The CampHacker Podcast

Camper Parents and our Staff - with Chris Rehs-Dupin & Matt Kaufman - CampHacker #230

• CampHacker - from Go Camp Pro • Episode 230

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 46:25

Have some feedback? A topic suggestion? Text us!

Find full show notes and links at: https://gocamp.pro/camphacker/camper-parents-and-our-staff

-

Training Your Team to Inspire Confidence in Caregivers

This episode explores the friction between caregiver expectations and camp realities, emphasizing why trust is the foundation of every interaction. Matt shares insights from his book on the science of belonging while the team discusses practical ways to shield frontline staff from communication fatigue and manage the "webcam" culture of modern parenting.

Key takeaways include:

  • Shift the focus from quantity to quality in communication. While parents may ask for daily updates or photos, the real goal is building a foundation of trust so they feel confident their child is safe without constant proof of life. Effective communication is an outgrowth of how a parent feels about leaving their child in your care.
  • Implement structural communication boundaries to protect staff energy. Rather than allowing parents to interrupt frontline counselors during busy times like bus duty, create systems that nudge caregivers toward leadership members who are trained to handle complex questions. This ensures that counselors can stay focused on their primary job of keeping children safe.
  • Train your staff to inspire confidence through professional interactions. Even if a counselor is young, teaching them specific social scripts and decision trees helps them appear capable and reliable to anxious parents. You don't want to communicate that you don't trust your staff to speak, but you must empower them with the tools to triage conversations effectively.

Tool of the Week - Make Yourself a Better Camp Director

Your Hosts

-  

Rate and Review the CampHacker Show

(Thank you!)

-

Thanks to our sponsors!

UltraCamp

Running camp comes with enough moving parts. UltraCamp keeps registration, payments, and communication in one place—so you can spend less time juggling systems and more time building an incredible camp experience. Learn more at ultracampmanagement.com/camphacker.

Our free Resilient Camp Blueprint diagnostic is available at: https://camp.mba/travis

SPEAKER_02

When it comes to communication between staff and parents, is it more like oil and water?

SPEAKER_00

This is Camp Hacker. Come find our show notes and our blog for camp directors and leaders at camphacker.tv.

SPEAKER_05

Learning Camp comes with enough moving parts. Ultracamp keeps registration, payments, and communication in one place so you can spend less time juggling systems and more time building an incredible camp experience. Learn more at ultracampmanagement.com/slash camphacker. Hello, Camp Mavericks, and welcome to the Camp Hacker Podcast, brought to you by UltraCamp and the Camp Resilience Checkup Diagnostic from me. My name is Travis Allison. I'm a summer camp consultant specializing in helping camps reclaim their staff time, build resilience, and reignite their purpose.

SPEAKER_02

Hi, everyone. My name is Chris Hudson. I'm a camp consultant. I help camps and youth organizations turn their values into real lived experiences for staff and kids. I focus on building stronger communities through practical leadership, equity, and connection.

SPEAKER_01

Hi, I'm Chris Reese Dupin. My pronouns are he hem. I'm the president and founder of T Camp and support camps and becoming spaces of belonging for campers of all genders and sexualities with a super fun sub-focus in supporting camps and interfacing with angry parents. I am also a parent and in the thick of being a camp parent. So I get to see this from both sides.

SPEAKER_05

Matt, welcome to Camp Hacker. We're grateful to have you here today. Um I know that you've done some of the other shows, but uh I just wanted to connect you with our audience. I think that your book is really interesting, and I also know you have a great perspective on our topic today. So uh how did you get connected to camp in the first place, Matt?

SPEAKER_03

Oh, um I've been in camp my whole life. I don't know, I don't know anything other than camp. Uh I started at Camp Ramacoy when I was four years old, and I never left. Um, so this has been my entire life. I don't really know. I've never taken a summer vacation in my life, to be honest with you. Um, so I started as a camper. I was a very, very shy camper. I was not the prototypical camper. I I struggled uh for a long time and uh spent 11 years at the camper and eventually uh became a counselor here, became a division leader, uh, became an administrator, and came on full-time and wound up being uh one of the directors here at camp. So um my my educational background is in engineering, and I think that what really appeals to me about camp for me personally is that camp is a lot harder for me than school was. So school came really easy for me, but but camp was always a challenge, and I think because of that challenge, it made me uh a better person, uh a more resilient person, and forced me to learn things that I likely would not have learned if I hadn't had the camp experience. So that's pretty it's it held a pretty special place in my part.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. And super quick overview, Matt, what is the book about?

SPEAKER_03

Uh the Campfire Effect uh is about um we we talk as camp people, we love camp and we talk about the magic of camp. We see kids transform, staff transform, and we we use the phrase the magic of camp. And uh I don't believe in magic because I'm a grown-up. Um so I did a little bit of research or a lot of research actually, and I realized that it's not magic, it's science. There's things going on in our brains, there's chemicals going on in our brains, and um, the book is basically uh combines science and stories to explain that what we do at camp really has foundations in science, and we can actually uh be an example to the rest of the world about how they can do things better in terms of creating an environment for human beings to flourish. So um I tried to keep in a balance of science and stories because I know that uh too much science can be overwhelming for people, including including me. So um that's in 30 seconds what the book's about.

SPEAKER_05

Amazing. And the audio book just came out, yeah? The audio version just came out.

SPEAKER_03

I'm very, very excited about the audio book. I I am a big Audible fan, so uh I was much more excited to see the book on Audible than on. And did you read it, Matt? Did I did I read the audio, the audio version?

SPEAKER_05

Who did the audio version for you?

SPEAKER_03

Oh, did I read the audio version? No, um, I didn't. Uh I I actually wanted um one of my co-directors to uh to to read it um because I love his voice and he's just fantastic. But yeah, it takes it takes like 40 hours to do an audiobook like this. Um, and we just didn't have the time. So I got a professional.

SPEAKER_05

Right. Amazing. I can't wait to hear it. It's really fun. So welcome to Camp Packer. We're grateful you're here, Matt. Thanks. Good to be here. And Chris, welcome back. We're good, glad to have you here again. You also have a book that is uh pending.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05

I've had a chance to read it. I'm excited about it too.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so it is called Impounded, and it is actually not about camp, but also about camp. It's about what happens when you take a camp person and put them in a completely different environment, which for me happened to be the city impound lot. Um, it also talks a lot about the the brain science of anger, um, which is something, you know, when we talk about parents, when we talk about impound lots, it comes up, you know?

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. Amazing. Well, we'll give folks a chance at the end um and in the show notes at camppacker.tv to find the links to both of these books to pre-order Chris's and to pick up Matt's. Um, but grateful that you both are here. Before we start the topic, I just wanted to ask those of you who are listening, do you know that you can leave us fan mail or effectively send us a text? From your podcast app, you'll see at the top, you can send us fan mail. And uh you can do it right from your app while you're listening if you have a question or a comment. And I wanted to highlight this comment, in which I'm going to swear because I like swearing and it's in the comment. Um, so you got 35 seconds to close your kids' ears. The the fan mail we got was holy shit, guys, this episode was like taking a cold plunge this morning. I appreciate the data and the insight. This is the kind of stuff that makes the Campbell pod so important to our industry. There needs to be conference sessions on this topic in the next round of session submissions. So thank you to Kirsi commenters. Um, and uh grateful to anybody who sends us some fan mail via your app. We're grateful for that. Today we are talking about how parents and staff interact. And this question actually comes out of some data work I've been doing on the most commonly asked questions of Camp Pros on the internet. And uh this is in the top 25 questions most often asked. How do we deal with parents interacting directly with our staff? And obviously, that is a daily concern for day camps and maybe weekly or bi-monthly uh concern for overnight camps where kids come and stay for a period of time. Um, but I think there's there's lots of lessons to learn from that, lots of things to talk about. Do you mind? I'm gonna start with you. Um, is do you folks have some structure around parents talking to your just uh their camp kids' counselors or other staff at camp who aren't like leadership people?

SPEAKER_03

So it's it's difficult to create too much structure uh for certain situations. Uh the biggest one for us is the the bus counselors. Bus counselors see every parent on their route twice a day. Um and it's uh it's difficult to create structure around that. The the thing that we that we try to train our bus counselors uh about is um to you know share with the parents that if they were to speak for one minute to every parent on the route, the bus would show up 15 minutes late to camp. So we try to get that across to parents and and we try to encourage parents to speak to our office. So we are trying to create some structure, but at the same time, uh there is a positive to genuine face-to-face interaction between staff and and parents. So I think that it's very easy to view all of this as a in a negative way. Um that's not necessarily the truth all the time. There's a lot of positive that comes that comes out of it. Um a lot of a lot of data camps have counselors calling uh parents and doing parent phone calls. We don't allow that. Um, that's not our model. Our model is to have a division leader, a unit head, who's a teacher, social worker, something like that, to make the phone call. So I I think I think your questions about structure. I think we try our best, but at the same time, you cannot completely create a structure around this. And I don't think that we necessarily want to because you lose some of that um genuine interaction.

SPEAKER_05

Chris Restephen, your thoughts on structure around staff and parents.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. I think that each camp can make kind of their own decision of what that interface looks like. But I think one of the most essential components is that anybody who does interface with parents have appropriate training in what that looks like, um, how to hold boundaries and empathy simultaneously. Um, and also what are the escalation points? At what point is a um staff member not no longer the person to support a parent in any situation, whether it's an angry situation, whether it's a gratitude situation. Um, but I think clarifying those expectations makes it easier for both the parent um and the staff member to understand their roles in the interaction.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. And I love a good decision tree. So that's great.

SPEAKER_02

So this is the time. Yeah, I think I think people get nervous about staff and parent interactions because the goals are misaligned. Like any conversation between staff and parent, do they have the same goal? That's the first question, right? Um, and depending whether it's a day camp or a sleepaway camp and the nature of that contact, it's like, how do we how do we set that up ahead of time? Spoiler alert, I'm going to suggest intention and and preparation, right? Really drawing the boundaries around that for your staff during staff training. And if if you if your staff is in contact with parents, such as like a pickup and drop off at a day camp, or if um, I know some sleepaway camps, yo, some sleepaway camps indulge parents in that they'll tell the like some parents want to call every day and the camp will say, no problem. And I'm like, um, okay, that's a different thing. But maybe not so much, because I'm talking about drawing boundaries. I think really spelling it out for the staff and for the parents, what can you expect from communication for the other and tell them what the goal is, right? Especially in like a day camp situation, Matt, like you said, like make it really clear. Like, you know, when the bus pulls up, then is not a time to, unless you have two sentences of important information, great. Otherwise, you have to send us an email or call us and just be very clear about that. I just think letting people know ahead of time what they're getting into. All this said, um, I think in a sleepaway camp situation, I'm not certain why the frontline staff member is speaking to the parent. I could only imagine that raises anxiety for everyone involved. And I do mean everyone. I mean that staff member, the parent, the child, and the supervisor. It just it, I'm not telling you, I'm not telling anyone what they're doing is wrong. But don't do that because I don't know what results you're looking for, but I don't think you're gonna get them. Uh, you're gonna have to dig up out of that hole. That's my opinion.

SPEAKER_01

Chris, I think that's so interesting. And I think you so you brought up roles, and I actually think this is one of the pieces in communication that are the hardest because parents and camps often have very different roles, right? Like as a parent, I understand that my responsibility is to keep my child safe, and the camp's responsibility is to keep everyone's child safe. And so sometimes that gives us kind of that natural friction point. Um, and I think it it can really that that can be the kind of like the seed of the conflict when we have so much care and just not always knowing where exactly it should go.

SPEAKER_05

I think so. This is from me from all of you, but um you know, Matt, you said something about the the worry about the I I get kind of the anxiety of parents and staff talking to each other, and even that parents talking to the camp. Like at a certain point, my um philosophy on talking to parents has changed a lot. Um, and I think that I would communicate with them much differently now than I did was I was a camp director. And a lot of that comes from research that Joanna Warren Smith and Dan Weir and I did that said that people who don't choose a camp for their kid, the main reason why they don't choose it is not that it doesn't look like it's fun. The main reason they don't choose is because it's not safe. It doesn't feel safe, it doesn't look safe, it doesn't present as safe. And I think a lot of those camps probably are. They're just not good at telling that part of the story. And so that's a a bigger comms. That's not today's discussion, but that's a bigger comms thing than we need to be thinking about.

SPEAKER_03

I I well, something that you said just spurred a thought in in my head, um, which is that there's a being a parent at a camp is hard, it's a job, there's a lot to learn, there's a lot to remember. And I think we have we need to do a difficult job of of training parents, not just training our staff. And that feels a little counterintuitive to us. Um and it's a it's a challenge for sure. One of the things that we need to do a a better job of getting across to parents is that when we hire staff, we're hiring them because of how they interact with children, not because of how they interact with with parents, at least our front mindset. Yes. Administrators, leaders, that's a different story. But we've we've said that to parents before, um, and it I don't know that it resonates with with all of them, but it but it is true uh that our staff many many of them that are bus counselors are 18 to 21 and they they don't know how to speak to parents. They nor should they, right? That not at that age. Um so I think that we try to get that across. However, the reality of the situation is that when we hire staff, when we're hiring for for bus counselors, when we're hired reserved positions, I think the reality is that they do need to interact with parents and they do need to make parents feel safe and and confident in in what they're doing. And I often say that at our camp for parents, most of the camp experience is how they interact with the bus counselor, which is a scary thought. Right? So um we at our camp, we've over the past ten years or so, we've taken a bit of a different approach with how we hire bus counselors, and over fifty percent of our of our campers now have a bus counselor that's over 21 years old, um, which is a difficult thing for a day camp. And most of those um are international staff. So we hire a small amount of international staff who are generally speaking more mature. I mean, they're willing to fly across the world and spend 10 weeks in a country that's not their own. So they're generally a little bit more mature, and and when we interview them, one of the main things we're looking for is do they inspire confidence in the parents? So I I I think that's a long way of saying that I think the parents need to meet the camp a little bit in in understanding that this our staff works with children and that's what they're great at. But the camp also has to meet the parent halfway and say, hey, I think we need to do a little bit better job of hiring and training for the skills that inspire confidence in the parents.

SPEAKER_02

I think uh now that I'm thinking, thinking through what you said, Matt, there's something that you said in there. You know, I think we have to train parents how to, what to. All right, this isn't a well-formed thought. You know how, like, if you're a parent, you're aware that when you send your kid to school, there's gonna be a parent-teacher meeting. It's gonna happen in September, October, and that's gonna happen again the spring. We're all vaguely aware of this because we all went to school and we remember it. It's like part of the culture. A lot of parents, when they send their kids to camp, they have no idea what to expect as far as the communication. It's not like school, right? They're not, you don't, you don't get to call me every day and ask about, oh, they came home with this thing. You don't get to, you're not calling me to ask me about homework. You know what I mean? That they could, if it's a day camp, the kid can't call us later to ask questions about an assignment. Like I'm thinking a lot about, especially because some of the camps I work with, they're smaller and urban, and you know, it's a lot of first-time camp parents. I think it's like definitely the handbook, but I think it's part of their orientation. This is who we are. This is what we do at different levels, and these are the interactions you can expect at different levels. I think a lot of people yada yada yada their way through that. But now that I'm sitting and thinking about it, no one tells you how to interact with the adults at camp. Like we just assume, like, oh, you're taking care of my kid, just like the school teachers do. I should have the same access to you as I do to my child's uh teacher. Can I have your email address? Can I have phone number? No, you can't. And this is why, right? And it's a lot of what you said, Matt, is like these frontline people, that's not their job. If you have questions about your kid, please call me, but certainly don't speak to your counselor. They are part of a team. Um, and and their part is not speaking with you. I just think that needs to be explicitly stated, either like in an orientation or in your staff handbook. And it's it's only to your benefit. A lot of people just don't know.

SPEAKER_03

And I and I think as a as a day camp, most of our new campers are are fairly young, and the the majority of them are coming from preschools. And we we feel like we do a fantastic job of parent communication relative to most other camps out there. We spend a lot of uh resources on parent communication, but compared to preschools where parents drop off their child and they have uh an interaction with the teacher every day, and many of these preschools now have webcams in the classroom, which forget about the creepiness of that, put that aside for a second. Um our parent communication does not hold a candle to that level of interaction with with the teacher. And it's very difficult to explain that to a parent to say, hey, we think we do this very well. And from the parent's perspective, it is much worse than the preschool. However, from a like a healthiness perspective, uh, sitting and washing your child in a web can every day probably isn't very healthy. So it's a difficult challenge for us.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, if you have the time to do that, don't send your kid to take care. I don't know. That's that's that's a massive judgment. That's a massive judgment. That just sounds really wild to me. I'm sorry, Travis. I cut you all.

SPEAKER_05

Well, uh, I think part of the the difference in the relationship between school and camp is also, despite the fact that it's not true, it feels like parents are paying for camp and they're not paying for school. There's this free thing, that's not free, but this free thing that they get to have all this interaction with the the the caregiver at that organization. And now you're making me pay for this product, and I get less, they get less interaction, I get less interfacing, I get less updates. Um, I I can imagine for those who don't have uh a camp experience in their background, that must feel weird from the outside.

SPEAKER_02

I think it depends how you pitch it though, right? Well, sure. Everything's a communication problem. Yeah, I think it's how you pitch it because like the reason why you're sending your kid to camp is not, you know, prep communication between the professionals. That's not why you're sending your kid. That's why I think the goals are important, right? And I think I think, like you said, like the amount of interaction that people have with kids' teachers, they expect the teacher to explain things from like assignments to behavior and policies of the organization. And I don't know, maybe some teachers are empowered to do that. When I was a school teacher, I was talking to parents all the time about all of those things. But of course, I have a social work background, so no one was worried about me, right? The 17 year old or a 19 year old, and the parent is like asking them to explain their behavior, which they saw on a webcam. Um, that becomes that becomes wild. Okay, I just a moment. For me, the webcams are crazy, but it does it speaks to this topic right now. If you have a webcam inside the room where kids are being taken care of, the way that everyone needs to be briefed about what to do with that information, right? So, parents, if you're watching this webcam, what can you do with this information? If you see something, if you see something that that like um you find alarming, what's the process? What's the protocol? Because that's gonna have to be very specific. And I if I was a worker, that would be as a supervisor, I love it, right? Uh, I'm very big brother Orwelly in my in that way. But uh, as a worker, I downsides are constant there. But yeah, if you are if the staff is being monitored, then uh the parents seriously have to be told how to interact with that that technology.

SPEAKER_01

I I completely agree. And I think that's something that brings up for me is like when we over-communicate or when we do deep communication, like webcam communication about what is happening at camp, it erodes the trust that parents actually have to have in the camp to resolve. Yeah, fair.

SPEAKER_02

That's a great point.

SPEAKER_01

It gives us this feeling, right? Like I'm watching my kids' webcam and I see my kid get in a fight with somebody else. Now I feel like I'm in control of resolving that fight, even though I'm sitting at home having my coffee. And and and I think about that, about a lot of this communication is so much of what happens at camp is kids resolving conflict. And if we over-communicate with parents, the kids don't get that skill of navigating those conflicts themselves, and it doesn't inspire confidence in the parents.

SPEAKER_05

Yep. Yeah. Exclusive for camphacker listeners. Grab UltraCamp's free guide, the parent experience checklist. Practical steps to simplify registration and keep families coming back. Download at ultracampmanagement.com slash camphacker. Parents don't want clunky processes, and you don't want constant phone calls. Ultracamp helps you simplify registration with mobile-friendly forms, offer payment plans that work for your families, reduce calls and emails with automated reminders, and keep parents engaged with built-in communication tools. Ultracamp helps you create smooth, stress-free parent interactions so your team can focus on camp, not customer service. Learn more at ultracampmanagement.com slash campacker. I think that just picking up on other little pieces, one of those I think it's important that we directly talk to staff about this. Obviously, the decision tree is a is a part of that, but it's worth training folks on um and letting them know what the expectation and it's worth acknowledging that we all go into the situation or into summer staff training these days, saying these are young adults who don't know how to talk to other young adults, and then they're also gonna have to talk to adults. And if an adult is talking to them who's not their supervisor, like it is a parent, then chances are pretty good there's a reason that that parent's upset, and so we need to be thoughtful about what you do in that situation. Um, Gabrielle, who's a longtime co-host on this show, they had a formula for young staff taking parents to drop off their kid in their their um tent. Um, and so they gave their staff a bit of a social script to go through that would engage the parents, want to know, build trust with them, you know, tell a bit of your own story, that kind of thing. But that was such a neat experience for people who struggle to have face-to-face conversations to at least give them something to work through that I thought was a good shortcut for acknowledging that some of these conversations are going to happen, whether or not it's the right person to talk to. We don't have control over those things.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Like I think it's easy to hold the truth that young people, you know, our 18 to 25, our 16 to 25 year old staff might have not have the experience of interfacing with parents, but they also didn't have the experience of being a lifeguard before they were taught how to be a lifeguard. So maybe it is more of a Matt, what you said of like part of their job is to inspire confidence in parents. But we we can't just say that, like we have to train that and we have to talk about what that looks like. So, Chris, what you were saying about just kind of the the anxiety spiral of a uh a staff member is anxious to talk to a parent, which makes the parent anxious about dropping off their kid, which makes them react, you know. So it just like goes around in a circle. Like maybe the disruption of that isn't to say we don't do this, it's to put those those scaffolded things into place that makes it a more healthy interaction between the training and the boundaries for parent, the decision tree, um, the social script of what it looks like to disengage from that conversation. Um and maybe that's more of the answer than then let's not do this.

SPEAKER_02

Right. I feel challenged. I feel like there's a correct answer here. I'm like trying to puzzle that. Interesting. I I feel like I'm like, there's got because you know, while while you all were talking, I was thinking, I don't know if it this was said, but in some and substance, I remember thinking like, I certainly don't want to communicate to the parents that I do not trust this person to speak with them. Right. I don't want to say that. I don't want to say, oh, they're 18 and they can't, they can't really talk to other adults, but by all means, can we have your three-year-old for eight hours today? Like, I do you see what I'm saying? Like, I just as a parent, I'd be like, oh, wait. So you hire people who can't talk to adults. I know it's not the job function, but as a parent, that would make me a little, you know, what else don't they know how to do? Like what aspects of this job can they do? I'm I'm just thinking, like, there's like a correct way to pitch this, I think, to people. Um, and I think it's gonna be it's gonna be new behavior for parents. And you know what parents hate? Developing new behavior. They absolutely hate it. And I, but oh man, I feel like we don't have time on this podcast, but I really want to like I feel like this is a puzzle that can be solved. Okay. I I feel like I feel like there is a the right amount of direct communication that could solve it. And I figure out I'm gonna write a book and make millions, and I'm not sharing it with anybody on this podcast.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, parenting books sell tool.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I just I think I think there's I how do we empower okay? We don't want to empower the parents to reach out to anybody, but how do we give them the confidence of like the person who's watching your kids can do that? And I have every confidence in that. Um, and then I want to say, but don't talk to them. But how do I how do I push that? You know what I'm saying? How do I spin that positively? Like, oh, they're part of a team. This is their role. Their role isn't to communicate with you. I just, as a parent, how does that hit you?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think the key there is like is it's managing the channel, right? It's making sure that parent questions are getting to the most impactful place. And a technique that I have worked with a lot of camps on is ensuring that they understand if this staff member is at answering this question, like there is an energy drain somewhere else, right? If we are spending all of our time discussing the lost and found on the phone with parents, our camp leadership isn't in the position to make your child safe. So I think some of that safety language actually really works with parents of I really want to be able to respond to this question, but right now my responsibility is keeping these nine, nine-year-olds safe. And so let's make sure you get that question at the right place.

SPEAKER_02

I'm gonna challenge you there though, because listening to you raised my anxiety. It makes it sound like everyone there is juggling knives. Do you know what I mean? Like I don't want to hear that. Yeah, I don't want to hear like, oh, I can't ask a question because if I do, a child will die. Like, that's too much. So what this there's a temper there, we can temper that a little bit. I just aren't trying to, oh, we're gonna figure it out.

SPEAKER_03

Chris, I don't have an answer for you. Uh but one thought that I have is I I like to create systems and structures that that create wins for everybody. And uh I didn't think of this until you you were speaking, but I do realize that as we move forward in time, something we're doing here is we're trying to create structures so that the easiest way for a parent to communicate with someone is a path to someone leading to that question. And yes, setting up a structure in a system like that might be the way to think about this, right? Like if if the parent is if the easiest way for the parent to interact with camp is to speak to a 16-year-old, that's probably not a good system. Yeah, that's probably a structural problem. Absolutely. And for us it's difficult because of the bus counselor's setup. But as we're as we're speaking, I'm thinking of, well, there are things we can do, there are changes we can make so that when a parent has a question or an issue, it's much easier for them to maybe pick up their phone and interact with someone. And we we don't we don't do that, of course, but I just have the idea as you guys were speaking. So I think that's a different way to do it. Instead of instead of training and forcing people to do things that's not in their wheelhouse, change the structure and make everything go to people that are in their wheelhouse. Certainly easier said than done, but as long as we're facing a difficult problem, maybe we should just solve it the right way.

SPEAKER_02

Can I ask a question? I'm just curious what you're saying.

SPEAKER_05

Oh, sorry, no, you've got to that's the book nudge, right, Matt? It's it's the set up a system to make it easy for people to do the right thing or the thing you want them to do, make it just a little bit harder to do the thing you don't want them to do. Sorry for tucking over you, Chris.

SPEAKER_02

No, no, I'm just curious. I'm just curious what you all are gonna say. Well uh what's what's the right amount of communication with a parent? Officially, my I was gonna say, like, you know, when does it become too much? But I think we're all aware of that. What's the right amount of communication? Like as far as we're concerned, these camp professionals, and as far as the parents concerned, because I'm I'm like, do those match up? That's always my first question. Do our expectations match? But then I was like, I was just reflecting back on myself. Uh uh, we're like we're pretty high touch with the parents. Um I'm just curious, like for you, what's the what's in a program, what would be the right amount of communication?

SPEAKER_05

I don't know how you can make that black and white.

SPEAKER_02

I guess what I'm saying is like we we know what it's like when it's too much, right? When it becomes overwhelming, when it becomes problematic, right? But uh my whole thing for the past 20 minutes has been like, oh, be intentional, prepare. If you're gonna prepare, then you have to have in mind how much communication with the parent is appropriate. And I'm saying, like, if we can enunciate, that's I'm getting close to solving the puzzle. If we can enunciate that, then it's easier to train them on it. But I feel like that's the part that we haven't really, we've been circling around it. But what is, what do we expect from parents in these contexts? What is the right amount of communication? I mean, we um at my camp, I I had parents texting me every single day. They wanted proof of life pictures. I was looking on the website, is my kid there? Yes, your kids here. Where would they be? You know, and it so I spent every meal doing proof of life pictures. That was the wrong level of communication. Do you know what I mean? Like that was too much. So what would be enough?

SPEAKER_01

Does that make sense? I think that you're, I don't know that we're gonna get to the answer of what is the right amount, because I think it is really gonna deeply vary. But I think what we can do is again make those expectations clear, right? When I was working overnight camp, we had an all of our parent literature. We will call you if your child is injured or um or something happens in a way where they have to sit out of activities. That was it, right? If you don't hear from us otherwise, everything is good. And it goes back to the role piece is part of the role of the parent is trusting the camp. And that is an essential thing that we need from that parent. And if they're unable to give that, if they are unable to not get a proof of life picture every day, we have to either adjust our behavior or adjust that expectation.

SPEAKER_02

You said something really smart. I mean, everything you say is smart, Chris. But um, building trust with the parents. That's really what we're talking about. How do you build trust with the parents? Because the communication, the communication you have with them is an outgrowth of how they feel about leaving their child with you. So I guess that's really is like what what can we do in our behavior and our marketing and messaging to build trust with the parent? That's that's step one. That's step one to solving the puzzle, everybody. We got that far.

SPEAKER_04

Yes.

SPEAKER_03

That's what I was gonna say. I don't I don't think it's an amount, I think I think it's about trust uh and and quality of communication because I think we we take the approach that parent communication is not a is not a bad thing. Um we can get a lot of information from the parent. We can we can figure out how to give the child a better summer by communicating with the parent. And we've had children here where we talk to the parent every single day for 10 to 15 minutes, and and that's perfectly appropriate for that child situation. Um, but if if you're constantly spending your time trying to build trust with the parent, that's a different story. So I don't think it's a it's a mat it's it's an amount of communication. I think it's more about a quality of communication, and each child is a little bit different. And I like to frame it as though it's a partnership, and we can certainly get a lot of of useful information if we can communicate effectively with the parents.

SPEAKER_05

Well, Matt, I think that brings us to a close. That was well well done. Thanks for bringing it around. And uh I'm grateful to the three of you for your thoughtful discussion on this point. I want to take a second before we move on to the tool of week to just remind folks that begin they can text us and let us know how they feel about our discussion on a topic or topic ideas. Uh, it also helps if you leave us a review on whatever app that you're listening to us on or write us a note in YouTube. It just helps us to know how we're doing. And you could also go to ratethispodcast.com slash camp and there's a rating reviews button there of ours. This means that we are on to our tool of the week.

SPEAKER_04

Tool of the week.

SPEAKER_05

Chris Hudson, what's your tool?

SPEAKER_02

The way I my anxiety spiked. You know, like when the teacher calls on you, the way I was like, oh my god, am I going first? But but I am prepared. Uh but I am prepared. Let me just move some windows around. But no, no, I'm totally prepared, right? Yes, absolutely. Okay, tool of the week. Ready for this? So I run a small program. And you know, when we set it up, we had to make a P.O. box and it was by my house. Um, over the years, having to go check that P.O. box and take out the pounds of trash, like the pounds of U-line catalogs, um, all sorts of stuff. Like it was the the trip itself was frustrating enough. By the way, it's two blocks from my house, but that's not the point, right? The point is having to go in there and do it was annoying. So finally, um, we we found this website, traveling mailbox. Are you familiar with this? Right? So, what it is is that they give you a static address, they receive the mail, and they scan it and send you pictures of it and say, which ones do you want? And which ones can we delete? Or can we just get rid of oh yes, oh yes, travelingmailbox.com. Yes, you have to pay for it. No, it's not a lot, and it has saved me so much time and energy. Uh, it's great. So, so check that out. Travelingmailbox.com. I really highly recommend it, especially if you're on a small program, right? Without and you don't have like a static like camp site. It's it's just let someone else sort the spam for you.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. And even if you're a camp that has a summer address and a winter address, that makes it kind of sense.

SPEAKER_02

Because that's the other thing, is like we didn't want to switch addresses more than once ever. And this and this way, no matter where our camp moves to, we'll still get the mail in our inboxes.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. Amazing. Great tool. Matt, what's your tool?

SPEAKER_03

My tool of the week is Claude Cowork. I love tech. I'm a big AI guy, and I've been using Claude Cowork for so many things the past, I would say, two or three weeks. Um, it if you're not familiar with it, it's a desktop app, it's a desktop version of Claude, and that means that it can manipulate files on your computer and it can run uh longer tests on your computer. It's a simplified version of something called Claude Code. And to give you an example of what I've done with it, um, I I gave a couple of presentations at the Tri-State Camp conference recently, and I took my existing presentations, I gave it to Claude Cowork, and I said, these are pretty boring. And you turn these into uh single-page web files with animations that are worthy of a TED talk. Uh, and I gave it a couple more information about color palettes that I like and things that I don't like. And I mean, I was just blown away. It was the coolest presentation that I've ever seen. Wow. So I could certainly talk for a long time about Claude Cowort, but um I I if you haven't used it, uh, give it a shot, especially if you have a paid version of Claude already. One caveat uh Claude Cowert can manipulate and delete files in your computer. So you always want to be very careful when you use Claude Coward.

SPEAKER_05

It does ask you for permission all of the time. It almost too much, so you don't pay. You're like, yes, yes, yes. But anyway, uh one of the things I've been doing with a couple of our camps, um, and this is always a challenge to try these super techie things, but one of the things the great frustration I hear in my job is registration software doesn't talk to email software. So you can give people the emails about the registration and arrival, but you can't do it on the marketing side. And so when you're marketing to people who haven't re-registered, sometimes you have to use MailChimp or something like that. And we've been using Cloud Code to move the updated registration file into MailChimp automatically so that people who are who did sign up since your last email went out aren't getting the emails like, hey, you should register for camp because that makes parents panic. If you use you should register for camp when they already have. And so just some of those little practical, annoying things about the job, it helps tie some of the tech together. Great tool. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Chris, I'm excited for your tool too.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. So um the tool that I'm talking about is called EFA, which is almost a uh it's a response triaging tool that helps folks right at the moment of any incident or in the moment where you're you're you have an angry caregiver in front of you, um, helping that person understand whether they are experiencing discomfort, if they are feeling unsafe, or they are actually unsafe. Right now, people have a really hard time discerning between all three levels of those things and they warrant very different responses. So giving staff an understanding of is this a discomfort thing? Okay, if it's a discomfort thing, um, then we just need to recognize it as that and regulate. Um, what we might not need to do is recognize that as a safety issue that warrants the uh a higher response. Um, so it's just a triaging tool that helps people really decide what their um their response level should be to if in any given situation.

SPEAKER_05

Fantastic. That's great. Thank you. I love that. I love a tool that's helpful right away and and fits into a big situation that we know folks are facing. So thank you. My tool of the week is a 3D printer, in particular the bamboo series. Um, and they have a low-priced one that is gets incredibly good reviews called the A1. There is an A1 mini. I don't think that's it's not gonna make stuff big enough for what camp people need. As soon as you get used to a 3D printer, you seem to find some lots of stuff to use it for. Uh, but bamboo's on sale. We're recording this at the end of March. Um, and they usually have a spring sale on their A1s, and um the it's about half price right now. So um good printer gets really well reviewed. Uh Joe Richards, who many of you know from Camp Hacker and some of our other podcasts, uh, has the A1 Mini and likes it. But I have heard him say I wish that this was a little bit bigger. So that is that's my recommendation, the Bamboo A1 3D printer. Thank you. Thank you both for joining us for this call. Chris, if people have follow-up, can you remind them of the title of your book and how they get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. You can find me at tcamp.com or ChrisSpeaks Out.com.

SPEAKER_05

Fantastic. Thanks for being here, Chris. Absolutely. All right. Matt, how can folks follow up with you?

SPEAKER_03

You email me at matt at ramakoy.com, r-a-m-a-ju-o-i-s.com. Or you can uh visit my my blog at www.ilove dot camp.

SPEAKER_05

Great domain. Such a great domain. I'm ha I'm so happy for you that you got it. Matt, thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_02

Hey Chris. Um one doesn't find me. You simply become ready and then I arrive. But if that doesn't work, you can send me an email, uh, planetchris at gmail.com. Look me up at LinkedIn. I think I'm Chris Hudson1 there or on Instagram on Planet Chris One There. Or check out my website, planetchris.net.

SPEAKER_05

Thanks, Chris. I'm gonna take a second now. Thank you to our guests, of course, for joining us. But I want to highlight one other Go Camp Pro podcast that we think you should check out. Um, and we'd love for you to check out the Daycamp pod. Um, Matt, is that the one that you were last on? Was Daycamp or Camp Owners? Was our Camp Owners recently. Oh, there you go. So this time, check out Camp Owners because there's a great episode from Matt on there. Matt's getting into all the shows, but we would be grateful if you search for GoCamp Pro Podcasts in your app and subscribe to those there.

SPEAKER_02

And you two have already been thanked, but I'm gonna do it one more time. Thank you so much for being here. You are great. And also, we want to thank the sponsors of this week's episode, as well as our editor, Ryan Vandatorin, and of course, GoCamp Pro's executive producer of podcasting, Matt Wilfred. Thanks for the evening, friends.

SPEAKER_00

The Camp Hacker Podcast is brought to you by Beth and Travis Allison, summer camp leadership training and marketing consultants. Thanks for listening. Camp Hacker, bringing your world into focus.