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I'm very much in agreement with this. Kids need stress, and not just of the exam kind.
One of my less pleasant but ultimately pretty beneficial childhood experience was attending a summer Scouts' camp at age 10. I was a member of the detachment but the summer camps weren't mandatory.
Anyway, it was somewhat unpleasant, mostly because the level of discipline demanded was fairly high, and as a very pre-pubertal kid* I didn't even have any machismo motivation that helped later with unpleasant things like bathing in very cold water.
And of course the labor, cut down dry trees, sawed them for firewood, cooked all the food, carted all the water and we built the camp ourselves. It was nothing dangerous or backbreaking, especially not for the smallest kids, but novel for bookish nerds.
The food wasn't the greatest usually, as you'd expect when the guy who is overseeing it is usually a teenager, and there's no real refrigeration apart from keeping stuff in a cool stream. We only ate meat once during the whole camp. Really helped with fixing my attitude to food too. I stopped being picky.
I remember I cried halfway through when the parents were visiting, but ultimately stayed.
This sounds awesome how much per week do I need to pay for this getaway? $5000...?
Not quite the same as this, but some friends and I spent a week camping in the Smoky Mountains earlier this summer. The costs for food, gas, campsite reservations, firewood, and supplies came to less than $250 per person.
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My parents paid cca $80 to have me off their hands for three weeks.
You understand the laboring part was only first five days and then 1/4 of the time ? Each scout patrol would take turns in doing the camp-keeping part.
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