Fiddleheads Summer Camp
Hi all,
I'm looking for feedback on the Fiddleheads Summer Camp Program. Our son is 5.5 years old and while I know he has age-appropriate social skills, he has difficulty accessing them at times when he is at school or in a group setting in general. He has always been quite shy, and while I know he has great interest in people, I think he can be unsure of how to enter play and appropriately interact with others. If you have any experience with the program, I'd love to hear about it! Thanks!
Jan 27, 2019
Parent Replies
My daughter did the Fiddleheads summer camp last year and I cannot recommend it. While the adult to child ratio is great, as is the small group size, we just didn't have a good experience. There was a lot of turnover with counselors (I think she had 5 in a 2-week period) and frankly the counselors didn't seem to really know how to handle challenging kids. My daughter came back with a whole host of new, undesirable behaviors learned from other kids and was subjected to a lot of 'mindful sits' which were basically time outs as she was given no instruction about mindfulness. I could not see any benefit from the camp. Add to that that it is extremely expensive and even she doesn't want to go back — it's not worth it!
We had a very negative experience with Fiddleheads. We also experienced high counselor/therapist turnover and for kids who need social skills help, this is not conducive to trust and growth in that area. While mindfulness is a good concept and showing kids how to agree on the rules they make amongst themselves with adult guidance is a positive thing, they were in no way prepared to handle my child's emotional upsets when things weren't fair or another kid was mean or didn't listen to my kid's words. They blamed my child for their problems, the very ones I brought them there to get help with. The concept is great on paper, but it doesn't happen in practice because they really don't seem to know what they are doing.