strategy to get our campers fully engaged quickly.  We are the best value in behavior change camps.  We have campers participate in activities they will love- sports, water activities, swimming, golf, and so much more. We get campers interacting and creating real relationships quickly.  Consequently, if any foot-dragging is going on, they get called out quickly.  Behavior coaches also meet with campers individually to discuss any issues that come up during the camp process.

We firmly believe that the best way to influence a teenager is through other teenagers.

Creating Results

Through the interactions campers have with other campers – whether that’s as a result of the team-building competitions or just having fun, we learn to interact and respond to one another in healthier, more pro-social ways.  The problem with outpatient behavior change is that it’s done after the fact.  In our setting, when we see campers getting upset, frustrated, or just having a bad social interaction, we step in and do the work of behavior change at the moment.

We are creating the experience of resolving negative feelings positively.  For many campers, it will be the first time they’ve done this in a long time.  Often the situation at home has just become too toxic- and we are locked into the same battles over and over that the learning experience has to take place elsewhere.  We can make that happen; it’s what we do.  We are the best value behavior change camp providing corrective opportunities for change.

It’s also critical when comparing our value to consider that you are paying for a full year of services versus just a short time at the program.  Please see the graphic below to best understand our true value:

Best Practices

In this respect what we are doing at camp is not revolutionary per se- we are simply providing “best practice” interventions for improving relationships, learning coping skills, developing insight, and setting goals.  What gives us such great results is that we are doing our interventions in real-time.  We believe that processing an interaction weeks after the fact is not effective.  We believe that it’s out of human interaction that people change and that we need to practice positive interactions to heal; not just think about what we should have done weeks later.