To all parents in the Brooklyn community,
I hope this letter finds you well and you are having a wonderful summer. I would like to bring to your attention something which is very disturbing in my eyes, and that is limited interaction between kids and their counselors.
I have a hard time understanding why great and dedicated counselors are not allowed to arrange special activities with their campers, whether it’s after camp hours during the summer or during the year, for example, having get- togethers, playing sports, and something similar. If I were a parent of a child who had such a great counselor that will go out of his way to do things for the bunk, I would say “Great, you are a great dedicat ed guy. Do it”. As a youth director during the year, if a leader of mine wanted to do something with his group during the week (depending on the age, I would not do this for a very young grade) I would say go ahead!!!! I feel that parents who are overprotective with their children are doing a major injustice for kids.
I would therefore ask these kinds of parents to start thinking a bit, and maybe ask themselves the following question: “Is my counselor/leader dedicated”? Maybe I can trust him/her in certain things out of camp/ youth program!!!” Counselors and leaders are there for the kids and their job is to give kids a great time, but it does not have to end there. I know kids who have stayed in touch with me on many occasions, whether it’s a monthly phone call, going to their Bar Mitzvah’s etc. It’s an important lifeline that you, the parent may be taking that away from that child. I know my mother A”H was also an overprotective mother, only because I was a n only child, and I never went to sleep away camp as a kid because of that. My goal is to take this initiative and break this overprotectiveness from these kind of parents, so living normal life can be restored. I hope you join this initiative with me. Feel free to write back in the papers what you feel about overprotectiveness. Thank You.
A Disturbed Counselor and Branch DirectorO
added some paragraph breaks for readability