ASD and Summer Camps

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Hi everyone!

I am thinking about applying for a job as a counselor in a summer camp. I already have some experience working with children as a teacher, but I have very little experience with summer camps. I would like to know about your personal experiences as an autistic person in a summer camp. I am interested in all kinds of experience (as a camper, as a counselor, in a mainstream camp, in an autism specific camp). I´d like to know what kind of accomodations they make in different camps, how inclusion works in mainstream camps and what makes it a good or bad experience for campers and counselor with ASD.

So, what was your experience like in summer camp?

I went to mainstream camp with people from my year level for a few years.

I always felt vaguely out of place, and very uneasy in the shared cabins, especially because I only really had one friend I cared about and we'd never be in the same one.

I was lucky - the other kids were surprisingly tolerant and accepting, especially considering it was a mainstream camp, and I was never bullied or treated differently even on the occasions when I had a camp related meltdown. I was afforded a lot of leeway just by virtue of being shy, bookish, and socially awkward. Additionally, my meltdowns aren't very disruptive, so I don't think many people apart from my friend actually realized they happened at the time.

Those occurrences notwithstanding, it was overall an enjoyable experience. However, I found that I much preferred volunteering at a nearby petting zoo over the summer around 6th grade, so I stopped going.

Still out of place but a lot better then school.

As a kid at summer camp I was always the loner, without friends, reading in the cabin while the others were having fun around campfire. All school trips were the same for me, even the highschool ones. Once I fell asleep in my cabin and noone noticednot even the girls who lived with me...even if they were checking attendance
Later I went to a summer camp organised by rafting club from town across the republic...altought I didn't know anybody we became friends really quickly and still, four years later, are - almost all of us are adult. Maybe the thing that helped was being a total stranger and talking about current things - people at the camp, sci-fi, food, stuff like that.
Few years after that I actually went as a kinda camp counselor (cutting out cards, preparing snacks,...) but they still counted me as a kid. So I attemped to bond all the kids together. It worked well but there was one kid who didn't want to go to this camp and he just sabotaged everything. He was like 15, really cool and interesting, liked cool stuff, fun to chat but when it came to camp activities, he just screwed s*it up. Sabotaging everything, taking himself as a hostage complete wit a hunger-strike and other stuff. Noone bullied him, I tried to drag him among the others and our squad...make him sit at our table... I simply tried my best and quite liked him - he hated me with an udying grudge rage. Didn't even get his facebook... Problem is I can't figure what did I do wrong and I'm pretty sure that it was me...the others liked me and became great friends, but this boy...maybe I wasn't empathetic enough but that's my main problem in life... :/
I still tend to make groups out of people and dragging the loners to my group but theres one guy in my class who only talks to one girl and I am not able to start a conversation with him. Ugh.

This was before I learned to recognize the signs of an upcoming meltdown and take myself out of the situation before it happened.

I'd say that the stress of being in an unfamiliar environment and surrounded by other people 24/7 was a major contributing factor. I felt as though I was constantly being watched, with no place to go be alone and recharge.

There wasn't a single particular person or incident that triggered them. It was a stress build up with nowhere to go that I inevitably had to release.

I went to a summer day camp for kids with disabilities. I often enjoyed it, though I did sometimes have meltdowns about losing a game and things like that. The other kids were mostly nice, though I did have mild verbal altercations with some of them. I had some friends, though I never truly felt like I fit in.

I was sent to a "Y" camp for two weeks around age 9. I didn't make any friends there, but I did choose the bunk under the cabin counsellor's, which afforded certain protections. Most evenings, I would be the last one awake, and would lift my feet to rouse the counsellor when I heard his name called for a staff poker game.
When swimming, we were told to stick with an assigned "buddy" for safety. Then, when we played volleyball in waist-high water, my buddy was assigned to the other team. Even though he was in plain sight and no danger, the rule conflict had me wailing.
One evening, the food was far better and more varied than usual, and we could "buy" what we wanted with "gold nuggets" (painted rocks) that we had found scattered in the woods. When we set off on the hunt, I was toward the rear, as usual in athletics, and decided to do a more thorough search instead of running for the far reaches. After about two minutes, I realized that participation was not mandatory, and that I could just go back to the cabin for some quiet time. This I did, not even feeling hungry, just relieved.
Another night, we paddled the canoes a few miles away, and slept out in our bags under fair skies. I chose a mossy hollow a bit away from the rest. I woke up only half as far from a cliff edge.
One day, we had mass-start canoe races. (I had my own boat at home.) As we jammed together, starting from stern on the beach, I didn't even have room to get my paddle in, so I grabbed the gunwale of the next boat and shot us forward into clear water.
When I got off the bus to re-join my parents, I said "See, I told you I wouldn't like it."

The story of the girl who took books to camp: https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_th ... introverts

Summer camp is near and dear to my heart. I went to camp for a week each summer starting when I was 8. My special interests are mostly crafty and outdoorsy with some horses thrown in, so I was mostly in heaven at camp. Especially once I was old enough to go to horse camp for the whole week instead of just getting a couple of horse rides. When I was engaged in a special interest camp project, it didn't matter as much that I didn't like engaging with the other kids. They awarded skill badges like scouts, so I would just work on getting as many of those as I could each week.

I was a third-generation camper with both my grandma and mom going there when they were kids, and even though I did generally love camp, there were a few things each week I really didn't enjoy, although I didn't know why then. Meals me uncomfortable because they assigned tables at random and I hated sitting with new people every meal. I developed a strategy of getting the table with the staff I wanted while the other kids were developing strategies to sit with their friends. All-Camp games made me uncomfortable because I wasn't athletic or popular. I'd usually try to find a way to sit out those activities or hang near a counselor. I always got along better with the staff than the kids.

I kept going all the way through their teen leadership program and eventually was on staff for a couple of summers before and after college. As a staff member, I didn't ever feel like I was as "cool" as the other staff and often didn't get invited to hang out with them on the weekends. Opposite of when I was a kid, I got along better with the kids than the staff once I was working there. The structure and routine of camp staff life was really good for me, but if something routine had to change it was meltdown city.

I only went to summer camp once. It was a day camp as I was too scared to be away from home overnight, it was for horseback riding. I was obsessed with horses back then. It was only a week but I loved it. I don't know if I would have been able to handle any longer. It was a small group of nice girls and we did other things like swimming too.