Vacation therapy, does a short time at teen camp have any effect?

Many of the teen boot camps, wilderness programs and residential camps offer vacation camps to get your teen back on track. They are an attractive option for the parent who may not be able to afford the fees of a long term residential program. There are advantages and disadvantages to these types of programs.

They differ in effectiveness and approach and you need to check them out as thoroughly as you would do if you were sending your teen away for a longer residential stay. Later articles will look at some of these programs in detail, but overall you need to consider whether this is the right solution or not for your troubled teen.

Advantages of a short term stay at teen camp

• Allows both the teen and parents to "try out" an option for a longer term stay


• Gives the parents a break from their difficult teen, and time to consider their strategies


• Can give the teen a structured environment and a break from their parents!


• Can allow the teen to interact with nature, may be a very unusual experience for an inner city teen


• Can give both parties a breathing space after a family crisis


• May send a strong enough message to the teen and make them change their behavior


• May help as "detox" for a teen with a drug problem


• Can jump start a change but must be followed up with therapy


• Keeps teens out of trouble during the long vacation!

Disadvantages of a short term stay at teen camp

• Is unlikely to make a long lasting impact on a seriously troubled teen, real therapeutic treatment takes time to effect a change in behavior


• May make the teen feel even more rejected by the family


• In some cases is no more than an expensive holiday camp with a few team building exercises


• Can be an expensive experiment!


• May have an impact while the teen is there, but once home the teen reverts to their old behaviors


• For a teen with a drug problem the short term detox effect needs follow up therapy and the camp may cause physical problems to show


• Rarely have medical or highly qualified staff as seen as second best to long term treatment


• May simply be a mechanism by which the camp persuades the parents to admit the teen for long term treatment

Before you send your teenager off to camp this summer, think about what you want that camp to provide, and read a lot about the different programs. It could be a way for you to see if your teenager responds to therapy or structure of a different sort. It may help you to decide what to do in the long term with your troubled teen.