Alexia Tate snagged a coveted spot for her 9-year-old son, Desmond, at a summer day camp and had been looking forward for months to his participation in a much-loved rite of passage — and having some downtime for herself.
Now, she’s mulling the possibility of Camp Mommy.
“Everything's just kind of on hold for right now,” she said.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, camp leaders are awaiting guidance from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state Department of Health on whether camps can open this summer.
The uncertainty is making unhappy campers out of parents.
Alexia Tate and her son Desmond, 9, are pictured at their home in Peekskill, May 6, 2020. They don't know if his summer camp will be open for the season, so they will do crafts and games and backyard exploration to keep busy.
After months of supervising online assignments and classes — while juggling their own jobs and responsibilities — parents are now confronting the possibility of having to keep their children engaged and supervised over the summer.
The past couple of months have been hectic for Tate, an early childhood music educator and a mother of a fourth-grader from Peekskill, New York.
“I've been juggling, teaching my own classes and helping my son stay focused and working on his school work and keeping him occupied,” she said.
For Tate, virtual camps — which some camps have started to talk about — have no appeal.
Alexia Tate and her son Desmond, 9, are pictured at their home in Peekskill, May 6, 2020. They don't know if his summer camp will be open for the season, so they will do crafts and games and backyard exploration to keep busy.
“I won't want to do a virtual camp," she said. "I'm tired of all the screen time. I can't imagine paying camp fees for a virtual experience."
She has not talked with her son about the possibility that camp will be canceled.
“I think as parents, we're trying to take on that emotional labor ourselves and you know, not burden him with thinking about it,” she said.
Camps may be able to open safely if the spread of the virus dissipates in the state, said Susie Lupert, executive director of the American Camp Association for New York and New Jersey.
"We are still in a holding pattern while we try to determine with both the state and the federal government how they believe kids can gather in a safe way," she said. "As of today, camps are certainly going forward with enrollments and hiring staff and we are hopeful that we can have some summer."
About 80,000 children in New York attend licensed summer camps, Lupert said.
On Tuesday, the American Campers Association released an outline of how camps might reopen, with ongoing testing and screening of campers and staff, strict rules to cover handwashing and social distancing, and increased sanitary standards for dining areas.
For Jennifer Picucci of Ossining, New York, there is no Plan B.
Picucci, who has two children at home — a 14-year-old son, who is on the autism spectrum, and a 12-year-old daughter — said not having a summer program would be challenging.
She is a health care worker and her husband works in construction, both jobs that cannot be done remotely, meaning they'd have to hire a babysitter.
“Hiring a babysitter for the entire day to take care of my son is not easy," she said. "He’s a big, tall boy who is jumping and flapping and agitated. It would be a lot for anyone."
Her daughter would miss out on a looked-forward-to opportunity to be a counselor-in-training at a local town camp.
Her biggest worry is the potential setback for her son if he is unable to attend summer school for children with special needs.
“When they don’t get services for a couple of months, there’s a big decline,” she said. “I'm lucky. I have a husband and two other children (one is an adult who lives nearby) that can help. But I'm sure there's tons of single parents out there with special-needs kids and I couldn't even imagine being in their shoes.”
Amelia Landis and her mother Sarah, are pictured at their home in Lewisboro, May 6, 2020. Amelia was going to be a CIT (Counselor in Training) at a summer camp in the Adirondacks this summer, but no one knows for sure if they will be open.
Meanwhile, some area camps are still accepting registrations for enrollment and hiring for summer positions.
Sarah Landis, a mother of three from Lewisboro, New York, said two of her children were planning to go to a sleepaway camp in the Adirondacks.
Her 17-year-old daughter, Amelia, a camper for nine years at the Adirondack Camp in Lake George, was all set to be a counselor-in-training this year while her 10-year-old daughter, Zuzu, was gearing up for an eight-week experience.
Amelia and Zuzu Landis at the Adirondack Camp last year
The Adirondack Camp has operated every summer since 1904 — through the typhoid fever outbreak in 1906, the Spanish flu, a Polio epidemic, the Asian flu, the 2009 Swine flu, two World Wars and many other global concerns, it said in a recent email to parents.
But this year, it’s all up in the air.
Landis, co-founder of MKR LAB, a STEAM-focused learning lab for kids in Lewisboro, said going away to camp is a positive growth experience for her children. .
"It's where they push themselves physically on multi-day hikes and paddling trips, where they take emotional risks singing and performing in front of a group,"she said.
If the much-loved summer rite of passage is unavailable, they will need to create their own focus and engage themselves, she said.
“They'll miss friends and the familiar rituals of summer and will need to find ways to keep ennui and depression at bay,” Landis said. “It's daunting. This will undoubtedly be a formative time in their lives. I hope our kids emerge stronger, more empathetic, and with the knowledge that they have great depth and resiliency."
Meanwhile, Tate has given some thought to what Camp Mommy would look like.
“I think that it would be like, get up and do yoga, do some reading and do some crafts. All the snacks and lunchtime will be really regimented,” she said, with a laugh. “Then, maybe play some games in the backyard, create an obstacle course or whatever it is. I would have to get up and start being physical, which I don't think I can do much of."
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy covers women and power for the USA Today Network Northeast. Click here for her latest stories. Follow her on Twitter at @SwapnaVenugopal. Support local journalism; go to lohud.com/specialoffer to find out how.
