Paul Hopkins: Summer camps: just camp on the green

At my supermarket checkout I hear a young woman say: "It won't be long now 'til the summer school break. And I have so much to organise." I gather we’re talking summer camps or the Gaeltacht for the children.

Heading home, Drivetime – with that consummate journalist with the infectious laugh, Sarah McInnerney – informs me that parents have been warned to expect high prices for sending children to summer camps and are being advised to plan ahead.

Research indicates that it will cost almost €1,500 for childcare and summer camps for a family of two primary-school children. And this is before including the cost of a family holiday.

The estimated costs have been compiled by financial planning firm Provest, which is urging parents to plan ahead to manage the financial demands associated with the upcoming school break.

The closure of schools invariably means many working-parent households will have to juggle camps, childcare for outside camp hours and transport for the summer months.

Summer camps are hugely popular, with the options available for children allowing them to have fun and also learn new skills. Maths academies, theatre camps and even Lego-based courses have sprung up in the last few years, along with the traditional sports-based camps and Gaeltacht residential courses.

Provest financial adviser Olive Walsh says the average costs for a family of two primary school-aged children, with two working parents, is now high. She calculated typical costs for a family with one parent working full-time and the other, part-time. The average cost of activity camps is between €70 and €130 a week a child, with many parents signing their children up for multiple camps across the summer.

Childcare costs for an average of 24 hours a week could be as much as €204. But this could be even higher if both parents are working full-time. And, also, costs will vary depending on locations and specific choices.

In the next few weeks, many parents will be running around like those proverbial blue-assed flies trying to get a place for little Sean or Sinead in the myriad such schools and camps that have been an option of the summer holidays the last decades.

All are good and worthy ventures, run well. While a week or two at these camps can be a good thing, the reality, says my psychologist friend from Magherafelt, is that children need a break from the necessary regimented structure that marks the school year, as it does summer clubs.

"Their young brains need a break, to refresh and recoup their thoughts and emotions and separate them from all the crammed learning and educational input of the last year. And there is no better way to do this, as any child will tell you, than to just chill out, let it all hang loose for the (hopefully) hazy, crazy days of summer," he tells me.

Half of the estate I grew up in was for some time still a building site and we kids treated it as one giant playground. We balanced on backs of tethering bricks, we climbed up half-built staircases and ran across landings that abruptly ended. Whatever about the building of resilience or grit, it certainly kept us fit, physically and mentally.

And, yes, we played on the street. The car had been invented but we still played on the street.

In the morning we were practically shoved out the door, and told "go play". The world was our oyster, imagination our playground, and such imagination, without the appendages of smart gadgets, was palpable with possibility.

Such wild abandoning to one's imagination and an endless possibility is these days what the educationalists term "freely chosen play", when a child decides and controls their play following their own instincts, imagination and interests. They play without being overseen by adults, and there’s no right nor wrong way to play. Such freely chosen activity improves their health, well-being and development, and life skills.

With measurable activities, like after-school sport or summer camps, it is easy to see what has been learned or achieved. Free unstructured play is not measurable. It may be hard to say what a child has actually been doing other than ‘playing’. But it's that great sense of free spirit, of 'doing nothing' for a young, inquiring mind that, I believe, directs one's development and individuality.

I saw it with my own three children.

And, when they and their peers were grown and gone, the silence on the green was deafening...