Bust out the duffel bags and Popsicle sticks. Summer camps are severely under-rated. These glorious temporary colonies of mostly children serve several important functions, not only for your offspring, but also for you— the parental figure’s— well-being. Summer camps were the height of fashion in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Honestly they should have been big deals for longer and earlier, but I digress.

What exactly are the benefits of Summer Camps? Well sit back and apply your mosquito repellent and I’ll tell you.

1. You can ship off your spawn to be someone else’s problem for a couple of weeks in the summer. That means you can kick back and take a well-earned vacation from parenting.

2. Depending on the type of camp, your offspring could come back a completely different person. Or at least knowing some important survival skills. Like that Disney Movie about fat summer camps? Yeah. You know the one. Those kids learned many valuable lessons. Don’t let yours miss out on those lessons. Look into camps that specialize in survival skills or Popsicle stick art. Either works.

3. Your offspring will gain an appreciation for nature. There’s nothing like being farted on by a small black and white forest creature to give a deep, unrelenting appreciation for the finer things on God’s green earth.

4. The farther, more remote the camp is the better. This will allow your offspring to learn how to be away from you, dealing on their own.

5. Use the haunted summer camps as the ultimate test before your kids go off into the world on their own. Don’t believe me? Watch any of the Jason movies. The ones with no common sense and poor reflexes are the first to die. If your spawn makes it through, then congratulations! They are eligible for leveling up.

Give yourself and your parenting partner a break next summer. Ship your kid off to someone else to deal with for a few weeks.

Grab the s’mores fixings!

Azra

***Disclaimer***Azra has been around children for centuries. While not having any of his own, part of being an exiled angel means blending in on earth. As he traveled the earth, he picked up on a lot of parenting practices across the globe. This blog is meant to share his parenting wisdom with a new generation. And to win a bet.

*Note: any advice given is meant to be satirical and not to be taken literally. Please do not exercise it upon any living being, child or otherwise.*

Fashion is finicky. Clothing choices transform a lot for the human species. With garb drastically changing not only from culture to culture, but also time periods and human ages, it’s so hard to get it right.

As a parent, you are obligated to ensure your offspring is properly dressed. Or are you?

Consider this: allowing your spawn to decide in the manner they are dressed teaches self-sufficiency and boosts confidence. Which, if you have read my previous blogs on the subjects, are great things for your rug rat to have.

A good fashion sense takes years to develop, though in many cases, it doesn’t develop at all. That would be all well and good, except for one tiny thing. Society judges you on your appearance and nothing else.

So, for the sake of creating a self-sufficient and confident human, you are left with letting your undeveloped monster choose the striped tutu over the dinosaur costume with the mismatching cowboy boots and ugly sweater vest. Which would be fine except you have to be seen and associated with them.

What is a parent to do?

Avoid them. Avoid being seen with them until their sense of fashion either comes out of hiding or until it is socially acceptable for them to be in public by themselves. Here are a couple of tips:

· Keep them locked up and out of the public eye. This approach is what I like to call the Rapunzel tactic. It only works for so long before they want to be let out and your counter measures (locks, towers, vague threats of the outside world, etc) fail.

· Watch them from afar. Keep a certain amount of distance from your child while in public. When they call for you, look away and ignore them. Soon, they will learn not to address you when other people are within eyesight.

· Hire someone to be seen in public with your offspring. Depending on how much they charge, you can also have them dress like your child, thus absolving you of your public parental image. Problem solved.

Fashionably yours,

Azra

*Note: any advice given is meant to be satirical and not to be taken literally. Please do not exercise it upon any living being, child or otherwise.*

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