Choosing a summer camp for a nine-year-old is mostly about fun and safety. By the time a boy is thirteen or fifteen, the question changes. He is old enough to be bored by activities designed for younger children, old enough to take real responsibility, and at an age when the men and older boys around him have outsized influence on who he becomes. A good camp at this age can be one of the most formative weeks of his year. A mediocre one is an expensive babysitter with a lake.
Here is how to tell the difference.
Start with the boy you have
Before looking at camps, be honest about your son. Is he outgoing or reserved? Has he been away from home before? Does he have a skill he wants to build, like climbing, sailing, or shooting, or does he need to discover one? Is he physically confident, or does he tend to hang back?
A boy who has never spent a night away from home may do better with a one-week program close to Nashville than with a month in the Rockies. A restless, capable fifteen-year-old who has done the local camp for five summers may need something harder: a backcountry expedition, a work program, or a camp where he serves as a junior counselor. The best camp is the one that stretches him from where he is, not from where you wish he were.
Look at what he will actually do each day
Every camp has an activity list. Ask instead for a typical daily schedule for his age group, and look at how the time is spent.
For teenage boys, the strongest programs usually share a few features. Boys are grouped with others their own age rather than mixed in with much younger campers. There is real skill progression, so a boy who returns the next summer can build on what he learned. And there is responsibility: older campers cook, lead, plan trips, or care for younger ones, rather than simply being entertained.
Pay attention to how much free, unstructured time there is and what fills it. Some unscheduled hours are healthy. A camp where teenagers spend long afternoons idle on their phones is not one.
Ask about screens
Camps vary widely on phones. Some collect them at check-in and return them at pickup. Others allow them at set times. A few barely regulate them.
For many families, a week or two without a phone is one of the chief benefits of camp, and boys often find they miss it far less than they expected. If that matters to you, ask directly, and ask how the rule is enforced. A written policy that counselors ignore is no policy at all.
Ask who the counselors are
The adults and young adults running a camp matter more than its facilities. Ask how old the counselors typically are, how many return from year to year, how they are screened and trained, and what the ratio of staff to campers is for your son’s age group.
Many camps rely on college students, and many college students make superb counselors. But it is fair to ask who supervises them, and whether there are experienced adults on site who have been doing this for years. For teenage boys in particular, the presence of a few older men of real character can shape the whole atmosphere of a camp.
Ask about safety and accreditation
Accreditation from the American Camp Association signals that a camp has met a set of outside standards for health, safety, and program quality. Not every good camp is accredited, especially smaller or specialized programs, but if a camp is not, ask how it handles the same issues: medical care on site, emergency plans, staff background checks, and procedures for water and wilderness activities.
For wilderness programs, ask what training the trip leaders hold in wilderness first aid, how they decide to change plans for weather, and how far the group will be from help. Good programs answer those questions easily and without defensiveness.
Ask what the camp believes it is for
This is the question most parents skip, and it is often the most revealing. Some camps exist to give children a carefree summer, which is a fine thing. Some aim to build specific skills. Some are explicitly religious and see faith formation as the heart of the work. Some talk about character and leadership.
None of these is wrong, but you want the camp’s purpose to match yours. If you are hoping your son comes home with more self-reliance and a clearer sense of what it means to be a man, a camp focused mostly on recreation may leave you disappointed, however well it is run.
Weigh cost against length honestly
Sleepaway camps range from affordable church camps to programs that cost as much as a semester of college. Longer is not always better, and more expensive is not always better. A single well-designed week can do more than a month of loosely supervised activity. Ask what is included, what gear he will need, and whether there are scholarships.
Consider alternatives to camp
For some teenage boys, the best summer program is not a camp at all. A summer job working outdoors, a long backpacking trip with his father, a week of volunteer labor, or a short guided expedition can each offer the challenge and responsibility a camp is supposed to provide. Our guides to a first father-son camping trip near Nashville and to choosing an outdoor program for a teenage boy cover some of those options.
Meriwether Academy does not run a traditional summer camp. We do run guided outdoor trips from Nashville through much of the year, including father-son trips for boys eight and older and overnight canoe voyages for men and boys fourteen and up, where boys cook, make camp, and purify their own water, and spend evenings around the fire talking about courage and character. Dates are posted on our events page as they are set.
From the Meriwether archive: Backpacking With a Teenage Boy: Pack Weight, Mileage, and What to Let Him Carry and What Is Wilderness Education? What Boys Learn Outdoors That School Cannot Teach.