Summer quandary for counselors

For increasing numbers of children, summer camp has become a vacation from Ritalin, much to the chagrin of their camp counsellors.

With at least 200,000 Canadian children on prescriptions for the pills and sales of the drug up 9% since last year, camp directors have devised strategies to either exclude from their camps children who are off Ritalin, or learn to cope with them.

Although doctors say there is no medical reason to take children off Ritalin for the summer, parents concerned about the drug’s possible side effects, from erratic sleep patterns to diminished appetite, often do so anyway.

Yet these parents often fail to tell the camp the child has Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or that the child is off Ritalin.

“The child may be OK for a few days but eventually the ADHD catches up with them, and I mean, they blow,” said Jack Feldman, director of Camp George, a reform Jewish camp at Parry Sound.

“Oftentimes the kid ends up getting sent home. So the wonderful, positive experience the parents wanted for their children doesn’t happen. It’s self-defeating. They have set up their
child to fail,” said Mr. Feldman, a former social worker, who objects to the conventional wisdom motivating the decisions: that children do not need to focus and pay attention once the school year is over.

“What about trying to teach them to sail or waterski? If the kids are on Ritalin to help them focus or learn, then by taking them off, parents are doing their own kids a disservice. The kids have a lot of problems and difficulty in listening and sitting still, and taking in information and being able to process it and turn it into a new skill.”

Camps are now taking steps to wrest information from parents, from tripling the amount of questions asked on camp medical forms to meeting with families before the start of camp to gauge a child’s behaviour.

“It’s not that they don’t tell the truth, it’s just avoiding telling us everything,” said Mary Casey, chairwoman of Camp Big Canoe, a United Church of Canada camp in Bracebridge, Ont.

Ms. Casey, a registered nurse, last year added a point-bank question to Camp Big Canoe’s medical form, asking whether the camper has been diagnosed with ADHD.

“It’s been very successful,” said Ms. Casey, a past chairwoman of the Ontario Camping Association’s health committee. “Though we still do get surprises.”

Other camps ask a series of probing questions. Does the child take any medication during the year that we should be aware of? Is the child going off a medication usually taken during the
school year? Is the child seeing a psychologist or school counselor? Does the child have any learning disabilities?

While many camps say they can accommodate children with disabilities if given warning, some simply cannot. “Parents need to be told this up front, even though it is painful,” said Jason
Haight, president of the British Columbia Camping Association.

© 2002 National Post

Written by Heather Sokoloff for the National Post, and published on DrKelley.info, July 12, 2002. Embedded links (if any) may no longer be active. (Ed. 12.31.10)

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