Action stations: Children try a spot of gymnastics at a summer camp in Mumbai

April was when they began to arrive at your doorstep every morning. Sandwiched neatly between newspages, they promised a whole lot of exciting things for your child the moment the summer vacations kicked off. Art and craft, dance, theatre, pottery, aerobics, weekend picnics at the nearest McDonald’s outlet ? the advertisements mentioned them all. All you had to do was enrol your child in the summer camp of your choice and sit back and see his or her holidays being taken care of.

But then, your children would be missing out on an experience that you yourself extracted from summer vacations a few decades ago. Back then, holidays meant complete submission to the elements. Studies were pushed to the backburner ? maths books were dislodged by detective novels on bedside tables. And afternoons were spent chasing the football in the neighbourhood park, if not watching Mary Poppins with distant cousins who had dropped in for a week.

Things, indeed, have changed. And from a sociological perspective, it seems that the encroachment being made by camps and workshops into quality leisure time is a fallout of the current nuclear structure of urban families. “During vacations, there’s no one to take care of children at home,” says a Delhi-based media professional, whose five-year-old daughter attends a camp offering courses to children for three hours every day. “Since my husband and I are both professionals and stay out of home for long hours, we feel our child will be better off in a summer camp during the day, instead of being managed by the maid at home,” she says.

The summer camp experience can be fairly exhaustive and depends on what kind of activity children want to focus on. To begin with, there are outstation camps, where children are taken to distant locations to be introduced to activities such as rock climbing, camping or nature orientation. “My children simply loved the nine-day experience they had at a trekking camp in Himachal Pradesh,” says Radhika Narang, a Delhi-based homemaker with children aged 10 and 12. “The camp came with a price tag of Rs 11,000, but it was well worth the experience,” she says.

On the other hand, city camps offer three to four hours courses daily, five days a week, and enrol children aged between four and 12. While some workshops offer a comprehensive package to children, comprising several activities under one roof, others are more specific, focusing on one or two activities only. Most camps cover a greater part of the vacations, ranging from two to six weeks, and come for anything between Rs 500 and Rs 2,000.

Price, however, doesn’t seem to be any deterrent for parents wanting to send their children to the camps. And their numbers are growing. “Last year, we had just one camp in Chittaranjan Park, where we took in about 25 children,” says Roopak Chauhan of the Delhi-based Anant Children’s Theatre Workshop. “This year, growing popularity has seen us running three camps across Delhi, with a collective strength of 75.”

The summer camp boom, then, is on. And Anuradha Dar, who has been conducting them for almost a decade, explains why. “Camps ensure that children learn how to use their free time in a more productive manner, instead of whiling away their holidays watching cartoons on television,” she says. And unfortunately, we don’t live in an age where the classic summer vacation experience of yore can be replicated either.

Nevertheless, there are others who feel that summer holidays are a ‘sacred space’ that needs to be left untouched. “Vacations are a time when the emotional bond between parents and children can be worked on, since the rest of the year just goes by in meeting deadlines,” says Amita Mulla Wattal, principal, Springdales School, Pusa Road, in Delhi. Under such circumstances, the tendency to pass children on to other people during holidays only sees parents being estranged from their children with passing time, she says. “The problem only becomes visible during adolescence, but by then, it’s too late to reopen communication channels,” she adds.

Nothing can also beat the experience of a summer camp gone wrong, and if parents are to be believed, they do go wrong at times. “My children went to a theatre camp two years ago where all they did through one-and-a-half months was gather material for a final stage performance,” recalls Meha Mathur, a working mother of two. “They learnt absolutely nothing through the course, despite the camp organisers charging more than Rs 1,000 for each child,” she says.

At the end of the camp, the teacher is believed to have asked the children if they would want to come back next year, says Mathur. “Not me, madam,” was her daughter Arushi’s curt reply.

Nevertheless, summer camps continue to thrive. Peer pressure among kids is a prime factor here. “A lot of parents come to me and say they want to put their children into summer camps because children otherwise tend to feel inferior to their friends who attend camps,” says Dar.

Of course, parents fail to realise that meeting a child’s peer demands may ironically end up taking a toll on his or her in due course of time. “But then, as long as they are not overdoing it, there’s really no harm in sending a kid to a camp for a couple of hours a day,” says Anita Paul, vice principal, Apeejay School, Saket, in New Delhi. “That still leaves a lot of time for children to be on their own, or even interact with their parents, and thus helps maintain a balance,” she adds.

The ultimate call on the issue, however, would be taken only by parents, keeping in view the interests of their children.