Gwen Thompson was ready for sleepaway camp last summer.
But she was 9 years old, and the COVID-19 vaccine wasn't approved for her age group yet. Her mother, Dr. Laura Thompson, is an emergency room physician and erred on the side of caution.
"It felt like a risk we weren't comfortable with," Thompson said. "What if she got sick and we weren't with her?"
This summer, however, Gwen is headed to Minnesota for Camp Thunderbird. She's vaccinated now, cases are declining, testing is easier and the camp has established safety protocols.
"Everything just feels more settled than it did a year ago," her mom said.
Their family is part of a national surge in parents seeking out sleepaway and day camps for their children after two years of pandemic uncertainty.
"Demand is soaring," said Tom Rosenberg, president and CEO of the American Camp Association. In 2020, after the pandemic shut down schools, about 82% of overnight camps canceled their summer sessions, he said. About 40% of day camps did not operate that summer, either. Once research became available on how to safely operate camps, most of them reopened in 2021, albeit with reduced capacity in many cases. Camps developed multilayered mitigation strategies including masking, social distancing, grouping kids into smaller cohorts, and establishing proper technique and etiquette around hand-washing, coughing and sneezing.
"Some of the lessons we are learning are going to stick with us," Rosenberg said.
Ricky Langton, executive director for YMCA Trout Lodge and Camp Lakewood, said the pandemic created an opportunity to focus on campers building relationships within their cabins. Last year, Camp Lakewood increased mental health training for staff -- both for their own well-being and to help campers adjust to increased social interactions and greater independence.
Some campers have had to get used to seeing other kids' entire faces again.
"It's a reintroduction of what it is to be a child," Langton said.
Lakewood's registrations are already 30% higher this year than last year, he said, and the camp expects to be back at full capacity this summer.
Part of the reason for the increased demand is that parents are looking for ways to help their children make up for delays in social and emotional growth due to all the recent isolation and social disruption. Others are keen to help their children regain some of the academic ground they've lost over the past two years.
For the next several years, the summer months will be crucial to helping children catch up. Research shows positive and engaging summer experiences help children overcome learning deficits.
Zasmine Johnson is the program manager for Blueprint4SummerSTL, a site that helps St. Louis-area parents find camp opportunities, including free and low-cost options. She said a lot of camps are incorporating academic elements into their programming.
"Care providers are very aware of the learning loss, and know parents are going to be interested in that," she said.
Schools that offer classes during the summer ought to "campify" those offerings, Rosenberg said. The learning that happens in camp is experiential and kinetic, he explained. Basically, it's the kind of learning that happens through hands-on activities and movement. That's what makes it feel like fun rather than a chore.
In the immersive environment of an overnight camp, the child is in "an undistracted, natural environment away from phones and able to have a completely human experience -- reconnecting with peers every day, all day, and encouraged by counselors to try hard things," Rosenberg said.
Schools can learn something from the camp approach. But many of the most enriching camp experiences are too expensive for the poor and working-class families whose students have lost the most ground.
Prior to the pandemic, about 26 million children attended some type of summer camp program. There are more than 76 million school-aged children in America.
Thompson said she wants her daughter to learn new life skills and develop her independence at camp. She said Gwen was so excited that she asked if she could go for the entire summer. Thompson dialed it back to half the summer: three-and-a-half weeks where Gwen will spend most of her days outside, making new friends and lifelong memories.
"We really need every young person to have these experiences," Rosenberg said.