Youth Therapy Camp

At Summerland Camps we are a youth behavior change camp that focus on the issues that plague the modern generation.  It’s not just “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” like it used to be.  Online addictions have taken over. and just avoiding technology is not a reasonable solution.

According a 2010 Kaiser Foundation study young people between the ages of eight and 18 spend an average of 7 hours 38 minutes a day with digital media including TV, computers, cell phones, and game systems. When the use of more than one digital device at a time is taken into account, the youth of today spend more than 10 and a half hours a day with “screen time” activities.

New Generation, New Problems

We are truly living in a different age.  We are the first generation of parents learning how to guide our kids though a world surrounded by screen based activities.  Today more than ever, parents need help in setting up a structure for their kids to enable them to be successful in college and beyond.

Many of the parent we speak to at Summerland Camps don’t see how their child will successful when they leave the house at their current level of functioning.  The is because the child is locked into a routine of social media, TV, computer or gaming use that only ends when the parents intervene and tell the child to turn the device off.

Self-Monitoring of Behavior

Summerland Camp is a youth behavior change camp that helps the child monitor their own behavior and develop self-regulation skills – that is, an internal framework of self-discipline that will enable them to monitor and regulate they own behaviors in order to meet higher level goals.

If you think about it- almost every goal a person sets involved self-regulation skills.  For example:

• People on a diet set calorie goals and write down what they eat every day, tracking caloric intake.
• People saving for a big purchase or even retirement calculate how much of every paycheck they need to save and write down a budget accordingly.
• Olympic or professional athletes that need to meet strength or endurance goals write down their workout routine and pre-plan their workouts every day.

The list goes on and on.  This is the approach we take at Summerland Camps for behavioral change.  We don’t see our campers as sick or broken.  They simply have developed some bad habits and need to learn how to change.

Best of all, the self-regulation methodology we teach can be applied to so much more in life.  Our campers can leave with the knowledge of how to change behaviors and become better students, athletes, financial savers and so much more.